The European Parliament, the Council of the EU and the Commission are committed to reaching a rapid agreement on the proposed regulation on batteries and battery waste.
MEP César Luena (S&D, Spain), who chaired the European Parliament’s Environment Committee (ENVI), on Thursday 28 April, confirmed this to his colleagues in a brief summary of the first interinstitutional negotiation meeting, which took place on 20 April (see EUROPE 12936/4).
Referring to “a first exchange of views on the most important political issues and on the innovative approach of this legislation” which covers the whole life cycle of batteries and will require “better battery recycling”, he spoke of a common will to intensify the work during the French Presidency of the EU Council and to hold two trilogues before July. The next one will take place at the end of May or beginning of June.
With this in mind, on Thursday a coalition of 16 human rights and environmental NGOs - including Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and Earthworks - called on EU Member States to not exclude bauxite, copper and iron from the supply chain due diligence, three metals that are on the European Parliament’s proposed list of raw materials.
“The three materials are important to battery production but too often the way they are extracted and processed has been a major contributor to human rights and environmental damage worldwide”, said Jim Wormington, a corporate responsibility researcher at Human Rights Watch, in a statement.
The NGOs point out that bauxite, the main mineral used to make aluminium, which is essential for the production of batteries, is the main cause of deforestation in mining concessions in the Brazilian Amazon rainforest. (Original version in French by Aminata Niang)