Negotiators from the European Parliament, the Council of the EU and the European Commission wrapped up their third - productive but not yet conclusive - round of negotiations (trilogue) on Tuesday 11 October on the proposed regulation on batteries and battery waste, the first piece of legislation in the EU’s 2nd Action Plan on the Circular Economy, which has been on the table since December 2020.
“It’s time to recharge the batteries! And to make them more sustainable throughout their life cycle: from production to recycling”, stressed the Czech Presidency of the Council on its Twitter account at the start of the trilogue on Tuesday morning.
According to the participants, “significant progress” has been made on this regulation, which 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 - to protect the environment and health and to create a European battery industry in the interests of strategic autonomy.
A Czech Presidency compromise had been concocted in an attempt to reconcile the positions (see EUROPE 13035/21).
“This third trilogue enabled us to agree on a majority of the sustainability requirements. We reached a common understanding on further work on due diligence provisions and management of waste batteries”, according to a diplomatic source.
The next trilogue will take place on 9 December.
The ambition of the three institutions remains that the text should be adopted in time to support battery production by 2024, but no one dares to predict the chances of a conclusion under the Czech Presidency.
“We will only be confident when we have an agreement. There is still a lot of work to be done, but all parties are committed to making the next political trilogue the last one”, a source close to the dossier told EUROPE. (Original version in French by Aminata Niang)