Compliance Key Factors of the EU WEEE Directive

Abstract

Since the transposition process of directive 2002/96/EC has started - and not even finished in big countries like France, Italy or UK - each member state has transposed the directive in its own way. Legal basis of differences in transposition is the article 175 of the Treaty, and its "minimum requirement principle". In several cases there are also varying influences of stakeholders involved in the transposition process or lack of overview of the practical consequences of such actions. The implementation process is currently leading to great differences amongst producers, governments, retailers, recyclers, compliances schemes and other involved. Beside the impact on producer's compliance cost, differences are also leading to more or less effectiveness in performances of national systems. One of the most important aspects here is the involvement of retailers in separate collection, by means of compensation of the collection and storage costs. It is observed as a key factor in those systems, running since years (Switzerland, Sweden and Norway have high collection amounts and an extended responsibility for retail 'all for all') or just set up (Ireland). Countries with a 1:1 mechanism for retail have moderate collection amounts and basically all other countries have none or lower collection performances maybe due to the fact that the retail sector is not willing to become active as collection points