Search Results for: european union

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Commission is distributing 1.2 million leaflets this summer – many via EU hotel and tourism federations – which aims to educate holiday-makers on how to use the single European currency, the Euro.

With its notes and coins due to be launched in January, “Don’t forget to Pack the Euro” encourages tourists to get used to the concept of the single currency whilst vacationing abroad this summer.…

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.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
FINAL agreement has been reached in a Council of Ministers-European Parliament conciliation committee on the tightening of a directive on the limitation of emissions of acid pollutants from large combustion plants and new directive fixing national emission ceilings for four atmospheric pollutants, (sulphur dioxide, nitrogen oxides, volatile organic compounds and ammonia).…

BY ALAN OSBORN
EUROPE’S clothing industry is “too big to be squeezed into niche markets,” says a report produced by experts on the sector at the European Commission. EU clothing manufacturers “need a sufficiently broad economic base to generate the turnover and economies of scale necessary to finance research and innovation,” says the report which is not binding on the Commission but will form the basis of future actions by Brussels in the sector.…

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
WASTEWATER

The European Commission has decided to take France and Belgium to the court for flouting the EU Urban Wastewater Treatment Directive. France, alleges the Commission, has failed to identify enough sensitive areas bodies of water that are eutrophic, or are otherwise seriously polluted by wastewater.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Commission has ordered American medicines information company IMS HEALTH (IMS) to abandon its refusal to allow rivals to copy its pharmaceutical sales and prescriptions data collection system in Germany.

In an unusual step, Brussels has used its powers as a competition authority to tell IMS to immediately licence the use of its 1860 brick structure method, over which it has copyright, “on commercial terms.”…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
MEP’s have backed moves to introduce EU pollution controls for ‘non-road mobile machinery,’ such as lawn mowers, hedge trimmers, chain saws and forestry equipment, although the European Parliament’s environment committee has baulked at proposals to grant concessions to large manufacturers.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Commission has asked for electronics research teams – from both the private and public sector – to bid for money from a budget to promote studies and demonstration projects, regarding innovative computing-related technologies.

Using some of the last money still available from the outgoing Fifth Framework Programme of research, which will be wound up by the end of this year, the Commission has announced that it has earmarked Euro 450 million for grants, with a deadline for applications for the bulk of the projects of October 17.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
BRITISH restaurateurs and hoteliers could be forced to pay regular fees to record companies for piping music from radio broadcasts into their premises, if the European Commission wins a legal case against the British government.

It has asked the European Court of Justice to order the UK to scrap the existing system, where no royalty fees are payable for playing this background music free-of-charge to customers.…