Search Results for: European Union

BY ALAN OSBORN
THE EUROPEAN Commission has given a new warning to EU Member States against agreeing individual bilateral air transport deals with non-EU countries. It says “open skies” deals with the US give the Americans “considerable operational opportunities in the European market” but have no equivalent value for European airlines in the US.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL AND ALAN OSBORN
PUBLIC expenditure on social protection – including pensions and health care, as well as benefits and social services – fell in the UK and the European Union between 1996 and 1999, having risen quite sharply in the first years of the 1990’s, a report from Eurostat, the EU’s statistical agency has claimed.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Union is joining talks at the WTO about a dispute between Australia and the Philippines over quarantine restrictions imposed by Canberra on imports of fresh fruit and vegetables, especially banana and pineapples.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
A SIGNIFICANT trend towards the consolidation in the European Union’s insurance sector has been highlighted by a report from the EU’s statistical agency Eurostat, which has released detailed data about 1999.

In that year, said the study, the number of EU insurance businesses decreased by 8.4 per cent between 1996 and 1999, with a particularly sharp decline in Britain, where numbers fell by 23.7 per cent.…

KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Union Council of Ministers has provisionally approved agreements on liberalising the trade in textile products between the EU, Egypt and Laos that were negotiated last year. The deals can now come into affect, while ministers consider whether to accept them formally and permanently.…

BY SWINEETHA DIAS WICKRAMANAYAKA
THE EUROPEAN Commission has fined eight companies a total of Euro 855.22 million for participating in secret market-sharing and price-fixing cartels affecting the production of vitamins including those sold to the confectionary industry to make nutrient enriched products.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Commission has stepped up a quarrel with France over bananas, where Brussels says French importers are entitled to only 4,000 tonnes of reduced-duty imports a year; France is insisting on 50,000 tonnes. Paris has now been given a month to respond or face action in the European Court of Justice.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Investment Bank is lending Euro 58 million, (US$50 million), to Vega do Sul S.A., to build a cold-rolling and hot-dip galvanizing plant in São Fernando do Sul, in the state of Santa Catarina, in southern Brazil.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE EUROPEAN Commission has acted upon its public warning that it was considering an extension of the Seveso II industrial safety directive, as result of the fireworks explosion in Enschede, the Netherlands, and the cyanide spill at the Baia Mare mine in Romania.…

Keith Nuthall
CHANGES to a European Union directive, which forces employers to make provision for their employees of they become insolvent, have been accepted by the European Parliament; the proposals aim to extend the scope of the legislation to include subcontractors and the officially self-employed who work mostly for one company.…