The digitalisation of the EU’s administrative procedures for transfrontier waste shipments as of 21 May is intended to enable better monitoring and streamline processes for authorities and businesses. In the view of the Italian recovered paper association Unirima, however, obligatory registration for the EU’s Digital Waste Shipment System (Diwass) platform will lead to more rather than less bureaucratic hassle.
The association contends that recovered paper exporters in Italy are not required to use the platform and the Annex VII document, as the material they are shipping is no longer waste under domestic law, assuming it complies with Italy's end-of-waste (EoW) criteria for this material stream.
This issue has now also reached the European Parliament via a question for written answer submitted to the European Commission in late April.
Owing to the significance of the questions raised, EUWID contacted waste and administrative law expert Anno Oexle from the German law firm Okl & Partner for a preliminary assessment of the interaction of EoW rules and waste shipment legislation.
For its part, the European Commission has repeatedly stressed in its preparations for the upcoming Circular Economy Act (CEA) that it wants to strengthen the EU internal market for waste, secondary raw materials and circular products. Speaking at the IFAT trade fair in Munich last week, Aurel Ciobanu-Dordea, Director Circular Economy at the Commission’s Directorate-General for Environment, gave some insight into regulatory approaches intended to achieve this objective. ...
