Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2002-04-09-Speech-2-248"
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"en.20020409.11.2-248"2
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"Mr President, Commissioner, as rapporteur I regret the fact that a relatively interesting report on the issue of how electronic scrap is to be recycled in Europe in future is being debated in the middle of the night.
I would like to draw your attention to the fact that this directive serves those Member States which are already working hard, achieving targets and have built up systems and that we are anxious that those Member States, and I particularly have in mind countries such as the Netherlands and Belgium, should be able to keep their existing systems. I would have to be crazy if I wanted to penalise those countries and say that they have to adopt the European system now. Of course not, they should achieve the targets, and if they comply with those targets and rates and guidelines, then they should be able to keep their financing systems over a period of about 10 years.
Over the last few days, industry has written some angry letters, because a decision in the Committee on the Environment, Public Health and Consumer Policy missed the target, namely how can we prevent free-riders in future when it comes to new products? You all know about those special offers just before Christmas, when big companies buy 10 000 fridges in the Pacific Rim which are then marketed any old how through some kind of agent, and then, all of a sudden, once the fridges have been sold this agent and importer disappear and the SMEs who then have to foot the bill are the ones that suffer. Industry itself has to develop guarantees to protect itself from free-riders. Industry is clever enough to protect itself against such free-riders, or, if you will excuse the expression, these wolves. I regard this as a very up-to-the-minute form of protection for SMEs.
There is a rather euphoric tendency, Commissioner, to overuse the word ‘re-use’ in this area. Re-use sounds very good at first, but is it really as good as we think? A ten-year-old fridge is an incredible power-guzzler. The amount of water consumed by a twenty-year-old washing machine is phenomenal. So re-use is not necessarily the best solution – it needs to be considered with a critical eye. I hope that you will agree with me.
I have made a very modest 10% increase in the rate of recovery, because in the foreseeable future we can expect a ban on landfill. I have left the recycling and re-use rates, because they are entry rates and because industry, including smaller industries, needs to follow these entry rates. It is no great feat to increase the rates by 20% – for example, for a mobile phone like this – and nor is it a political masterstroke, but the vital issue for me is what they do with the recyclable material. We are seeking a ban on six dangerous substances as quickly as possible. We have brought this forward from 2008 to 2006. Commissioner, I would be pleased if you would follow these initiatives and motivate your colleagues in the Member States. They were not particularly ambitious about the electronic scrap regulation.
When I tell people in my constituency at home that we discuss subjects like this at anything up to midnight, nobody believes me. But the administration cannot seem to find any other solution. I am often asked why we need a directive of this kind. Do we need yet another European law to address the issue of electronic scrap? The answer is relatively simple. We have seven to eight million tonnes of scrap in the European Community every year, and every year there is an extra million tonnes. That alone is sufficient for us to acknowledge that we are really not just talking about scrap here, but about recyclable material which future generations should not be deprived of, and which should certainly not be dumped on landfill sites.
That brings me to the European Parliament's first request. In the course of our various deliberations and committee decisions, we have written a ban on disposable equipment into the directive, which should send a message to the European public that an electric shaver should no longer be thrown into the dustbin, but that it should be collected separately, because it is recyclable. The EU Member States, and above all my own country, have very limited ambitions in this area and believe that it is not necessary to make such demands of the Member States and of Europe's citizens. The Member States have an equally low level of commitment as regards what collection targets we should aim for in future. The Member States believe that an optional collection rate of 4 kg is the right way to go. I can only say this: why should a Parliament like ours bother with this report if the end result is not binding and is actually lower than the targets already being achieved? Because the United Kingdom, believe it or not, is already achieving far more than we are calling for, namely a binding 6 kg collection rate.
An important point here is of course who meets the costs. Opinions on that are divided in this House as well. I believe that the Commission originally brought forward a very good proposal, which it unfortunately subsequently departed from again. With regard to costs, there are two models, one for historical waste and another for new equipment. As far as historical waste is concerned, the costs should be borne collectively, because this can no longer be achieved individually. You know that there are a great many orphan products; there are non-branded products and it is no longer possible to allocate precisely those products. That is why collective financing is needed here.
However, up to the point of collection, for example in the city centre, the costs are to be borne by the companies. There are a few individual Members of this House who believe that in future even a toothbrush should be collected by the producers from the user's bathroom. I am of course exaggerating somewhat, but I want to make it clear that enormous costs are involved here: exactly 50% of the costs are incurred between the front door and the collection point. I am convinced that in many cases this will impose a heavy burden on medium-sized companies throughout Europe. That is why I believe that in future the costs borne by companies should be from the collection point and not from the front door.
In the case of collective historical waste, we have proposed an alternative form of cost allocation with the voluntary visible fee for companies. That also helps to answer the question of whether there will be any retroactive effect in this area. Particularly in cases where costs are borne collectively, and are separately identified, this issue of retroactivity, which we debated so passionately in this House when we were discussing the end-of-life vehicle directive, might be addressed.
When it comes to the financing of new products, as I see it, and as this House in general sees it, we are looking at individual cost allocation. There are many good reasons for doing that, and in fact that is where there is scope for innovation and motivation, because, in future, companies will have to accept that their fridges will be returned to their yard. They will at long last have to find a way of dismantling them more easily and more cost-effectively. It is precisely for that reason that we are proposing individual responsibility here. We would not grant the Member States any individual scope for decision making; it should be the companies that do that on an individual basis. As far as I am concerned, it is very important that costs should be borne up to the point of collection in this case too.
We are at present going through the implementation of the end-of-life vehicle directive, on which this House also decided that companies should pay everything, so that the companies are now saying – and I mean real blue-chip companies in my country – that if you pay everything, you should also set the price! It is precisely that which is not consumer-friendly. That is why I would really like to warn you against thinking that collection from people's front doors is a consumer-friendly act, Mrs van Brempt. It is not, because the companies alone are then responsible for how high the collection and recycling costs actually are. There is then no third-party control. I am enough of an entrepreneur to know that it is an opportunity for companies, if you say – as the Council and unfortunately now Mrs Wallström too are saying – that the costs should at least be borne from the collection point. We will then end up again with exactly the same patchwork quilt that we were trying to get rid of by means of this directive.
We have said that we want to harmonise the various different regulations in Europe in the long run, with the aim of achieving comparable rules. That was one of my great ideals and reasons for getting involved in Europe, because I said that this enormous internal market should take advantage of its synergies. And then – because we are such good people – we go and allow for individual and even 15 separate options in this internal market. That just cannot be right."@en1
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