Brussels, 04/07/2007 (Agence Europe) - Environmental NGOs at the European Environmental Bureau (EEB) are unhappy with the results of the most recent Environment Council and the draft regulation on preventing and recycling waste. Although the German presidency fought a hard battle to close its mandate with a political agreement on this dossier (EUROPE 9457), the EEB considers that far from being an advance, the contents contained in the agreement constitute, “a serious climb-down on more than 30 years of European waste policy”. In a press release the EEB stated, “Ministers promoted incineration and missed the opportunity to modernise waste policy so that it increase Europe's resource efficiency and reduces its climate impacts”.
Ministers certainly supported the traditional hierarchy of waste treatment methods, which should prioritise prevention, reuse and recycling ahead of energy recovery and landfill. But the Council also voted to reclassify municipal waste incineration as 'recovery' rather than 'disposal', pointed out the EEB. Environmental NGOs deplore the fact that ministers had pushed it further up the waste hierarchy and had given it a 'cleaner' image.
The NGOs consider that this results in, “policy that does not back up the waste hierarchy and promotes more waste incineration”.
The EEB also regret that ministers had not even tried to reach an agreement on recycling and prevention methods proposed by the European Parliament in first reading (EUROPE 9366). Michael Warhurst from Friends of the Earth declared, “The Environment Council has postponed discussion of the vital recycling and prevention targets - supported by Parliament in February - and has instead focussed on fiddling with the bottom of the waste hierarchy. This is deeply disappointing when the EU should be providing leadership on resource efficiency and reducing climate impacts”.
The EEB criticises the agreement on this point, which from the outset very clearly divided the delegations and was obtained in exchange for concessions granted to member states that wanted, in some cases, to oppose waste imports or exports.
NGOs believe that reclassification of incineration as recovery is “counterproductive and unnecessary” because it is overwhelmingly dictated by problems experienced by a small number of member states and which ought to be resolved in these member states.
Doreen Fedrigo, an expert in waste policy at the EEB affirmed, “Overall, the Council Common Position reflects a demand by Member States to have more autonomy, including on whether waste will be allowed into their country, and on how to implement the waste hierarchy. This decentralisation of decision-making threatens to fragment further an already fragmented policy area. It is a dangerous development away from a unified EU waste management policy approach." (an)