European Union News - Internal Market

The Court of First Instance has confirmed OHIM's decision not to register the word “Budweiser” as a community trade mark, inter alia for beer, for the American brewer, Anheuser-Busch, as the commercial right to use such term for beer is already held in Germany and Austria by the Czech brewery, Budějovický Budvar.

The European Commission has launched a call for tenders for a framework contract for the evaluation of CAP measures applied to the starch, sugar and cotton sectors. The indicative budget for the framework contract is 1.6 M€, and interested operators must submit their offers by June 8th 2009.

The European Commission and the European Central Bank (ECB) have issued a joint statement providing further clarification so as to encourage the European Payments Council (EPC) to launch the SEPA Direct Debit scheme (SDD) on November 1st 2009. In particular, the Commission makes clear that a general per transaction multilateral interchange fee (MIF) for direct debit transactions does not seem justified for efficiency reasons and therefore does not appear compatible with EU antitrust rules.

ince Council Regulation (EC) Nº 40/94 of December 20th 1993 on the Community trade mark has been substantially amended several times, the Commission has considered necessary, for the sake of clarity and rationality to be consolidated. For that reason Council has issued Regulation (EC) Nº 207/2009 of February 26th 2009, with the codified version on the Community trade mark.

The European Commission has established the rules applying to the introduction into the Community of personal consignments of products of animal origin, and has therefore published in the OJEU on March 23rd, Regulation (EC) Nº 206/2009 of March 5th 2009. These provisions amend Regulation (EC) Nº 136/2004 and lay down some rules aiming at ensuring food safety in trade and movement of such products of animal origin.

The European Commission's Directorate-General for the Internal Market & Services is organising on March 23rd, a Roundtable discussion on Directors' remuneration (including in the financial services sector), in order to consult the relevant stakeholders on this file.

A total of 126.7 M€ of EU farm money unduly spent by Member States is claimed back as a result of a decision adopted on March 19th by the European Commission. The money returns to the Community budget because of non-compliance with EU rules or inadequate control procedures on agricultural expenditure.

The European Commission adopted on March 17th 2009 a proposal long-term plan to improve further the state of the northern hake stock in EU waters. This plan will replace the recovery plan which has been in place since 2004, and which has successfully helped the northern hake stock recover from almost collapse to the safe target size advised by scientists, putting forward as new objective the achievement of  maximum sustainable yield for this species.