Brussels, 25/05/2000 (Agence Europe) - As announced in yesterday's EUROPE, Parliament and the Council came to an agreement on Tuesday evening on the directive on the ecological elimination of end-of-life vehicles, within the framework of the conciliation procedure held to bring their points of view together on this essential environmental protection issue. The conciliation exercise concentrated on two points, namely: the date on which manufacturers will be required to take on a significant part of the costs of dismantling and recycling end-of-life vehicles after the final owner turns in an old car free of charge (manufacturer's liability clause) and the timeframe for the elimination of heavy metals in the manufacture of new cars. Agreement was reached through a compromise that can be summarised as follows.
1. Manufacturer liability: The date on which this liability will apply for vehicles placed on the market after 1 January 2001 remains unchanged in relation to the Council's common position: it will apply immediately upon entry into force of the directive. On the other hand, for existing vehicles, i.e. vehicles placed on the market prior to 1 January 2001, it will be delayed one year, applying in 2007 rather than 2006. However, as stipulated in an article added to the text, Member States will be free to anticipate the date of implementation (Denmark, Sweden and the Netherlands should be in a position to do so).
2. Elimination of heavy metals: the agreement establishes that vehicles placed on the market after 1 July 2003 must no longer contain heavy metals such as cadmium, lead and hexavalent chromium. This solution represents a good compromise between the Council's common position (which foresaw entry into force of this ban 18 months after entry into force of the directive for vehicles placed on the market after 1 January 2003) and Parliament's amendment (which requested implementation of the ban 18 months following entry into force of the directive for vehicles approved after 1 January 2005). The compromise insists on release on the market (rather than approval) to keep from delaying the prohibition.
The two delegations also agreed on the list of derogations to this article (Annex 2 of the directive), introducing several points relating to lead and excluding vintage cars from the directive, as requested by Parliament. The text of the agreement also stipulates that the Committee on Technical Adaptation of the directive, charged with reviewing this list, shall give priority to the review of certain elements, in particular the case of cadmium in batteries for electric cars (the period between the entry into force of the directive introducing the prohibition on the use of heavy metals may be used to study this question, which is of great importance for the French automotive industry, a major manufactuer of electric cars, and which notes the lack of substitute products).
This favourable outcome to the conciliation procedure closes an issue that has been on the table for over two years (the Commission's proposal dates back to July 1997) and which gave rise to considerable controversy, both in the Council and Parliament. EUROPE would point out that the directive is aimed at preventing environmental pollution caused by end-of-life vehicles by imposing the collection, treatment, recycling and recovery of such vehicles.
Margot Wallström, European Commissioner for the Environment, welcomed this success. "This is a good outcome for the environment. We have achieved our key objectives, which are to improve the management of waste and remove a number of materials which damage the environment from the waste stream, in the interest of sustainable development", she delcared, adding that the agreement is promising for other planned legislation on waste, in particular forthcoming Commission proposals on waste from electricl and electronic equipment and waste batteries.