The proposed Regulation was one of the measures that survived the axe of the Commission's Better Regulation initiative, which announced today that a third of proposed EU legislation is being dropped.
The proposed Regulation on the shipment of waste is intended to bring new OECD rules into EU legislation and pursue “global harmonisation in the area of transboundary shipments of waste”.
Disagreement
However, there has been a great deal of uncertainty over the proposed Regulation – and some serious disagreement between the European Parliament and the Member States through the Council.
Before the Commission's announced intention to analyse the proposal further, it had been through a first reading of the Parliament and was on the way to a second reading this summer.
Disagreement has come partly because the Commission is not accepting the legal basis of the Council's position. While the Commission is arguing that the Regulation should be based on both EU environment and trade laws, the Council believes the Regulation should be legally based only on environment grounds.
Standards
The Commission is not supporting the measure that would allow Member States to object to shipments of waste destined for recovery on the grounds of “lower treatment standards” in the country of destination.
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The Commission said it “considers that such a provision would create barriers in the European waste recycling and recovery market while not improving the environmental standards of waste management in the EU.”
The issue of treatment standards within EU states is to be tackled in the Thematic Strategy on the Prevention and Recycling of Waste, the Commission said.
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