Word: belgians
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...Paula Romero, 29, was born in Spain, has an English husband and lives in Brussels, where she is pursuing an arts degree at a Belgian university. "A true European is someone who doesn't feel his or her culture is the only thing in town," she says. "Just one culture is not enough these days." Catherine Rubbens, 34, an environmental consultant in London who left the Netherlands after high school, speaks five European languages and says she feels more European than Dutch. "I notice as I start to adjust somewhere that I speak to myself in the language of that...
...European steelmakers started swallowing each other soon after Europe began unifying. Both Usinor and Arbed were in the running to acquire Belgian steelmaker Cockerill Sambre when the Belgian government sold most of its stake in 1998. Arbed instead bought 35% of Aceralia, leaving Usinor and Germany's Thyssen-Krupp in the running for Cockerill. When the Germans pulled out, Usinor got Cockerill's mills by default. Now those same mills are part of the new company-the most expendable part. No surprise then that workers there greeted the merger announcement with a one-day walkout...
...Belgian and French labor leaders warned of consequences if plants start shutting down. But the new company was ready with a long-term attrition plan, saying it could save $630 million a year by 2006 simply by letting older workers retire and then redistributing the savings into new technologies. It also figures it could save $300 million in 2003 on cost synergies, which amounts to 2% of the $15 billion a year it shells out for materials, services and logistics."You could probably manage that just by benchmarking," says Commerzbank analyst Peter Dupont. "If the new company finds that Arbed...
...There are still moments when even hard-core addicts like Jacky can recapture the shiny, bright exuberance of the first few times she tried speed. Even tonight, as she dances with a potential Belgian client at Angel's, and it looks like the customer is about to take her back to his hotel room, and she's thinking that she'll soon have enough money to visit her children, it doesn't seem so bad. It seems life is almost manageable. A few more customers and who knows, maybe one will really fall for her and pay to move...
...call for a radical reform of the E.U.'s $37 billion Common Agricultural Policy, shifting a share of its massive subsidies away from large-scale intensive farming toward more environmentally friendly producers. With European farm lobbies clamoring for more emergency aid and threatening mass disruptions-like the French and Belgian protesters who blocked roads with tractors and burning tires last week-it remains to be seen whether the politicians will have the stomach to push through sweeping changes. But Fischler did take a first step last week by proposing a 90-head limit on the number of cattle each producer...