Industry

ERKKI Liikanen, the enterprise and information society commissioner, plans to launch a green paper to examine why the EU fails to nurture business start-ups as well as the United States.

THE European Investment Bank has granted Cyprus loans worth €220 million to boost energy, education and air transport on the Greek-speaking half of the island.

COMMISSIONER Mario Monti’s competition department has been accused of conducting a ’whispering campaign’ against the European Commission’s legal service over the allegedly poor way it has performed in court in two imminent appeals to merger decisions.

EUROPE’S leading employment agency has urged member states to reach agreement on a proposed EU directive on temporary agency workers.

THE European Parliament is set to vote in a first reading on a massive overhaul of EU-wide pharmaceuticals law on Tuesday (22 October) which will determine the shape of the market for the next decade or more.

A DISTURBING dearth of newcomers to the pharmaceuticals market has forced the European Agency for the Evaluation of Medical Products to tighten its budgetary belt.

EUROPE’S leading accountants have issued a ‘hands-off’ warning to politicians as they prepare to adopt a raft of international standards that listed firms will have to use from 2005.

BABY experts have set the first pan-EU standard for the 100 million baby pacifier ‘dummies’ sold in the Union every year.

AFTER haggling late into the night, European parliamentarians and EU governments finally reached agreement last week on a sweeping new directive that will make companies pay for the recycling of the electronic goods they produce.

SMALL companies and their bankers will not be squeezed out by controversial new rules forcing lenders to set aside enough reserves for bad loans, the architect of the reforms insisted this week.

GERMAN MEPs from both the Christian Democrat and Socialist camps are set to challenge a European Commission proposal to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in a vote today (10 October).

FINANCIAL Services Commissioner Frits Bolkestein is set to issue the UK with two legal warnings over its supervision of the Lloyd’s of London insurance market.

WIM Duisenberg, the European Central Bank’s president, this week blamed the threat of war and long-term structural problems rather than interest rates for the gloomy economic climate in the eurozone.

FRITS Bolkestein, the internal market commissioner, is preparing legal action against Germany to challenge a law that prevents hostile bidders from taking over Europe’s biggest carmaker, Volkswagen.

MEPS will next week urge Frits Bolkestein to take swift action over alleged shortcomings in the audit of the Lloyd’s of London insurance market.

WORLD Trade Organization chief Supachai Panitchpakdi says the US and EU should think twice before launching legal action over trade disputes.

MARIO Monti is set to boost the EU’s faltering online music market by loosening the vice-like grip of the bodies which dictate who gets a licence to put music and video on the internet.

A RAFT of Spanish road and rail projects will soon get a cash injection from the European Investment Bank, EIB directors agreed last week.

THE EU is well on its way to ironing out all of its differences with the US over the Galileo satellite navigation system, with only the thorny issue of overlaying frequency bands proving problematic.

THE European Commission has proposed the introduction of minimum insurance requirements for all aircraft carriers and operators flying within the EU.

SENIOR DG Competition officials met at a secret Belgian location last weekend to plot the future management strategy at the European Commission’s highest profile department.

AGRICULTURE ministers look set to vote for mandatory labelling of all food and animal feed containing genetically modified organisms (GMOs) after a Council meeting yesterday (25 September).

AN IRISH-led consortium wants to help put the roar back into the Celtic tiger with a multi-million euro bid to run the EU’s new ‘dot eu’ internet domain from the continent’s western fringes.

MEPS are threatening to take the European Commission to court over moves to stop the phasing-out of cosmetics imports tested on animals.