Regulatory rollouts

Recycling Today, March, 2004

The Bureau of International Recycling (BIR) and two of its European Federations, EUROMETREC and ERPA, have expressed "serious concern" about the revision of the European Union (EU) Waste Shipment Regulations, for which the European Council has recently been determining its position.

The recycling trade groups note that early in the legislative process, the Commission had added a "notifier hierarchy" that would seriously restrict licensed collectors, registered dealers, brokers and traders from carrying out their business. Currently these businesses are licensed, registered or permitted by their national authorities.

The Commission never publicly justified this "notifier hierarchy," the groups contend. This "notifier hierarchy" restriction slipped through the EU Parliament's first reading and is now submitted to the Council. This legal text could damage currently well-functioning markets by removing some specialist operators.

As an example of the benefit of specialists, the BIR cites the role of the dealer/trader/broker network in the management of metal-containing drosses, ashes and residues.

For the entire range of recycling materials no dealer, trader or broker would be allowed to arrange export to industrializing countries that require notifications, and no dealer, trader or broker in those materials would be allowed to arrange export to Latvia, Hungary Malta Poland and Slovakia, which require notification through new EU Accession Treaty arrangements. "This will damage business and, unintended, will encourage industrializing countries wanting these materials, yet requiring notification, to drop their controls," the BIR says in a news release.