Search Results for: Spain

BY KEITH NUTHALL
AN INQUIRY into whether national state aid paid to Spanish coal mining company González y Díez was illegal under European rules is to be reopened, seven months after the European Commission ruled on the case. Last July 2, it decided that under the now defunct regulations of the former European Coal and Steel Community that the Spanish government should recover state aid paid to the company between1998 and 2000 and should not pay aid earmarked to cover 2001 costs.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Commission has authorised the Spanish government to pay out industry-wide state aid totalling Euro 425 million covering expenses incurred by the country’s coal industry from July 24 to December 31, 2002, and additional aid of Euro 11.2 million for 2001 and 2002 until July 23.…

BY ALEX SMAILES, in Port of Spain, Trinidad
BRITISH cruise ships are planning to return to Trinidad after pulling out due to a report of planned terrorist attacks against UK nationals from Islamic groups on the island. The two companies – P&O cruises and Princess Cruises – made the decision after information from the British Foreign and Commonwealth office (FCO).…

Keith Nuthall
Spain has been ordered to repay 21 million euros (about pounds 13.6

million) of EU aid in respect of “serious deficiencies in the

administration and control of the aid for flax and hemp production.”

Omissions by the Spanish authorities “led to an exceptionally high risk

for the EU budget,” said farm Commissioner Franz Fischler.…

KEITH NUTHALL
THE MOST important driver of reform in the institutions of the European Union today is the impending enlargement of the EU eastwards, to take in (Greek) Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Poland, Slovakia and Slovenia.…

BY SWINEETHA DIAS WICKRAMANAYAKA
INDIA’S four-day 18th International Leather Fair, in Chennai (Madras), this month (Feb) concluded INDRupees 5,090 million (US$106.8 million) worth of business, said its organisers. Staged at the Chennai Trade Centre, it attracted more than 8,000 visitors, said the Indian Trade Promotion Organisation, of whom five per cent were from abroad, including representatives from 20 countries, notably from Italy, Germany, Spain, Brazil and China.…

Keith Nuthall
PSYCHOLOGICAL harassment in the workplace, especially by colleagues, is the new growing health-and-safety threat in Europe, both as a source of stress and a cause of productivity losses, a European Union (EU) agency’s report has concluded.

‘Preventing violence and harassment in the workplace’ by the European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions has found that defence industry workers and government officials are most likely to suffer this kind of victimisation, with 16 per cent reporting these problems.…

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.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
DISASTERS invariably spark reforms, especially when they are unprecedented. It was so with September 11, which has spun off a range of hitherto unimagined security precautions, and the same kind of safety-first reaction has followed recent oil tanker disasters such as the Prestige tragedy, off Spain.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
Europe’s ambitious Galileo programme to establish a global satellite navigation system is clearly a project that likes to keep its supporters in a state of fairly constant nervous tension. At a cost of 3.2 billion euros, Galileo was never a sure-fire runner to begin with.…