The environment ministry of the German state of Bavaria expects by summer to have completed the repatriation of around 500 tonnes of waste that were allegedly exported illegally by a Bavarian firm to Czechia. According to the ministry, the federal state’s environment minister Thorsten Glauber assured his Czech counterpart Petr Hladík that steps are being taken to initiate the repatriation of waste dumped at two sites in the Czech Republic. "This matter should be resolved in the next eight to approximately ten weeks,” said a spokesman for the ministry in Munich.
According to the ministry, the competent Upper Palatine regional authority (Regierung der Oberpfalz) had ordered the German firm to bring back and appropriately manage this waste, but the company is now in insolvency proceedings.
The state of Bavaria is therefore preparing to organise the repatriation under a legal procedure known as "substitute performance”, an enforcement measure when the obligated party cannot or will not carry out the action, once the two-month deadline for repatriating the waste has expired. It is not yet clear what the associated costs for the state of Bavaria will be.
In early April, the public prosecutor’s offices in Weiden and Bruntál established a joint investigation team (JIT) to facilitate cross-border cooperation. The JIT is supported by the European Union Agency for Criminal Justice Cooperation (Eurojust)....
