Search Results for: european union

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Union is pressing for the ongoing World Trade Organisation round in agricultural goods to lead to a reduction in export credits for food products, that are currently unregulated by world trade rules.

EU chief negotiator David Roberts has offered to maybe trim Europe’s export subsidies under a new WTO Agreement on Agriculture, if other countries – notably the USA – consider reducing loans such as export credits.…

BY ALAN OSBORN
THE EUROPEAN Commission has allowed Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, Italy and Spain to pay special income aid worth a total of some Euro 418 million, (about Pounds 250 million), to beef producers suffering losses between November 2000 and June 2001 because of the BSE crisis.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Union has been pressing its trading partners to loosen the emergency import restrictions that they imposed on EU meat products at the height of the foot and mouth crisis, because of the clear evidence that the outbreak is under control.…

BY ALAN OSBORN
THE EUROPEAN Union’s Council of Ministers has decided to suspend the collection of anti-dumping duties on imports of cotton-type bed linen from India following a determination by the World Trade Organisation that the EU had failed to take all relevant factors into account when it originally imposed the levies in 1997.…

BY ALAN OSBORN
BRITAIN has been formally threatened with legal action by the European Commission over its failure to introduce national legislation fully implementing the EU’s Hazardous Waste Directive. Brussels said that the UK was at fault over its legal definition of hazardous waste – which did not match that of the EU – and added that the ban on the mixing of hazardous wastes, outlined in the directive, “has not been fully implemented in Gibraltar or Northern Ireland.”…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Court of Justice has damaged Monsanto’s case at the High Court, in London, where it is claiming that UK regulations break European law by failing to insist that rival firms provide up-do-date information about the effect of glyphosate herbicides, when applying for market approvals.…

Keith Nuthall
THE EUROPEAN Commission has failed in its bid to force the French government to abandon its tough line over the right of driving instructors to deduct tax VAT for vehicles bought for their jobs; Paris insists that they can claim a rebate, only where automobiles are used “exclusively” for teaching.…

Keith Nuthall
AUSTRIA and Ireland have been warned by the European Commission that they could face action in the European Court of Justice for failure to introduce legislation covering roadworthiness tests for diesel motor vehicles.

The EU directive concerned is 1999/52/EC, which concerns emissions from diesel engine vehicles and in particular with “vehicle preconditioning with a view to avoiding damage to the engine,” said the Commission.…

BY ALAN OSBORN
THE GERMAN government has been told that it must cut back its regional aid for the construction of a new Volkswagen car factory in Dresden to 85 per cent of the sum proposed. The revised aid of 145 million Deutschmarks, (about Pounds 47 million), is part of a total investment of DM 1,000 million for a so-called “transparent factory,” which would allow a customer to observe the final assembly of his vehicle on site.…

KEITH NUTHALL
THREATS of delays to the distribution of ecopoints permits, allowing hauliers to cross ecologically sensitive Austrian Alpine passes, have been lifted, with the European Commission abandoning plans to cut back allocations. The move had been opposed by the EU Council of Ministers, leading to concerns about an political stand-off.…