Search Results for: European Union

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE ABILITY of the European Commission to effectively monitor the European Union insurance sector has been called into question by MEP’s, who have admitted being “astonished” after receiving official complaints about irregularities at Lloyd’s of London dating back 20 years.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Commission has cleared a significant legal obstacle preventing the French government going ahead with plans to spend national state aid on subsidising start-up short sea shipping runs.

Brussels has ordered that such grants would be legal under European Union state aid regulations.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
WHAT could be more straightforward or fairer, you might think, than the European Union’s veterinary and phytosanitary agreements with non-member countries?

The idea is that each party pledges that the food it exports to the other – be it derived from animals or plants – meets the requirements of its own food safety legislation and that this is then taken on trust by the receiving country.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
INTELLECTUAL property law specialists have been asked to comment on a report that suggests that European Union regulations limiting the scope of technology transfer agreements should be liberalised. The European Commission wants to know whether it should widen the scope of its so-called ‘block exemption’ from its competition rules regarding intellectual property issues.…

KEITH NUTHALL
THE CREATION of a hydro electricity joint venture by German electricity giant E.ON and Austrian electricity producer Verbund has been approved by the European Commission; European Hydro Power will produce electricity for its parents, which will continue to sell the power separately to their customers in Germany and Austria.…

BY ALAN OSBORN
THE EUROPEAN Union’s ambitious Galileo satellite navigation project has been given a vote of approval by the European Parliament but the assembly also crucially said that there should be no intimate private sector involvement in the Pounds 2.5 billion programme.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE NORWEIGAN government is to conduct a three-year review of its subsidised shipping service providing a lifeline for 34 ports from Bergen to Kirkenes, in the far north, near the Russian border. The move follows an agreement struck with the surveillance authority of the European Free Trade Area, (EFTA), which polices the European Economic Area rules by which Norway must abide.…

KEITH NUTHALL
A NEW report from the European Environment Agency has tried to explain why there is indeed a wide gulf between Member States’ performance on renewables; for instance, Britain has more wind than Germany, but significantly less wind power electricity generation and Greece has failed to develop solar panels as quickly as fellow southern Mediterranean EU Member State Spain.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Union Council of Ministers (general affairs) has approved an intensive double-checking system regarding the trade in steel products between Macedonia and the European Union. Its aim is to boost openness and transparency in the export of Macedonian steel, under the trade agreement Skopje has signed with Brussels, preventing the system being abused.…

BY ALAN OSBORN
THE EUROPEAN Commission today (Tuesday) formally proposed that the European Union ratifies the Rotterdam Convention procedure regulating the shipping of hazardous chemicals in international trade, and at the same time proposed that the EU goes further by covering a wider range of chemicals than contained in the Convention.…