The European Parliament has this week adopted new EU rules on the recycling of batteries. The new directive, which received its 2nd reading in Strasbourg on Tuesday, also aims to prevent the use of heavy metals in batteries and accumulators.
MEPs did not amend the collection targets proposed by the Council of Ministers and these will be fixed at 25% of portable batteries after 6 years with a 45% target after 10 years.
The European Parliament did, however, adopt over 20 amendments to the Council of Ministers' position, including the following:
If the Council of Ministers accepts all the amendments adopted this week by the European Parliament, the directive can be adopted quickly and its provisions will have to be put into domestic legislation after two years. If the Council cannot accept all the Parliament amendments, conciliation will follow between Parliament and Council to determine the final wording of the directive.
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Commissioner Charlie McCreevy: The existing Community legislation on batteries only covers a small part of all the portable batteries sold annually in the European Union. This has hindered the setting-up of efficient national collection and recycling schemes. Consequently, many batteries placed on the Community market today still risk ending up in the environment, in incineration or in landfills. To address that problem, the Commission presented a new legislative proposal for batteries in 2003 that would extend the scope of existing Community legislation from batteries containing certain dangerous substances to all batteries placed on the Community market.
Caroline Jackson MEP (Conservative, South West): O nly six Member States currently have a national system of collecting small batteries for recycling: Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, Holland and Sweden. Austria has achieved 40% collection after 14 years…The report now calls for higher targets: 40% after 6 years and 60% after 10 years. From the point of view of Member States which, for whatever reason, have never given battery recycling a high priority, these totals are unrealistic and, if set, will simply not be reached.
Secondly, the rapporteur is calling for bans on lead and cadmium in power tool batteries…We need a full assessment of the social, environmental and economic impact of any such bans before we agree to introduce them… I am confident that this directive represents a major change of direction and of public habits for many European countries. We should have turned to specific battery collection long ago. I hope we can now put this proposal into operation as soon as possible.
Linda McAvan MEP (Labour, Yorkshire & Humber): Mr President, I very much welcome this legislation which, I think, will help clean up our environment… I do not agree with an automatic ban (on nickel cadmium batteries)… There is cadmium in our atmosphere but less than 1% is caused by batteries - much more comes from pesticides and other uses - so we must have legislation that is proportionate to what we are trying to achieve. We need a study on this issue before we move to any further legislation.
As regards the targets, there is no point pretending we can automatically run to big leaps forward when in fact only a handful of countries collect batteries at all. We need to get targets down to a level that countries can meet at some point in the future and work out how to get there.
Commissioner McCreevy: T he Commission believes that setting collection targets in the proposed directive is necessary: It is important that the collection targets are ambitious in environmental terms, but they should also be achievable, realistic and cost-efficient. The Commission's extended impact assessment carefully analysed this issue and came to the conclusion that the collection target of 160 grams or 40% would be the most cost-efficient target.
Full text of the debate (Monday 12 December 2005) in the speakers' original language:
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Report by Johannes Blokland MEP (A6-0335/2005):
http://www.europarl.eu.int/omk/sipade3?L=EN&OBJID=104621&LEVEL=3&MODE=SIP&NAV=X&LSTDOC=N
Text and amendments adopted by Parliament (Tuesday 13 December 2005):
Legislative Observatory:
Legislation in force (Environment / Waste):
http://europa.eu.int/eur-lex/lex/en/repert/1510.htm#15103030
Existing texts affected by the new directive:
revised:
- Directive 91/157/EEC on batteries and accumulators:
http://europa.eu.int/smartapi/cgi/sga_doc?smartapi!celexdoc!prod!CELEXnumdoc&lg=EN&numdoc=31991L0157&model=guicheti
linked:
- Sixth Community Environment Action Programme:
http://europa.eu.int/smartapi/cgi/sga_doc?smartapi!celexdoc!prod!CELEXnumdoc&lg=EN&numdoc=32002D1600&model=guicheti
- Directive 2002/96/EC on waste electrical and electronic equipment:
http://europa.eu.int/eur-lex/lex/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=CELEX:32002L0096:EN:HTML
UK MEPs contact details and websites:
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