Upgrading Electric Connections

• Author: Gabrielle Williamson
• Position: Managing Partner of the Brussels office of Heuking Kühn Lüer Wojtek, a German law firm. She also practices in the firm's Düsseldorf office
• Pages: 22-22

Page 22 ❧ THE ENVIRONMENTAL FORUM Copyright © 2009, Environmental Law Institute®, Washington, D.C. www.eli.org.

Reprinted by permission from The Environmental Forum®, March/April 2009

Industry and

enironmental g roups

have reacted with equal

deprecation to the

Commission’s proposal

Upgrading Electric

Connections

European Union legislation on the

Restriction of the Use of Certain

Hazardous Substances in Electrical

and Electronic Equipment (“RoHS

Directive”) and on Waste from Elec-

trical and Electronic Equipment

(“WEEE Directive”) has been in force

since February 2003. However, there

are still a signif‌icant number of prod-

ucts not complying with the substance

restrictions, and only about a third of

covered equipment is reported to be

treated under the waste measure. e

main problems of the sister Directives

are diverse requirements for product

compliance and inconsistency with

other Community legislation.

e European Commission agrees

that legislation on electrical and elec-

tronic equipment and its waste has

proved dif‌f‌icult to be implemented

and enforced by Member States. After

stakeholder consultations and several

expert studies, amending proposals

to the Directives were made public in

December.

e proposal for the RoHS Di-

rective contains various changes and

modif‌ications that should make it less

ambiguous. It clarif‌ies def‌initions and

creates a binding list of products. Med-

ical devices and control and monitor-

ing instruments have been added to the

list of regulated devices. e proposal

acknowledges that transitional periods

will be necessary so that environmen-

tal and health benef‌its can be achieved

with less social impact. According to

the proposal, the restrictions to this

product group would apply as of 2014

and would be gradually extended to in

vitro diagnostic medical devices placed

on the market from 2016 onward.

At present, the RoHS Directive

contains a list of six substances that

are banned from use in certain elec-

trical and electronic equipment as of

2006. Despite the fact that no new

substances are proposed to be prohib-

ited, Article 4 of the proposal allows

for restriction of additional substances

if they pose an unacceptable risk. An-

nex III to the proposal contains a list

of four substances that would be as-

sessed as a priority in case of an alleged

unacceptable risk to human health or

environment, providing a possibility

for these substances to be banned in

the future.

e RoHS proposal introduces

mandatory obligations for manufactur-

ers to carry out an internal production

control procedure, is-

sue an EC declaration

of conformity and

af‌f‌ix the CE (Con-

formité Européenne)

mark. Article 9 of the

proposal requires im-

porters to check that

non-EU manufactur-

ers have completed the conformity

assessment procedures and that any

CE-marked product is accompanied

by the required documents.

As to the WEEE Directive, the

amending proposal addresses def‌ini-

tions and scope, which appear to be

very dif‌f‌icult for Member States to

transpose into national law because of

unclear language, leading to inconsis-

tent implementation. According to the

proposal, the recycling and re-use tar-

gets would increase by 5 percent and

there would also be benchmarks set for

the recovery of medical devices.

Moreover, the Commission consid-

ers that the current electronic waste

collection target of four kilograms per

person annually does not properly re-

f‌lect the situation in individual Mem-

ber States. e revised WEEE Direc-

tive of‌fers to set a new binding target

for the collection of electrical and elec-

tronic equipment.

A provision of the amending pro-

posal would allow harmonization of

producer registration and reporting

in the EU and would make national

registers administrated by the indi-

vidual EU Member States interop-

erable. By introducing an EU-wide

one-stop regulatory shop, the Com-

mission hopes to save producers

some 60 million euros annually.

Industry and environmentalists

have reacted with equal depreca-

tion to the Commission’s proposals.

Trade groups and corporations claim

that they will lead to more uncer-

tainty and potentially higher costs of

compliance. e chief of the Euro-

pean household appliance industry

warned that shifting the responsibil-

ity for household collection to indus-

try would add one billion euros of

extra costs to EU manufacturers.

Moreover, in many

industry sectors the

physio-chemical

properties of haz-

ardous substances

provide signif‌icant

advantages that far

outweigh the envi-

ronmental impacts,

industry says. Companies are con-

cerned that new substance bans and

exemptions might limit innovation

and long-term investments in some

sectors.

ese proposals are only the f‌irst

step in a lengthy legislative process.

e text of the Directives may signif-

icantly change during intense nego-

tiations in the European Parliament

and the Council. e actual adop-

tion of the f‌inal legislative acts could

take as long as 18 months, and new

rules will probably not take ef‌fect un-

til 2011 or 2012.

By Gabrielle Williamson

A V   EU

Gabrielle H. Williamson is Ma na gi ng Pa rt n er o f

th e B ru ss els of c e o f H eu ki ng K üh n L üe r W ojt ek ,

a G erman law rm. She also practic es in the

rm’s Düsseldor f ofce. She can be reached at

g.williamson@heuking.de.

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