Construction equipment association CECE and the European Materials Handling Federation (FEM) are among 40 European industry groups calling on the European Commission to take decisive action in solving implementation issues within the EU Waste Framework Directive (WFD).
The industry groups have signed a letter to EC president Ursula von der Leyen seeking urgent resolution of implementation issues in the WFD’s SCIP database that is designed to support the circular economy as expressed in the European Green Deal. The SCIP database gives waste operators and the public access to information about the presence of SVHCs (substances of very high concern) in products and waste materials.
The letter states the signatories have serious concerns over the current SCIP database and calls on von der Leyen to postpone the database notification deadline of 5th January 2021 by at least 12 months and to conduct an assessment to make it “workable, proportionate and useful”.
The signatories also want the EC president to instruct the European Chemicals Agency (ECHA) to adapt the SCIP database according to the outcome of such a study.
The associations say that ECHA failed to finalise the database development to the required timescale of January 2020, preventing companies from developing, testing and adapting their own systems to meet the January 2021 notification deadline.
The signatories add that they have repeatedly expressed their concerns over the last two years about the workability, proportionality and value of the SCIP database, but that these concerns have not been resolved by the EC or ECHA.
The letter states: “Contrary to the EU Better Regulation principles, Article 9.1 was added to the revised WFD during the final stage of the co-decision process without any prior stakeholder consultation or impact assessment. A proper impact study should help shape the way forward to deliver on the EU ambition for a circular European Economy.”
