The EU Council is ready to make limited concessions in the inter-institutional negotiations, which resume at 7.30pm on the evening of Tuesday 31 May, on the proposed EU regulation to tighten the concentration limits for persistent organic pollutants (POPs) - highly toxic chemical substances - in waste.
It should be recalled that the proposed revision of Annexes IV and V of Regulation (EU) 2019/1021 on POPs aims to update EU legislation to take into account the EU’s commitments under the Stockholm International Convention, which it transposes, as well as new technological developments.
According to the negotiating mandate given by the Member States to the Council Presidency for this second ‘trilogue’ (see EUROPE 12960/11), the main concession concerns the future classification of waste, a requirement dear to the European Parliament, which it added to the Commission’s proposal (see EUROPE 12944/8).
The Parliament wants the Commission to assess the appropriateness of revising Decision 2014/955/EU on the list of wastes and/or the Waste Framework Directive so that in the future the status of hazardous waste is recognised for any waste exceeding the concentration limits for POPs in Annex IV.
The EU Council would be prepared to accept this, but while the Parliament proposes a period of 18 months after the entry into force of the POP Regulation for the Commission to present a possible legislative proposal to this effect, the French Presidency considers that this period should be extended to 36 months.
With regard to the limit values for the various POPs, the EU Council is prepared to make a gesture with regard to polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDEs), for which a step-by-step approach is planned. While it maintains the initial limit value of 500 mg/kg and the revision clause of no more than 200 mg/kg, it is prepared to add an intermediate step: an automatic reduction of the limit value to 350 mg/kg 3 years after the entry into force of the Regulation, as long as this value is not lower than the value in Annex I, which covers the placing on the market of products containing POPs.
For hexabromocyclododecane (HBCDD) and C10-C13 alkanes, chloro (short-chain chlorinated paraffins) (SCCP), the EU Council does not want to proceed with an immediate lowering of the limit values beyond what was proposed by the Commission, but is willing to add revision clauses to lower these limit values in the future.
However, the EU Council does not intend to change its position on perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA), as the European Commission’s impact assessment highlights the technical difficulties of having a quantification threshold below 1 mg/kg.
It also maintains its position on dioxins and furans in order to preserve the delicate balance that had been struck by Member States on these substances - maintaining a transition clause for household ash and soot and setting the concentration limit value at 10 μg/kg (see EUROPE 12914/23).
As for the addition of perfluorohexanesulfonic acid (PFHxS) to the list of substances to be phased out, as requested by the Parliament (see EUROPE 12944/8), the EU Council will wait, as expected, for the outcome of the tenth Conference of the Parties to the Stockholm Convention (COP10 in Geneva, 6-17 June), which is expected to approve the inclusion of PFHxS in Annex A of the Convention. The French Presidency of the EU Council intends to present limit values once the results of this international meeting are known.
See the FPEU negotiating mandate (in French): https://aeur.eu/f/1uy (Original version in French by Aminata Niang)