More than 4 hours of negotiations between the European Parliament, the EU Council and the Commission (trilogue) on the evening of Monday 5 February in Strasbourg failed to produce any significant progress on the future EU regulation on packaging and packaging waste. And with good reason: this was the first ‘trilogue’ devoted to political discussions on a number of points which were the subject of a compromise proposed to the Member States by the Belgian Presidency of the EU Council and examined on 31 January by the 27 ambassadors of the Member States to the EU (Coreper).
This European Green Deal regulation aims to tackle the constant growth in waste by imposing binding targets for reducing packaging, preventing its production, reuse, high-quality recycling and creating an internal market for secondary raw materials (see EUROPE 13074/7).
The Council adopted its negotiating position in December (see EUROPE 13316/5) and the Parliament at the end of November (see EUROPE 13298/2).
On Monday evening, the negotiators made little progress on substances of concern (article 5), recycled content in plastic packaging (article 7), and deposit and return systems (articles 43 and 44) - progress that is relative, since work will continue at technical level to try to find compromises on these issues.
Interinstitutional negotiations at political level will resume on Monday 4 March, with the aim of reaching a provisional agreement at the end of this second trilogue, for which the most problematic issues remain unresolved, namely reuse and refill targets (article 26), and restrictions on the use of certain packaging formats (article 22 and the associated Annex V). They were only briefly discussed on Monday.
Substances of concern/PFAS and BPA (article 5). The Parliament wants a total ban on the use of PFASs and bisphenol A in food packaging. Both the Council and the Commission are of the view that there is no need to duplicate the REACH regulation. A mandate was given to find a way of addressing the issue in the packaging and packaging waste regulation.
Minimum recycled content in plastic packaging (article 7). The Parliament wants to reduce the 2030 target to 7.5% (instead of 10% in the proposal) and add a target of 25% for 2040. The negotiators are said to be in agreement on staying at 10% from 2030 and adding the 2040 target.
However, disagreements remain on a number of points: - the flexibility requested by the Council for SMEs; - bio-based plastics (the Council wants a review report from the European Commission after the regulation comes into force to take account of technological developments. The Parliament, for its part, is asking for a report from 2025).
Separate collection/return and collection systems (article 43 and 44 derogations). A compromise was reached only on the percentage of separate collection of plastic bottles and metal cans triggering a derogation. This is reportedly 80% (the Council wanted 78%, the Parliament 85%), but the new Article 43a introduced by the European Parliament to impose a separate collection target of at least 90% for all materials is a red line for the Council.
Extended producer responsibility (article 40). The negotiators have reportedly agreed to include the costs of waste cleaning, but have yet to reach agreement on the costs of public waste collection systems and the modulation of financial contributions. The Commission should help them find a compromise solution, particularly on this last point.
Urgency procedure for the adoption of the text. Given the tight deadline before the European elections from 6 to 9 June, and that Parliament’s last plenary session is scheduled for April, the urgency procedure known as the ‘corrigendum procedure’ (from Parliament’s Rules of Procedure) will be used.
The provisional agreement would be reviewed for approval by Coreper in March, with the European Parliament Committee on the Environment, Public Health and Food Safety (ENVI) expected to do the same before April, in accordance with the ordinary procedure.
The outgoing Parliament would adopt at first reading the text provisionally approved and translated, but not yet revised by the lawyer-linguists.
The newly elected European Parliament would approve the provisional agreement, probably unchanged (as was the case for 20 texts adopted after the May 2019 elections), by means of a ‘corrigendum’ to the text drawn up by the lawyer-linguists.
If this is the case, the regulation will be formally adopted by the Council at the end of 2024.
See the EU Council’s general approach: https://aeur.eu/f/aqd (Original version in French by Aminata Niang)