European Commission

LONDON -- For Europe, this was supposed to be a year of destiny. Instead, it has become a year of chaos and controversy.The executive leadership of the 15-nation European Union is out, the new single European currency is down, and the continent's bid to become a world leader on a par with the United States is clouded.But Europe's biggest boosters say there is a silver lining, despite the gloom after the unprecedented mass resignation yesterday of the continent's 20 top bureaucrats, who make up the European Commission.

LONDON -- Europe gave birth to the euro, its new common currency, at midnight, ushering in one of the biggest changes in the world's money since World War II and presenting the almighty dollar with its strongest challenger to date."

PARIS -- The recent forced resignation of the entire European Commission has delighted enemies of a United Europe in Britain and elsewhere. It has also produced a certain satisfaction in U.S. official circles.The European Union has been weakened just when a series of important conflicts with Washington approaches a climax. One is the useless and destructive "banana war," which has produced a retaliatory European complaint to the World Trade Organization against the so-called "super 301" provision in U.S. law that requires unilateral reprisal for perceived trade discrimination.

BRUSSELS, Belgium -- AlliedSignal Inc.'s $15 billion purchase of Honeywell Inc., the world's largest maker of automated controls, will get European Union clearance in the next two weeks after the companies offered concessions to secure EU approval, the European Commission said yesterday.The commission, the EU's executive agency, will clear the acquisition by Dec. 8 at the latest and possibly as early as Wednesday, said spokesman Michael Tscherny. "The undertakings they offered are considered satisfactory," he said.

A TRADE WAR was averted recently when the Boeing Co. of Seattle made a key concession on marketing within the U.S. to the European Commission. The 15-member European Union will now approve the giant civil airliner manufacturer's merger with the defense giant, McDonnell Douglas. Phone calls by President Clinton helped. But Americans may wonder what business a European supra-government has approving a merger of two American firms.One answer is that this was payback. Egged on by French President Jacques Chirac, this was partly a response to Congress' sanctions against foreign firms for trading with Cuba or investing in Libya's or Iran's oil industry.

SARAJEVO, Bosnia-Herzegovina -- European Commission auditors say they have uncovered evidence that the Bosnian federal treasury is losing tens of millions of dollars a year to two fraud schemes -- one operated by Bosnian Muslim officials and the other by criminal gangs that are run by Croats and Serbs.The gangs, diplomats say, operate in league with Bosnian Serb leaders.The effect has been to channel funds away from the weak federal government and to the rival ethnic leaderships that are keeping Bosnia divided.

WASHINGTON -- The Federal Communications Commission voted yesterday to give foreign companies greater access to the booming U.S. telecommunications and satellite markets, the first step in a global effort to open communications markets to competition.The United States is the first country to implement a broad World Trade Organization agreement under which 69 countries controlling 95 percent of the world's telecommunications trade revenue pledged to further open their markets. Under the FCC's rules implementing the accord, companies from all 132 WTO countries will be able to have up to 100 percent indirect ownership of U.S. telecommunications companies.

LONDON -- The European Union partly lifted a ban on British beef yesterday, but the action failed to defuse Britain's "mad cow" war against its closest trading partners.European Commission President Jacques Santer told community leaders in Brussels, Belgium, that he hoped the action would lead Britain to abandon its policy of blocking all measures before EU bodies in protest of the ban. But the government of Prime Minister John Major indicated that the British offensive would continue until a full lifting of the export prohibitions.

LONDON -- A French civil servant in Brussels once said that the two crucial dates in European history were June 18, 1815, when Britain, at Waterloo, ended "the first serious attempt to unify Europe," and January 1, 1973, when Britain joined the European Community and set out "to put an end to the second attempt."A quarter-century later, the struggle against European unity rages in Britain, but rather than end Europe's unification it is likely to promote it, either by driving Britain completely out of the European Union, or by relegating it to Europe's outer circles, where it can be ignored by the other European powers.

PARIS -- In what it called a goodwill gesture in its conflict with its European partners over beef sales, Britain, which has vowed to block European Union decisions until its partners lift a ban on British beef exports, allowed two key measures to go through yesterday.British Foreign Secretary Malcolm Rifkind said at a meeting of European Union foreign ministers in Luxembourg that Britain had decided to show its good will by voting for a European trade pact with Algeria and for an agreement to provide $3.6 million from the European Union to help pay for elections in Bosnia.

AirTran adding BWI flights to Bahamas, Jamaica AirTran Airways announced Thursday schedules for new service to Nassau, Bahamas, and Montego Bay, Jamaica, including nonstop flights to BWI Marshall Airport. The flights will start Dec. 17 to Nassau and Feb. 11 to Montego Bay, pending government approval. BWI will have one daily flight to Montego Bay and two Nassau flights with service four days a week. The Florida-based airline filed applications last month with the U.S. Department of Transportation to begin offering service to the Caribbean.

LONDON - In what would be a major boost for the U.S. poultry industry, the European Union appears close to lifting its 11-year-old ban on imports of American poultry. Some trade experts say an announcement could come as early as today after a meeting of the Transatlantic Economic Council in Brussels, Belgium. Others say it's more likely an announcement will come next month at a formal U.S.-EU summit in Slovenia. The expected decision would open up a market worth at least $200 million, and perhaps much more, to U.S. poultry farmers.

I cringed when I read recently that the Food and Drug Administration had declared that food from cloned animals is safe to eat. Could this mean I would have to struggle with yet another decision about what to put on my dinner table? Already I wrestle with whether my seafood is sustainable, my coffee is shade-grown and my beer is organic. But the more I looked into this matter, the more I realized that I was not going to have to take any quick stance about whether to serve cloned burgers for supper.

Ryland Group names John Meade as head of Baltimore division The Ryland Group Inc. has named John Meade president of its Baltimore division. Meade, a 23-year Ryland veteran, most recently was vice president of finance in the Baltimore division, where he oversaw all financial activities and land acquisition analysis, and played a lead role in the division's strategic and day-to-day operations. Meade began his career in 1981 as a staff auditor at Price Waterhouse in Baltimore. After joining Ryland as a senior internal auditor in 1982, he held various positions, including division and region controller.

BRUSSELS, Belgium - The European Commission turned up the heat in its antitrust investigation of Intel yesterday, conducting unannounced visits to the company's offices around Europe, a commission spokesman said. Besides the early visits to Intel offices, commission officials also conducted dawn raids on computer makers and retailers, seeking evidence that Intel, the world's No. 1 chip maker, has been abusing a rebate program intended to keep PC makers from buying chips from Intel's competitors.

BRUSSELS - The European Union has given China until Tuesday to curb the flood of its textile exports to Europe or face a formal trade dispute, with the possible re-imposition of protectionist quotas on some goods as soon as June 15, the European Commission said yesterday. The European Union's trade commissioner, Peter Mandelson, and China's chief trade negotiator, Gao Hucheng, failed to defuse the dispute during a meeting in Brussels late Tuesday. Senior aides to the two parties continued talks yesterday, said Claude Viron-Riville, the trade spokeswoman at the European Commission, the executive arm of the European Union.

Labor has won the May 5 elections, and Tony Blair has been returned to power in Great Britain. But another European vote, scheduled this month in France, could have a more politically explosive outcome. Polls show that French voters could reject the proposed European Constitution in a May 29 referendum. This would likely lead to months, or even years, of turmoil as the Europeans attempt to put their plans for a closer political union back on track. Even if the French vote to approve the constitution, there's still significant trouble on the horizon.

BRUSSELS, Belgium - Microsoft Corp. and European Union regulators have failed in last-ditch talks to agree on an antitrust settlement, opening the way for restrictions on the software giant's Windows operating system. "We made substantial progress toward resolving the problems that had arisen in the past, but we were unable to agree on commitments for future conduct," the European Union competition commissioner, Mario Monti, said yesterday. "It was impossible to achieve a satisfactory result in terms of setting a precedent."

LONDON - Europe's antitrust watchdogs showed their teeth yesterday, unanimously approving a draft ruling that would force Microsoft Corp. to make major changes in its software and business practices. The vote by representatives of 15 European Union governments clears the way - unless talks produce a last-minute settlement - for the European Commission to declare next week that the world's largest software company is an abusive monopolist. The commission is the EU's administrative arm. Such a ruling could affect Microsoft's bottom line.

Declaring its most threatening legal problems over and its business strong, Microsoft Corp. surprised Wall Street yesterday by announcing that it would begin paying a dividend. The step is significant mostly as an indication of the maturing corporate culture and psychology at Microsoft. But it does not seem to be a concession by the company's longtime leaders - Bill Gates, the chairman and cofounder, and Steven A. Ballmer, the chief executive - that Microsoft, the prototypical entrepreneurial high-tech growth company, is slowing down.