Brussels Briefing |
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Nanotechnology
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| INTRODUCTION Less than a decade from now, 15% of all products will contain something called nanotechnology, say researchers. But what exactly is it and how do we deal with the ... |
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Russia
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| INTRODUCTION On May 7, Dmitri Medvedev will take over from Vladimir Putin as President of Russia. In this issue of Brussels Briefing we take a closer look at the new President and examine the... |
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Demographic Change
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| INTRODUCTION The ageing of Europe’s population is a looming issue for all EU countries, including the UK. In part, it is occurring due to the unusually large baby boomer generat... |
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The EU Reform Treaty Unwrapped
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| Brussels Briefing Nº 33, produced last summer, set out how the new EU Reform Treaty had come about and broadly what was contained within it. During the autumn, the Portuguese Presidency of ... |
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The Reform Treaty
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| Ever since the French and Dutch “no” votes effectively killed off the ill-fated European Constitution 2 years ago, the EU has been in a log-jam. For many months, the usual suspects in t... |
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Mobile Phone Roaming Charges
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| Love them or hate them, mobile phones have almost become one of life’s essentials, whether we use them for work, pleasure or simply in emergencies. Making calls abroad, though, is often a... |
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Climate Change
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| 2006 was the warmest year on record in the UK and this winter has seen temperatures well above normal. In the North West, we also experienced very heavy rainfall with some areas getting dou... |
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Road Safety
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| Over 40,000 lives are lost on Europe’s roads each year with a further 1.7 million people injured, according to the European Commission's Road Accident data base (CARE). Furthermore, the gap ... |
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Energy
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| One of the most important issues facing Europe today is energy. The effects of climate change, highly priced oil imported from unstable or potentially hostile states and the ongoing “gas row&rdq... |
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The Services Directive
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| Few pieces of European legislation have provoked more heated debate over the last decade, than the Services Directive. In essence, this proposal has become the battleground for two competing visions o... |
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Turkey and the EU
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| Early in October, the government achieved a key objective of the six-month UK Presidency of the EU when negotiations with Turkey for EU membership formally opened. But it was a close-run thing. Last m... |
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Brussels Summit
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| Coming just three weeks after the French “Non” (55% to 45%) and the Dutch “Nee” (61% to 39%) in the referenda on the European Constitution, the Brussels Summit was always going... |
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EU Migration
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| Few subjects provoke greater controversy than migration, especially when certain political groups set out to exploit the issue for their own ends. The formula they use is well tried and tested. Take a... |
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The EU Sugar Regime
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| The EU sugar regime was introduced in 1968 as part of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), covering the production and marketing of beet and sugar cane within EU member countries. It is subject to re... |
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The European Constitution: The British approach
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| In the week that MPs returned to Westminster at the end of their Summer recess, the government published its long-awaited White Paper on the draft European Constitution (see Brussels Briefing No 18). ... |
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The European Convention
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| At the Laeken Summit in Belgium last December, EU heads of government agreed to set up a special convention to debate the future of Europe. They said that, 50 years after the end of the Second World W... |
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Metrication
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A court case, brought by Sunderland trading standards officers this month against a local market trader for refusing to sell goods in kilos, reignited media frenzy about imperial measures. Anti-... |
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The Road to EU enlargement
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Little more than a decade ago, Europe was still in the icy grip of the Cold War. But the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 marked the beginning of the end of totalitarian dictatorship throug... |
