EUROPEN, 24 January 2017 -Following today’s vote in the European Parliament ENVI Committee on the revision of the Waste Framework Directive (WFD) and Packaging and Packaging Waste Directive (PPWD), EUROPEN welcomes the ENVI Committee’s proposed improvements to the legal framework for extended producer responsibility (EPR).
“We welcome the improvements that ENVI has made to the proposed EPR minimum requirements. We are particularly pleased to see efforts to demarcate the producer’s responsibility. Producers, along with other stakeholders involved in waste management, have a shared responsibility towards achieving the Circular Economy objectives. We fully support this shared accountability with defined roles and responsibilities and more transparency and cost-efficiency under EPR,” said Virginia Janssens, EUROPEN’s Managing Director.
EUROPEN welcomes ENVI’s vote to safeguard the Internal Market objective of the PPWD. With regards to the proposed indicative packaging reuse targets, EUROPEN has reservations about how these targets may impact the Single Market: “We question how these new targets would work, particularly in the absence of a baseline, data on reuse and an EU-harmonised calculation methodology,” said Martin Reynolds, EUROPEN’s Chairman, Crown Europe.
EUROPEN welcomes other parts of the proposal that focus on the whole life cycle of packaged products. “We are encouraged to see recognition of the importance of a life-cycle approach in legislation. We now call on the European Parliament as a whole, the Member States and the Commission to support these type of measures and to ensure that the Internal Market – a cornerstone of the EU – is safeguarded fully,” concluded Ms Janssens.
