Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2011-02-03-Speech-4-057-000"
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"en.20110203.5.4-057-000"2
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"Madam President, I would also like first to thank Parliament, and in particular the rapporteur, Mr Florenz, and his team, the shadows and the Committee on the Environment, Public Health and Food Safety, for their hard work.
I am now curious to listen to your debate on the proposal and the proposed amendments, and will make further comments, on behalf of the Commission, in my closing remarks.
Their commitment and interest in this matter is reflected in the amendments that were adopted in committee and tabled in recent weeks. I am pleased to see that many amendments fully support the objectives of the Commission’s proposals on the directive on waste electronic and electrical equipment, namely: to fully reap the environmental benefits of the WEEE Directive by setting ambitious collection and recovery targets that are realistic for all the Member States; to strengthen implementation and enforcement by establishing detailed rules to fight illegal exports of EU waste; and to reduce unnecessary administrative burdens significantly for European producers through reinforced cooperation among national authorities.
By strengthening the WEEE Directive we can make an important contribution towards becoming a resource-efficient recycling society. We are talking about the fastest growing waste stream in Europe, and one with huge potential for reducing our dependence on imported or virgin raw materials.
Based on this very positive background of broad agreement between Parliament and the Commission, let me make some introductory comments on the three specific issues.
The Commission is pleased that Parliament fully accepts the ambition level and starting date for the new collection target. It is ambitious in order to benefit our environment and increase the resource efficiency of our economy, and it is achievable for each Member State, which is also important. The committee proposes to define the target in a new way by mentioning the ultimate goal – collecting a proportion of the WEEE generated – explicitly in the wording. The Commission can agree to this approach if an appropriate methodology to calculate the WEEE generated is established. The Commission is willing to contribute to coming up with this methodology, as proposed by the committee.
Concerning the scope of the directive, it is proposed that the link between derogations to the WEEE Directive be abolished. This is acceptable to the Commission, because the principle objective of the Commission proposal in this area was to clarify, but not to change, the scope of the WEEE Directive.
Finally, concerning photovoltaic models, which are one specific issue within the matter of the scope of the directive, the Commission proposes to exclude them specifically from the scope of the directive which, as you know, is in line with the committee’s proposal and the current directive. However, we are aware of the increasing number of concerns relating to the potential environmental impact of solar panels, particularly in their waste phase. A voluntary agreement recently submitted by the solar panel industry clearly fails to meet the criteria for such agreements.
An evaluation of the agreement by the Commission’s services will be published very soon. We clearly need to assess properly the environmental risks and opportunities of the disposal of solar panels before considering their inclusion in the scope of the WEEE directive.
To conclude, as you know, the new WEEE Directive was proposed under the recast procedure, which combines the requalification of existing texts with designated new or amended elements. We still believe that, when the recast procedure is used, we should in principle respect the agreed rules of the procedure. Only those elements have been truly impact-assessed. However, we sympathise with the intentions, and agree with the direction, of certain amendments which were tabled by the committee."@en1
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