The feasibility study on the benefits and costs of creating a special agency to enforce EU waste legislation was commissioned as part of the EU executive’s search for new initiatives to strengthen the implementation of EU legislation on the field.
The consultancy report prepared by Milieu Ltd, AmbienDura and FFact concludes that a new EU agency for waste implementation would provide “the most effective way forward” to help overcome the EU waste law “enforcement crisis”.
The agency would carry out reviews of member states’ enforcement systems, conduct coordinated checks and inspections, and train national officials, the report suggests.
It would be combined with the creation of a “specific European body”, possibly hosted by the EU executive, to carry out direct inspections and controls of facilities and sites in “serious cases of non-compliance”.
Implementing waste laws 'low priority' for national governments
According to the study, many member states lack inspection and enforcement capacity and action among national bodies is poorly coordinated.
Other challenges for better national EU waste law compliance include a lack of technical capacity to prepare waste management plans and programmes, as well as insufficient resource allocation for enforcement activities, which, the authors say, is due to the “low priority” given to the implementation of EU waste legislation.
Member states also have different interpretations of EU waste requirements.
The EU’s Landfill Directive, for example, obliges member states to reduce the amount of municipal solid waste in landfill by 65% by 2016 compared to 1995 levels. But it does not give countries binding specifications on what to do with it - a situation that has led most member states to opt for incineration.
Last summer, a Commission official in charge of environmental infringement cases regretted that while waste officially ranks among the EU’s top priorities, "there is not much happening" (EurActiv 17/07/09).
The Commission does not even have a unit dedicated to waste, and the issue is dealt with by the EU executive’s sustainable consumption and production unit, where there is only one person in charge of the Landfill Directive, he said.
