Search Results for: Spain

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Union’s (EU) financial watchdog the Court of Auditors has criticised the EU’s 10-year-old extensification premium, a subsidy designed to encourage beef and veal producers to abandon potentially polluting intensive farming practices. The Court has claimed that the payments “did little to encourage additional extensive farming.”…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE REPUBLIC of the Congo (Brazzaville) has launched a case at the International Court of Justice, in the Hague, which is trying to undermine the principle of extra-territoriality under which activist magistrates, for instance in Belgium and Spain, have been seeking to prosecute crimes committed abroad.…

BY DEIRDRE MASON
SIMPLIFIED rules for ensuring that clean bathing water set out in the final proposal for a revised European Union (EU) bathing water directive will need to stand up to cost benefit analysis, water utility representatives have stressed.

The European Commission has now tabled proposed revision for agreement by EU ministers and MEPs, after years of argument that stalled previous attempts to update the 1976 directive.…

KEITH NUTHALL
A EUROPEAN masters degree in renewable energy has been launched. Coordinated by renewables research group EUREC, the one-year course aims at teaching technically qualified students about a variety of renewable energy methods.

Professor Arthuros Zervos, EUREC vice president said that the course was unique in obliging students to study in at least two different countries.…

BY SWINEETHA DIAS WICKRAMANAYAKA and KEITH NUTHALL
THE GOVERNMENT of Sri Lanka is embarking on a comprehensive survey of the country’s clay resources as demand grows thanks to an official policy of promoting a home-grown ceramics industry, which is already the largest mineral-based sector in this south Asian country.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Commission has publicly backed the growing privatisation of Europe’s water utilities, with its internal market commissioner backing British government moves to inject competition into its national sector.

Indeed, Frits Bolkestein defended the much-maligned record of privatised water services in the UK, blaming the price rises in the 1990’s on a failure to ensure private water companies could compete and previous government neglect.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
A EUROPEAN Union (EU) commissioner has called on EU governments to reconsider the phasing out of nuclear energy, which he says has been approved on the basis of “the moral high ground and….of often unjustified emotions.”

Internal market Commissioner Frits Bolkestein (CORRECT SPELLING) said that technological advances were tackling the environmental difficulties surrounding nuclear energy and although problems still exist, “they do not justify the total phasing out of nuclear energy now carried out by a number of Member States.”…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
HALF-HEARTED efforts by European Union Member States to impose controls on shabby shipping have been blamed for the disastrous sinking of the ill-named Prestige oil tanker, off Galicia, Spain. Placing on record their disgust at the environmental tragedy, the Council of Europe’s environment committee deplored “the negligence of governments and their lack of any real determination to provide themselves with the means of preventing such disasters – or at least minimising their impact.”…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
MICROSOFT, Vodafone, Oracle, AT&T, Nokia, Verizon, IBM and other telecoms related companies have joined a protest statement coordinated by the International Chamber of Commerce against a Spanish law restricting e-commerce.

Spain is not only requiring commercial websites based on its territory to register with its government, but also to insist that Spanish ISP’s block access to site that are deemed threatening to the country’s defence, public order, consumer rights or other values.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Commission has sued RJ Reynolds in New York, seeking damages against allegations that it illegally laundered the proceeds of cigarette smuggling. The case – which also involves Italy, Germany, France, Spain, Portugal, Greece, Belgium, the Netherlands, Finland and Luxembourg – also seeks an injunction stopping future alleged laundering.…