The object of the meetings is to clear the way for the European parliament and the Council of Ministers to try to reach a common position.
Only then will both the recycling and producer industries know what they are with in terms of complying with the directive.
Recycling contractors, member state government, manufacturers and environmental groups have lobbied hard since the directive was first debated a year ago by the European Parliament.
It had a second reading in April, at which a raft of significant amendments were made.
The conciliation process under way this week is time limited, and so the directive is still expected to be completed by the end of this year, and put into UK law in 2004.
Ken Norman, WEEE coordinator at metal recycling firm EMR, said that individual versus collective responsibility was the most significant of some 40 issues remaining.
He said: “The industry will want to see a clear set of rules and then see how they will be implemented in the UK. Because it is a directive and not regulations, the Department of Trade and Industry has a bit of leeway.”
The greatest problem would be separating WEEE from general household waste, he predicted.
Mr Norman said: “Only householders can do that; it is too late afterwards. Searching for batteries among nappies, would be a pretty unpleasant job.
“It is easy in business-to-business because you can put it in contracts, but with households it's a matter of convincing people to separate waste and we are not very good at that in the UK.”
It is likely that from 2005 electrical and electronic waste can no longer be disposed of along with domestic waste, and that from the following year, manufacturers will have to finance recovery, treatment and recycling.
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