Free Republic

The European Commission has started preparing the ground for legislation that would prevent member states from undertaking major tax, labor or financial reforms without running it by the commission and other governments first. In an ideas paper published Wednesday (20 March), the commission said this ex-ante coordination should concern “major national economic reform plans and should take place at an early stage before the measures are adopted.” The suggested scope of covered policies would implicate virtually all national government legislation—including competitiveness and employment laws, reforms that cover product and services markets, as well as those affecting tax systems and network...

There is a 50/50 chance that Britain will slide into a devastating triple-dip recession this year, leading economists warn today. Output “probably” fell in the final three months of 2012 and could do so again in the first three months of 2013, said the Center for Economics and Business Research. Another two quarters of decline in a row would mean the third recession in five years and set the scene for another bleak year. The think-tank singled out the crisis in the eurozone as “a major challenge for the UK economy”, given it is Britain’s biggest trading partner. …

The 2013 EU budget has been agreed after MEPs signed off on a deal worth €132.8 billion ($173.8 billion) in Strasbourg on Wednesday (12 December). The agreement breaks months of deadlock between MEPs, the commission and national governments. It increases EU spending next year by just €3.8 billion ($4.97 billion), over €5 billion ($6.5 billion) less than the sums demanded by MEPs and the EU executive. It also includes a controversial deal providing just €6.1 billion ($7.98 billion) of emergency funding to the European Commission to cover outstanding bills from 2012. …

Urgent action is needed to boost carbon prices to €150 per tonne ($215.65/ton)—2,250% higher than current levels—if the EU is to meet its decarbonization goals by 2050, the former secretary-general of the UNFCCC has told EurActiv in an interview. “We very quickly need to see a carbon price in the order of €150 a tonne because that’s the kind of level that drives the price signals that we really need,” Yvo de Boer said on a phone line from Manila, in the Philippines. EU carbon allowances are currently trading at €6.60 per tonne ($9.49/ton), but a price of around €150...

President Barack Obama signed a bill yesterday (27 November) shielding US airlines from paying for each tonne of carbon their planes emit flying into and out of Europe, despite a recent move by Europe to suspend its proposed measure for one year. The bill was the first piece of legislation debated on the House floor after the US Congress returned from recess on 13 November, and had been cleared by the Senate in September in a rare unanimous vote. It gives the American transportation secretary the power to shield US airlines from Europe’s Emissions Trading System (ETS). … “It never...

Britain would damage its fragile economy and risk isolation if it ended its often stormy relationship with the European Union, business leaders said on Monday (19 November) before critical EU budget talks later this week. Britain’s main business lobby group urged Prime Minister David Cameron to resist growing “Euroskeptic” calls to cut the island nation’s 40-year ties with a bloc that accounts for half of its trade. With the anti-European mood growing, opposition Labour leader Ed Miliband pledged not to let Britain “sleepwalk” towards an EU exit that he said would be bad for prosperity and a betrayal of Britain’s...

The much vaunted EU financial transaction tax (FTT) is set to be hard-wired into the EU budget, with most of its revenue going directly to the EU.A paper prepared by EU Council President Herman Van Rompuy and sent to European capitals ahead of next week’s EU budget summit, where leaders aim to agree a mandate on the budget framework for 2014-2020, would deduct FTT revenues from national contributions to the annual EU pot. Van Rompuy put forward his ideas after private talks with EU countries’ budget sherpas over the past 10 days. He has proposed a cut of €75 billion...

Large multinationals, many of them based in the United States, are masters at avoiding taxes on profits made abroad. Apple, for example, paid just $100 million in taxes in 2010 on overseas profits of $13 billion. But Germany would like to put a stop to the practice, and is finding some influential support. … The operations corporations launch to optimize their tax bill go by various names, including "Double Irish" and "Dutch Sandwich," but the principle is always the same. In a confusing network of parent companies and subsidiaries, foreign branches and holding companies, sales, earnings and costs are shifted...

Does Britain belong in the European Union? There are plenty both in the United Kingdom and on the Continent who have their doubts. Now, with the debate over the EU’s next budget raging, a European Commissioner has challenged London to decide. In Germany, Chancellor Angela Merkel is also losing her patience over the squabble. … On Friday, European Commissioner for Financial Programming and Budget Janusz Lewandowski, Poland’s representative in the EU’s executive, said it was time for Britain to make a fundamental decision regarding its future in the European Union. “Of course there are limits,” he said in an interview...

Representatives of Europe’s biofuels industry have threatened to sue the European Commission if it proceeds with plans to limit crop-based biofuels because of their indirect effect on greenhouse gas emissions. “If no one is going to invest in us anymore, I think we should sue the European Commission for killing an industry,” Rob Vierhout, the secretary-general of ePure, Europe’s bioethanol association said at a roundtable in EurActiv’s offices. EurActiv understands that the EU has rowed back on plans to make biofuels suppliers account for greenhouse gas emissions in its proposals to deal with the Indirect Land Use Change (ILUC) issue,...

The European Commission announced yesterday (2 October) that it intends to introduce an emissions monitoring system in early 2013, in a bid to curb the environmental footprint left by the shipping industry. The Commission said in a statement it would outline “a simple, robust and globally feasible approach towards setting a system for monitoring, reporting and verification of emissions based on fuel consumption”. This was “the necessary starting point” for further action on greenhouse gas emissions, it said, flagging market-based mechanisms. These could include a maritime emissions trading scheme (ETS) or bunker fuel levies. …

France and Germany still need the backing of a number of member states to put in place a European Union financial transaction tax (FTT), despite claims from French President François Hollande that the tax is "now effective", EurActiv.fr reports. For over a year now, Paris and Berlin have been battling to persuade their European partners to put in place a FTT. … A working group, launched by Germany and France in March 2012, continues to discuss the proposal. Poland and Austria say they will take part in the project. To form a robust cooperation agreement, a minimum of nine countries...

URGENT - WEATHER MESSAGE NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE MEDFORD OR 210 PM PDT WED AUG 22 2012 ...WIDESPREAD FREEZING TEMPERATURES POSSIBLE FRIDAY MORNING... .COOL HIGH PRESSURE WILL MOVE OVER THE AREA THURSDAY NIGHT AND FRIDAY MORNING. CLEAR SKIES AND LIGHT WINDS WILL LEAD TO ADDITIONAL COOLING WITH FREEZING TEMPERATURES POSSIBLE OVER MUCH OF NORTHERN KLAMATH AND LAKE COUNTIES FRIDAY MORNING. ORZ029>031-231100- /O.NEW.KMFR.FZ.A.0011.120824T1000Z-120824T1500Z/ KLAMATH BASIN- NORTHERN AND EASTERN KLAMATH COUNTY AND WESTERN LAKE COUNTY- CENTRAL AND EASTERN LAKE COUNTY- INCLUDING THE CITIES OF...BEATTY...CHEMULT...CRESCENT... GILCHRIST...SPRAGUE RIVER 210 PM PDT WED AUG 22 2012 ...FREEZE WATCH IN EFFECT FOR FRIDAY MORNING... THE NATIONAL WEATHER...

A European crackdown on pollution from ships will require billions worth of investment by shipping firms on filter technology and by refineries on upgrades to produce cleaner fuels—burdens the industries say they can ill afford. The shipping industry is already struggling due to poor global demand and overcapacity, which have pushed freight rates to unprofitable levels for many operators. European refineries are under pressure from high crude costs, cheap refined product imports and weak demand. To comply with new European Union laws, shipping companies now face extra costs of €2.6 billion ($3.2 billion) to €11 billion ($13.7 billion) to switch...

So eager are the shills at the George Soros-funded far-left website Think Progress to find evidence of global warming that on Thursday they falsely blamed melting street lights in Stillwater, Oklahoma, on the heat. As originally reported by TP's Stephen Lacey:… Even as residents swelter in the relentless heat, Oklahoma Senator James Inhofe continued his tirade about man-made global warming during a Senate hearing yesterday, saying the science had “collapsed.” It appears the only thing collapsing are the street lights.Way down at the bottom is this:UPDATE: After we published this piece, we saw reports from people on the ground in...

The German engineering giant Siemens is researching the idea of using overhead electricity lines to power truck traffic. But the state-supported project makes no sense. It would cost billions to implement—and only lead to higher fuel consumption and more pollution. … Germany's Ministry for the Environment (BMU) saw enough green potential in this hybrid truck to channel over €2 million ($2.5 million) in federal funding to the project. Siemens used the funds to help set up its first test track at an obsolete military airport north of Berlin. … In any case, electrifying Germany's roads is not going to bring...

Fears about climate change are overblown and shifting weather patterns and rising sea levels should be considered an engineering problem, said the head of the world's largest oil refiner, ExxonMobil. "The fear factor that people want to throw out there to say 'we just have to stop this,' I do not accept," Rex Tillerson, ExxonMobil's chief executive, said in a speech on Wednesday (June 27). Tackling global poverty should have a higher international priority than reducing carbon emissions, because it would give billions of the world’s energy poor access to oil and gas supplies, in his view. "They'd love to...

The earth is running out of natural resources like land, water and minerals so quickly that if nothing is done, some predictions say that by 2030 humankind will need the equivalent of two planets to sustain our current lifestyle. Those chilling figures come from a famous World Wildlife Fund ‘Living Planet’ report in 2008, but what exactly can we do to reduce our environmental impact—which has got worse since then—and how should we go about doing it? People “desperately” need a means of putting the environmental impact of their products into context, according to Martin Barrow, a senior consultant at...

Rattled in Europe by the REACH regulation and carbon dioxide emission curbs, international chemical companies are at the Rio Earth Summit determined to push for a global approach to environmental policy—but with a light regulatory touch. … The reasoning is simple and well-known. Rather than complying with a myriad of environmental laws in different countries, companies prefer dealing with a single set of globally-harmonized rules. … In Europe, the REACH regulation, adopted in 2006, has started a mammoth process of registering about 100,000 substances that are currently used in a wide range of consumer products, with the aim of gradually...

China will take swift countermeasures that could include impounding European aircraft if the European Union punishes Chinese airlines for non-compliance with a scheme to curb carbon emissions, the China Air Transport Association said on Tuesday. Chinese airlines, which have been told by Beijing not to comply with the EU's Emissions Trading Scheme, refused to meet a March 31 deadline for submitting carbon emissions data. EU Climate Commissioner Connie Hedegaard has said carriers have until mid-June to submit their data before enforcement action is taken. "Chinese airlines are unanimous on this. We won't provide the data," Wei Zhenzhong, secretary general of...