Negotiating the binding international treaty to end plastic pollution (see EUROPE 13070/10, 13049/5) will not be a walk in the park, despite the ambitious negotiating timetable already established.
The European Commission’s assessment of the first meeting of the Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee in Uruguay, presented to the European Parliament’s Committee on the Environment on Monday 5 December, was mixed.
“This first meeting set the scene. There will be four more, the next one in May, and the deadline for closing the negotiations has been set at 2024 so that the treaty can be signed in 2025”, said the Commission representative, who had just returned from Uruguay.
According to him, this meeting in a hybrid format allowed some 160 countries and 400 stakeholders to express their expectations. He welcomed the “overwhelming convergence of a vast majority” of participants on globally legally binding targets and provisions for phasing out single-use plastics, toxic additives and microplastics.
“The expectation was clearly to cover the full life cycle of plastics and there is a recognition of the relevance of requirements for product design, safe use compositions and recyclability”, in line with the approach promoted by the EU, the official added.
On the other hand, he pointed to fault lines that have opened up with the oil-producing countries. They have predicted difficulties in the further negotiations and “used the scare tactic of a demand crisis”. Alongside them were China, the United States and Japan, “which had a rather different view of the structure of the instrument, putting national measures, national implementation plans at the centre of the future instrument, as opposed to the majority of countries who see it as legally binding, as far as the global provisions are concerned”, the Commission representative stressed. (Original version in French by Aminata Niang)