Search Results for: Portugal

BY KEITH NUTHALL

MINIMUM excise duty rates on tobacco products across the European Union (EU) are rising and at such rates that demand will almost certainly be depressed in many EU member states. The impact will be especially marked in eastern Europe, where governments have been given additional time to implement hikes in excise duty.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

The European Commission will spend around Euro 3 million on promoting sales outside the European Union (EU) of French spirits, Italian and Portuguese wines over the next three years. It is spending Euro 1.2 million on marketing and information campaigns in Japan and north America coordinated by Italian wine federation Federdoc; Euro 1 million promoting Portuguese ‘vinho verde’ wines within China, Norway, Latin and north America, campaigns organised by the Comissão de Viticultura da Região dos Vinhos Verdes; and Euro 912 million on promoting Cognac, with campaigns in China, Russia and north America coordinated by France’s Bureau National Interprofessionnel du Cognac (BNIC).…

BY DEIRDRE MASON

THE AUTOMOTIVE industry has a new potential market opportunity now that the European Union (EU) has finally agreed the technical specifications for its long-awaited European Electronic Toll Service (EETS). Future vehicles could offer a single pre-installed on-board unit that would work for all road-tolling points across the EU.…

BY BRENDAN DE BEER and CARRIE-MARIE BRATLEY

"THIS is one of the most serious situations we have ever been faced with," admitted António Mousinho, chairman of Portugal’s National Haulage Association (ANTRAM) at the beginning of October.

As with other industries in these economically turbulent times, the haulage industry in Portugal and its trade unions and professional associations are becoming increasingly obsessed with simple economic survival.…

BY PACIFICA GODDARD

The Venezuelan cigarette market experienced an overall decline in 2008 and the first half of 2009. In 2008, 11.95 billion sticks were sold, an 8.6% drop from the 13.07 billion sticks sold in 2007, according to the United Nations Statistics Division.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

A EUROPEAN Union (EU) research project has been launched to prevent allergic reactions to wine, by finding alternatives to sulphur dioxide – widely used by the industry to prevent micro-biological damage to taste and colour.

Organised under the umbrella of EU research network Eureka, wine industry specialists are testing a variety of alternative substances and treatments to reduce the amount of sulphites in wines, which are regarded as an allergen.…

BY ALAN OSBORN

A NEW crisis over the presence of genetically modified (GM) ingredients in food and livestock feed has once more focused attention on the European Union’s (EU’s) controversial GM policies. It has especially raised the spectre of job losses, farm bankruptcies and higher consumer prices if a relaxation of the current de facto zero tolerance restriction applying to unauthorised GM products is not agreed soon.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

HACHETTE Ireland was one of 12 publishers honoured this week at the first awards of the new European Union Prize for Literature (Monday Sept 28). The Dublin-based branch of the Hachette publishing empire was praised for producing one of 12 award winning books: ‘Longshore Drift’ (2006), by Karen Gillece.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

THE ATTACK by France and Germany on the European Commission’s ‘health check’ reforms to phase out European Union (EU) dairy quotas by 2015 is gathering support, with 16 member states backing increased subsidies. Having failed to persuade the Commission to abandon quota liberalisation, a growing Franco-German-led alliance at the EU Council of Ministers is backing increased subsides while restrictive production quotas expand from 2010 and disappear in 2015.…

 By David Haworth, in Brussels

Among many things the ambitious Swedish presidency of the European Union hopes to achieve in the next five months is a revival of the so-called ‘Lisbon Process’. The what? A few may recall this initiative was launched in 2000 to chart the way the EU would become “the world’s most dynamic, knowledge-based economy.” Rhetorically it became a bouncy castle for politicians, left and right, who could jump up and down with ‘Lisbon’, confident of its crowd-pleasing potential, in Brussels and Strasbourg at least.

But the applause soon died – so much so the whole effort had to be revived a mere five years after it began.

It hasn’t been going great guns since then, either. Not unreasonably, however, EU officials think it’s worth taking out of the drawer in the context of the worst recession since the war.…