Search Results for: Spain

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE WORLD Trade Organisation has launched a general round at its summit in Qatar, which will include negotiations on liberalising export and import regimes for so-called industrial goods such as fish.

These talks have a final deadline of 2005 and, said the meeting’s communiqué, will try “to reduce or as appropriate eliminate tariffs, including the reduction or elimination of tariff peaks, high tariffs, and tariff escalation, as well as non-tariff barriers, in particular on products of export interest to developing countries.”…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
HEALTH experts have been discussing a report from the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, (OECD), which has shown Britain performs poorly against its competitors in western Europe and north America, regarding the number of nurses employed per head of population in the late 1990’s.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Commission has cleared the proposed merger between steel producers Usinor S.A. of France, Luxembourg-based Arbed S.A. and Aceralia Corporación Siderúrgica S.A. of Spain, a deal which would create the world’s biggest steel company. To secure regulatory approval, the companies have agreed to sell off steel production and distribution operations in France, Spain, Luxembourg, Belgium, Italy and Portugal.…

BY ALAN OSBORN
THE PAYMENT of Euro 18 million in grants by the Spanish government in support of a Renault factory at Valladolid is to be formally investigated by the European Commission. Brussels says it fears Spain fluted EU state aid rules.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL AND ALAN OSBORN
WATER pricing reform is on its way in the European Union. The water framework directive passed last year imposes a commitment on Member States by the year 2010 to ensure that their pricing policies “provide adequate incentives for users to use water resources efficiently.”…

BY ALAN OSBORN
THE LATEST report of the European Court of Auditors on annual spending by the European Union is depressingly familiar. It says the figures do not warrant official approval. It puts a questionmark over some Pounds 2.5 billion out of the pounds 50 billion spent by the EU in 2000, with most of the suspect figures again in the farm sector.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
IT was telling that the first step taken by President Bush against Islamic terror groups following the World Trade Centre disaster was to freeze bank accounts. The international community has now responded by agreeing common controls to stop terror groups laundering funds.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
SPAIN has lost two bids at the European Court of Justice to overturn the refusal by the European Commission to fully meet Spanish claims for European grants for meat subsidies, because of concerns about Madrid’s “weak” anti-fraud controls.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
LOOKING ahead, the work programme of the European Civil Aviation Conference, (ECAC), for 2001 to 2003, seems to have been prepared with a degree of foresight.

Taking account of its general aim of promoting the safe and orderly development of civil aviation on routes to, from and within Europe, its director generals, (representing its member countries), have agreed a comprehensive set of projects focused on security.…

BY JONATHAN THOMSON
HANDLING the needs and issues surrounding the 550 million passengers and billions of tonnes of cargo moving through the airports and terminals of the 38 European Civil Aviation Conference countries is a task of immense scope.

No wonder then that ECAC’s Working Group on Facilitation, (FAL), is comprised of a multi-disciplined team of delegates and observers from areas including customs, immigration, security, public health, drug control as well as of course, air transport users and civil aviation representatives.…