120 packaging associations have signed a joint letter to the EU that stresses the need to preserve the internal market legal basis in its entirety or risk ‘increasing fragmentation’ within the single market.
The EU Commission is currently proposing the transformation of Directive 94/62/EC on Packaging and Packaging Waste (PPWD) into a Regulation (PPWR). The signatories are concerned that moving away from the internal market legal basis will erode the Regulation’s legal basis and exacerbate pressures by increasing fragmentation, paving the way for a patchwork of national packaging legislations. This, they say, would undermine the objective of creating a single circular economy comprising all Member States, to the detriment of consumer safety, environmental protection and European competitiveness.
The internal market legal basis was introduced in the 1994 Packaging and Packaging Waste Directive (PPWD) and was intended to address differences among the various national rules on the management of packaging and packaging waste and consequent internal market barriers while providing a high level of environmental protection.
The letter – released today (17 April) – included signatories such as the Alliance for Beverage Cartons & the Environment (ACE), the Confederation of European Paper Industries (Cepi), the European Organisation for Packaging and the Environment (EUROPEN), Metal Packaging Europe (MPE), and Plastics Europe.
Additionally, the signatories state that ensuring that packaging waste is duly collected and makes its way into recycling allows valuable raw materials to come back into the value chain and be used across the Single Market. They say that a strengthened market for secondary materials and a strong and resilient EU single market represent fundamental enablers of circularity, which will create greater economies of scale and underpin the investment needed to realise a circular and climate-neutral economy in Europe.
The letter also states that the inclusion of environmental protection as a legal basis for some or all the Articles of the PPWR will further exacerbate the current situation of mismatched legislation, create legal uncertainty about the residual responsibilities of Member States and adversely impact the free movement of packaged goods within the EU and consequently the EU’s transition to a circular and climate-neutral economy.
Finally, several of the provisions included in the PPWR proposal would allow Member States to maintain or introduce additional national sustainability and information requirements. The letter states that those or other provisions be based on an environmental legal basis, the potential for harmonisation would be weakened by a patchwork of national packaging legislations, to the detriment of consumers, environmental protection and the competitiveness of European industry.
EUROPEN commented: “Europe needs just one circular economy covering the whole bloc, not 27 miniature ones.”
The Regulation is being proposed as the EU feels the PPWD no longer adequately addresses accelerating trends in EU packaging waste generation. It has three main objectives:
- Prevent packaging waste by reducing the amount of packaging in the EU market;
- Boost high-quality (‘closed loop’) recycling and make all packaging recyclable in an economically viable way by 2030;
- And reduce the need for virgin materials in packaging with mandatory targets for recycled content, and foster a market for secondary materials.
Despite these criticisms, the letter affirms the industry’s strong support for the EU’s wider approach, stating that that ‘circular economy solutions require the scale for investment and their roll-out so that the transition is cost-effective and fast to serve the society best’ with a ‘robust EU single market’ being key to achieving this.
It adds: “A strengthened market for secondary materials and a strong and resilient EU single market represent fundamental enablers of circularity, which will create greater economies of scale and underpin the investment needed to realise a circular and climate-neutral economy in Europe.
“Its continued functioning remains crucial to Europe’s global competitiveness and green transition.”
Background on the Packaging and Packaging Waste Directive
The need for the internal market legal basis was established by the EU Commission within the 1992 proposal for the current PPWD. This followed the realisation that there was a need to address the divergent Member state measures that were hindering the free movement of packaged goods and distorting the internal market.
However, since 1994, the packaging value chain has witnessed an increase in unilateral and divergent national packaging requirements – for example, packaging bans, reuse and recycled content targets, and labelling requirements. These have led to internal market barriers, environmental trade-offs, losses in economies of scale, and diversion of investments and research and development.
For example, the impact assessment accompanying the EU Commission proposal for a Packaging and Packaging Waste Regulation identifies inconsistent and confusing labelling as a barrier to packaging circularity and provides a number of case studies regarding environmental tradeoffs and compliance costs deriving from diverging marking requirements.
Even more recently, several EU Member States have also adopted national legislation on packaging and packaging waste, pre-empting the adoption of EU-wide sectoral legislation and leading to further market barriers.
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