Search Results for: Portugal

KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Commission is piling political pressure onto industries, especially fossil fuel electricity generators, which pour greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, to force them to clean up their processes, adding costs to their bottom line.

In a move that will only serve to make CHP and renewable plants more competitive by comparison, the Commission is preparing a raft of legal cases against eight European Union Member States, to force them to monitor and restrict their production of key greenhouse pollutants.…

KEITH NUTHALL
EUROPEAN consumers still lack the confidence to buy in countries other than their own, in spite of all the efforts made to open up the internal market, the European Commission reports. A special survey by the Commission shows that only 31 per cent of consumers think their rights are well protected when they shop cross-border in the EU, against 56 per cent who feel well protected in their own country.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Commission is to take Britain, France, Germany, the Netherlands, and Portugal to the European Court of Justice for allegedly failing to fully implement the EU Basic Safety Standards Directive on protecting the health of workers and the public against dangers from ionising radiation.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Commission has been given authority by European Union Council of Ministers (finance) to negotiate a comprehensive “Governing International Fisheries Agreement” with the USA. A Brussels official in the Commission’s directorate general for fisheries told Fishing News International that a future deal could lead to EU fishing crews being given access to fish US waters and for European factory ships to be allowed to buy stocks from American fishermen at sea.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Commission has been given authority to negotiate a comprehensive “Governing International Fisheries Agreement” with the USA. EU ministers said Brussels officials should

Meanwhile, the EU Council of Ministers has agreed a regulation aiming at boosting cod stocks in the Irish Sea this year, protecting adult cod during the spawning season, notably enforcing an area closure from February.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Commission has launched a case at the European Court of Justice in a political battle with the EU Council of Ministers over whether Portuguese pig farmers should receive Euro 16.3 million in state aid. Ministers had allowed Portugal to release the money to refund losses incurred by an earlier order from the Commission that previous subsidies of this value should be repaid, in effect overruling Brussels’ decision.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
A SPLIT has emerged in the European Union Council of Ministers over the possible scrapping of subsidies to tobacco producers under a possible review the common market regime, which should happen this year. On one side in a debate at a recent agriculture council were a group including many of the EU’s tobacco growing countries, (Austria, Belgium, Luxembourg, Italy, France, Greece, Spain and Portugal), who are opposed to cuts, whilst other Member States, (notably Britain, the Netherlands, Denmark and Sweden), backed a recital to a current proposal to adjust subsidies over the next two years that calls on the EU to review the regime this year “to allow the progressive deletion of subsidies.”…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Union Council of Ministers has approved an application from France to extend for another seven years its right to reduce by up to half the rate of excise duty applied in mainland France to traditional rum from the French Caribbean and Indian Ocean departments of Guadeloupe, Martinique, Réunion and Guyane.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
PORTUGAL has called for the resumption of EU funding of the International Olive Oil Council’s promotion of olive oil in non-EU countries with low demand, (including the USA, Australia and Japan). Payments were suspended over council tendering concerns.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
A SERIES of good practice recommendations on the prevention and detection of e-coli outbreaks has been issued by the European Commission, following a study of how six EU Member States deal with the pathogen.

Officials looked at the monitoring and control systems for red meat and milk in Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Portugal and Sweden and concluded that although all were alert to the risks of e-coli contamination, there was a wide range of different public and private control measures.…