Negotiators from the European Parliament, the outgoing French Presidency of the Council of the EU and the European Commission meet on Thursday 30 June for a new interinstitutional negotiation session (trilogue) on the ‘Batteries and Waste’ Regulation - the last of this six-month rotating Presidency.
“This trilogue will not be conclusive”, a diplomatic source said on Wednesday.
Proposed in December 2020 under the German Presidency, this regulation aims to improve the sustainability of batteries throughout their life cycle - from the extraction of raw materials to their reuse at the end of their life - in the interests of the environment and health, and to create a European battery industry to encourage the EU’s strategic autonomy.
Negotiators were supposed to meet for this second ‘trilogue’ at the end of May/beginning of June and hold another one before July (see EUROPE 12941/14).
The intense current events and the multitude of dossiers to be dealt with prevented this provisional calendar from being kept.
The negotiators will have to review the most sensitive political issues, such as the implementation timetable, which the EU Council wants to postpone (see EUROPE 12913/13), collection and recycling rates - for which the Parliament is much more ambitious than the Member States (see EUROPE 12908/12) - and the management of chemicals, before the handover over to the Czech Presidency of the EU Council, which starts on Friday 1 July.
It should be recalled that the ambition of the three institutions is that the text can be adopted in time to support battery production by 2024 (see EUROPE 12878/15). (Original version in French by Aminata Niang)