Search Results for: Romanian

BY KEITH NUTHALL
MUTUAL trade between the European Union (EU) and Romania in a range of tobacco products will become duty free by 2007, easing the eastern European country’s anticipated EU accession of that year. A trade agreement phases out duties on cigarettes (including those flavoured with cloves), cigars, cheroots and cigarillos, smoking tobacco, homogenised or reconstituted tobacco, chewing tobacco and snuff.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
RESERVE anti-dumping duties against two Romanian producers of certain seamless pipes and tubes of iron or non-alloy steel are to be re-imposed, even though they had last year been declared illegal by the European Court of Justice.

Judges had ruled last January that the European Commission made administrative errors when fixing the level of protection required for European Union (EU) producers from exports made by Petrotub SA and Republica SA.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
AFTER a long period of consultation, a comprehensive directive protecting the European Union’s (EU) groundwater reserves has been proposed by the European Commission, which would force Member States to establish and police locally sensitive pollution limits. The legislation would insist that national governments carefully monitor groundwater quality and take steps to reverse its pollution, where it has exceeded these self-imposed thresholds.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) is lending Romanian water utility Regia Autonoma Aquaserv Euro 7 million to improve drinking water supplies for the central Romania town of Targu Mures. The loan complements a Euro 20.9 million grant from the European Union’s (EU) ISPA programme to extend the 160,000-citizen town’s sewer network, improve storm management systems and help rehabilitate a water plant.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
ENVIRONMENTAL health is necessarily a broad science, after all, the pollution, pathogens and accident risks that surround us are many and varied. So it makes sense, when trying to improve the environmental health of a particular urban area, to take a holistic approach, making improvements to services and cleanliness, as well as the built environment.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE WORLD Bank is lending Romania a Euro 74.3 million package to help it develop a fully-functioning wholesale electricity market and boost the reliability of its transmission systems. Concerned that a lack of reliability of power supplies could hinder economic growth, especially in the capital Bucharest and in Transylvania, the bank wants to “attract and sustain private sector participation in the power sector.”…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
ROMANIA’S Ministry of Public Works, Transports and Housing has launched a seaworthiness review of all Romanian flagged ships, which it hopes will allow it to provisionally close its European Union accession negotiations regarding transport policy. The inquiry was sparked by the Prestige disaster off Spain and the resulting release of a blacklist by the European Commission of ships that had visited European Union ports with safety defects.…

KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) has drawn up plans to lend Romanian Industrial Energy Efficiency Company Euro 11 million, so it can help around 15 creditworthy industrial companies develop “more efficient and reliable sources of energy,” especially by using co-generation.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
SWITZERLAND has complained to a key World Trade Organisation committee that its beef imports are being unfairly restricted by the USA because of concerns that they are contaminated with BSE. It has claimed at the WTO Sanitary and Phytosanitary Measures Committee that the US should not, for example, be insisting on the onsite inspection of Swiss meat plants, because the Office International des Épizooties has classified Switzerland as having a low incidence the disease.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
A LAPSED double-checking system for imports of Romanian steel products into the European Union is to be reinstated from July, assuming EU ministers approve a proposal from the European Commission. The system was established when Romania and the EU signed an association agreement, (a broad trade and political relations deal), in 1996, but its legal authority lapsed last December.…