Luxembourg  - It is illegal to make Turkish lorry drivers apply for visas if they want to perform short-term services in the European Union, the EU's top court ruled on Thursday.

The case concerns Turkish truckers Mehmet Soysal and Ibrahim Savatli, who were employed by a Turkish contractor to drive German-owned trucks from Turkey to Germany.

In 2001 the German authorities refused to grant them visas - a decision the two men challenged in court.

The European Court of Justice ruled that Germany was wrong to demand visas from the two men, as the current agreement between Turkey and the EU forbids it.

Luxembourg - European Union member states cannot cover up the location of sites where genetically-modified organisms (GMOs) have been released, even if they fear that the information could provoke public disorder, the EU's highest court ruled Tuesday.

"The information relating to the location of the release can in no case be kept confidential," and public-order considerations "cannot constitute reasons capable of restricting access to the information," the European Court of Justice (ECJ) said.

Luxembourg - A British couple that built a holiday home in the Turkish side of Cyprus must obey a court order issued by the Republic of Cyprus and return the land to its rightful owner, a European Union judge said Thursday.

While acknowledging that the authorities in the south do not exert effective control over their northern neighbour, the EU's advocate general in Luxembourg argued that its courts' decisions must nevertheless be enforced.

Luxembourg - Ryanair won a court case against the European Commission on Wednesday, meaning the low-cost airline will not have to pay back millions of euros in subsidies that it received from the Belgian state for establishing a base at Charleroi Airport.

Ryanair obtained favourable terms from the Wallonia Region when negotiating its first continental base at Charleroi, in 2000.

These included a 50 per cent discount on landing charges and compensation for any loss of profit arising from subsequent hikes in such charges.

Luxembourg  - Luxembourg's parliament voted nearly unanimously Thursday for a constitutional change that would reduce the ability of its Grand Duke to block laws.

Under the change, the Grand Duke would only be able to proclaim new laws. Currently, all laws must receive the duke's final approval before implementation.

Luxembourg - The European Court of First Instance on Thursday annulled an asset freeze wrongly imposed by the European Union on the People's Mujahedin of Iran (PMI), an organization which seeks to bring democracy to Iran.

The decision follows two previous rulings in which the Luxembourg courts said the EU was wrong to keep the PMI's assets frozen, despite the group being taken off a British list of terrorist organizations.

Founded in 1965, the PMI operated a military wing in its early years, but says it renounced violence in June 2001.