The Maltese Presidency of the Council of the EU has received a mandate for negotiating with the European Parliament. The former will receive the assistance of the European Commission in its negotiations for the revision of the “Wastes” Directives, a key element in the EU’s circular economy package presented by the Junker Commission in December 2015, following the withdrawal of the initial package by the Barroso Commission (see EUROPE 11444). The EU28 ambassadors meeting at Coreper, approved this mandate on Monday 22 May, for the first trilogue negotiating meeting on 30 May.
These negotiations will focus on the level of binding recycling targets and the calculating method, as well as and of life waste criteria, the producer’s expanded systems of responsibility and waste prevention.
It appears that the negotiations are going to be difficult because the objectives the Council finds acceptable on recycling and preparing municipal waste reuse, packaging waste recycling, landfill and food waste reduction are very much below the objective advocated by Parliament.
Parliament followed the line of its rapporteur, Simona Bonafè (S&D, Italy) and proved much more ambitious than the European Commission during its vote on 14 March (see EUROPE 11745). Very recently it repeated its very high level food waste reduction target by adding a target of at least 30% by 2030 and 50% by 2050 (see EUROPE 11789).
One diplomatic source informed EUROPE that “All the targets are below those of the European Commission. The objective of the member states is more realistic”.
A number of more ambitious member states agreed to opening the negotiations on the basis of minimum figures “as a starting point”, although, for the others, these figures are the only ones acceptable because they believe they are the only ones that can be achieved.
The vice president of the European Commission, Frans Timmermans, commented the day after the vote at Parliament, that the Commission’s proposal had more of a chance of obtaining an agreement between Parliament and Council because for many member states, it was closer to what they regarded as acceptable limits (see EUROPE 11713).
The Council has so far debated the action plan for the circular economy, at length and this formed the subject of the conclusions of the Environment Council on 20 May last (see EUROPE 11577). The subject of the “wastes” directives was discussed at the Council working group in an attempt to obtain a compromise for negotiating an agreement during the first reading with the Parliament. (Original version in French by Aminata Niang)