The 3 July deadline for the transposition of the single-use plastics directive has come and gone, but the current status of the legislative processes throughout the EU shows ‘unprecedented fragmentation’ among EU member states, according to the European Market for Polymers (EUPC). National legislators are apparently rushing to attempt to meet the strict timeline set at EU level.
“The commission should have realised the disruptive impact of the single-use plastics directive on businesses and how lengthy national legislative processes can be. Those changes cannot be done overnight and the fragmentation of the EU single market is now an unavoidable scenario having severe consequences on employment and businesses losses in the EU,” said Alexandre Dangis, EUPC’s managing director.
The single-use plastics directive leaves considerable room for interpretation to the national legislators, the EUPC claims. Member states are developing dissimilar understandings of pivotal concepts, which may make it impossible to preserve the ultimate goal of harmonising the policy throughout the EU.
The differences among EU member states are substantial, both with regard to timeline and content, says the EUPC. France recently sent back one of its notified texts to the national legislator for amendment, causing further delays, the EUPC reported. The body described Italy as ‘the only country to take the questionable decision of excluding bio-based plastic products from the scope of the transposition law’, and highlighted delays in Sweden too. It said that countries like Romania and Bulgaria have ‘not made yet real steps towards the transposition’.
“The entire world is still paying the consequences of the outbreak of the pandemic, which, in the past year, has represented the main element of focus and concern both at EU and national level. Allowing a shift of the deadline, as requested by our industry at the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, could have granted the EU member states enough time to properly consider all the legislative options, work on harmonisation and properly exploit the clarifications provided by the guidelines and the other implementing acts,” added Alexandre.
