By Brian Johnson - 17th June 2008
The European parliament has accepted a controversial deal with EU member states on the revision of the waste framework directive.
Despite strong criticism from some deputies that the prearranged deal with EU governments had severely weakened the directive, MEPs backed the package in Strasbourg on Tuesday.
Commenting ahead of the vote, parliament’s rapporteur, British conservative deputy Caroline Jackson, said that negotiating an agreement with EU ministers had been a “long and tortuous road”.
“There was much resistance to what we wanted to do and council drove a very hard bargain. This is the best deal available. Anyone who thinks that we could get anything better by going to conciliation would be deceiving themselves.”
The agreement sets out mandatory recycling targets to be met by 2020: 50 per cent for paper, metal, plastic, and glass from household waste and 70 per cent for construction and demolition waste.
Despite the agreement on recycling targets, new provisions on the prevention of waste, the introduction of a five-step “hierarchy” of waste management options, and plans to develop national waste prevention programmes, many MEP were scathing of the final package.
Greens/EFA group members Jill Evans and Caroline Lucas called the agreement a wasted opportunity.
"The compromise on the EU waste framework directive is a patchwork of positive and negative elements. Unfortunately, the positive elements are rather weak, while the negative elements are rather strong,” said Evans.
“Instead of clear and ambitious targets for waste reuse and recycling, we get non-binding targets for 2020 that many member states have already achieved.”
Caroline Lucas also called the compromise a missed opportunity for climate change policy.
“An ambitious European waste policy could and should make an important contribution to reducing CO2 emissions through consequent waste prevention, recycling, and the composting of bio-waste – but the political will is unfortunately still lacking to make this happen.”
And both MEPs were unhappy that the deal was achieved by conceding to member states that incineration of waste could be categorised as “recovery” rather than “disposal”, and by postponing the setting of an EU-wide waste prevention target.
“Waste incineration with a certain efficiency will be reclassified as recovery. This promotes incineration, a waste-hungry technology which is counterproductive to any effort to tackle the waste mountains at their source and to meet the EU's vision for a recycling society,” said Evans.
“As well as promoting incineration, the compromise also includes two potential loopholes that are likely to haunt us in the future. It introduces new definitions for 'by-products' and when 'waste ceases to be a waste'. This creates possibilities to unduly escape waste legislation and may well lead to a new series of court cases,” added Lucas.
However Jackson highlighted that only the most energy-efficient incinerators would be classified as recovery installations.
“This is a positive incentive to incinerator operators to reach high standards and we would do well to remember, in these fuel-poor days, that waste can be a useful fuel,” said Jackson.
“But it is important to recognise that the parliament has now ensured, by writing in targets for recycling and emphasising waste prevention objectives, that incineration of residual waste will have to go hand in hand with recycling."
"We have transformed the directive into a campaigning law aimed at bringing quality of life issues onto the European agenda."
"It proved impossible to get the council or commission to agree to quantitative waste prevention targets in this directive but the parliament has created, through its amendments, momentum for future policy that may contain waste prevention targets. It is something for our successors to build on."
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