Background

On 30 March 2022, the European Commission published its proposal for the Ecodesign for Sustainable Products Regulation (ESPR). The Council adopted its negotiating position on 15 May 2023; the Parliament on 12 July 2023. Negotiations have proceeded in the past 4-5 months. The co-legislators have now found a provisional deal.

Major provisions

The ESPR will replace the current Ecodesign Directive and extend its scope to all products.

It aims to regulate all lifecycle environmental impacts, not just energy performance. This might include setting carbon or environmental footprint requirements for some products.

It further aims to make products last longer, easier to repair and recycle, contain fewer substances of concern, and include more recycled content.

The ESPR also bans the destruction of certain types of unsold consumer products, including textiles and footwear. The Commission will be empowered to introduce new bans for the destruction of other unsold products by delegated acts.

The ESPR would require disclosing some product information to consumers and recyclers through a Digital Product Passport (DPP). The DPP would be a standardised but decentralized way to give instant access to product information through a data carrier affixed on the product, like a QR code or bar code. What information will be required in the DPP is yet to be defined in product-specific delegated acts. It might vary from product to product.

The ESPR is a framework regulation. Detailed requirements for specific products will still have to be implemented through delegated acts.

First product priorities

The first products to be targeted for delegated acts will be defined in the first ESPR working plan. The Commission held a public consultation in the first half of 2023 to gather input on what would be good first priorities. The report should become available in Q1 2024, probably after publication of the ESPR. So far, the focus seems to be on textiles, garments, footwear, furniture, mattresses, iron, steel, aluminium, tyres, paints, lubricants, chemicals, ICT products and other consumer electronics.

Energy-related products already regulated under the current Ecodesign Directive will continue to be reviewed, but according to a separate working plan.

Next steps

With the big political questions resolved, there is still some work to be done at technical level to settle minor provisions in the legal text. After that, the provisional legal text should become available. This might still take a few weeks.

If endorsed by Council and Parliament, the deal will then be translated into all EU languages, formally adopted, and published in the Official Journal of the EU.

Additional information

See the public announcements of the Council of the EU and European Commission.

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Background of the legislative proposal

The European Commission published a legislative proposal for a Packaging and Packaging Waste Regulation (PPWR) last year, on 30 November 2022. This Regulation would have the effect of repealing and replacing the 1994 Packaging and Packaging Waste Directive. It aims to increase the use of recyclable and reusable packaging, and packaging made with recycled materials.

Single Market protections

The PPWR would be a Regulation and not a Directive anymore, which means it would be directly applicable and not transposed differently in the Member States. This should prevent fragmentation of packaging rules across the EU. Furthermore, Article 4 of the Commission proposal states that packaging that complies with EU sustainability requirements defined in the PPWR can circulate freely in the Single Market. Member States cannot create additional requirements. According to the legal principle known as primacy (or precedence or supremacy), EU law overrules national laws in case of conflict.

Parliament negotiating position

The negotiations were long and difficult, resulting in repeated postponement of the final report. The push from environmentalists to extend targets for reusable packaging and the continued possibility for national packaging initiatives caused concern among industry.

In the end, the European Parliament adopted a balanced negotiating position which reflects well the concerns of the industry. That includes more reasonable targets and exemptions of re-usable packaging used for large appliances (including air conditioners, room heating appliances, and exhaust ventilation equipment) in Article 26.

The full position is available here.

Next steps

When it comes to the Council of the EU, the current Spanish presidency is continuing the work on the file. However, it is not certain whether they will be able to reach their general approach by the end of 2023 and it might be left to the upcoming Belgian presidency in 2024. This could put the Council and Parliament in conflict regarding the timeline of the work because the latter has expressed the intention to conclude the trilogue negotiations by 4 February.

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Public consultation

The public consultation on the WEEE evaluation closed on 22 September. The objectives of the public consultation were to assess effectiveness and impact towards the circular economy policy objectives, and to identify shortcomings with implementation and enforcement.

Second stakeholder workshop

As part of the preparation for the public consultation on 19 October, Ramboll together with Environmental Agency Austria (EAA) and Oeko-institute on behalf of the European Commission, organised a second workshop organized to share the interim results of the public consultation. The preliminary conclusions on effectiveness, efficiency, relevance, coherence and EU-added value were examined.

Next steps

The consultant will now revise the interim report together with the Commission and draft the final report till the end of November 2023. This final report is expected to be published in January 2024.

According to the European Commission, the review of WEEE Directive would possibly come at the end of 2026 at the earliest. Nevertheless, the timeline that the European Parliament has set on the draft report of ENVI adapting the current framework to case C181/201 is at the latest the end of 2025, so it is still an open discussion.

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Topics under negotiation

After the Council adopted its general approach on 22 May and the Parliament adopted its report on 12 July, the co-legislators entered trilogue negotiations on the file. The first meeting took place on 30 August, and the second was postponed from 10 October to 30 November.

What has been reported so far is that the negotiations are progressing well, and the main contentious points are:

• the obligations of online markets,
• the role of market surveillance in controlling harmonised standards, and
• the centralised vs de-centralised concept of the Digital Product Passport.

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Short summary

On 24 October 2024, the public consultation on the draft implementing regulation laying down operational details for the EPREL product database was opened on the “Have Your Say” webpage.

This initiative aims to set requirements for the functioning of the European Product Registry for Energy Labelling (EPREL) system, managing the product database for products covered by the Labelling Regulation (EU) 2017/1369, in particular related to:

• Electronic verification process of suppliers and conditions for registering products in the database
• Format of the information to be entered in the database
• Nature of complementary content to describe product models

Verification

Only suppliers having successfully completed the verification process may register product models in EPREL and perform any modification relating to existing ones. Legal entities shall submit evidence of their identity and of their establishment within the Union, by means of a qualified electronic seal supported by a certificate for electronic seal, while natural persons shall submit evidence of their identity by means of a qualified electronic signature.

Unverified suppliers

Models registered in EPREL by entities still not verified at the date of application shall be considered as not legally placed on the Union market and shall not be listed in the public EPREL system.

Positions and actions

Interested Members are invited to assess the draft text and provide their feedback to the Commission. ProdBIM, in the person of Ms Sandrine Marinhas, will also assess the document to develop feedback on behalf of Eurovent, members are therefore invited to share their views through the Eurovent Secretariat.

Timeline

The draft Regulation is open for feedbacks for 4 weeks, until 21 November 2023.

Additional resources

• Draft Act
• Have Your Say webpage

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Short summary

The European Commission has commissioned an Ecodesign preparatory study for product specific measures on scarce, environmentally relevant and critical raw materials and on recycled content.
The study is carried out by VITO, Viegand Maagøe, VHK and Fraunhofer ISI for the European Commission, DG GROW.

The main exchange platform between the study team, the Commission, and the stakeholders is on the study website www.ecodesignmaterials.eu. All public documents prepared as part of the study will be made available through this website. Three stakeholder meetings are expected to be held during the course of the study.

The purpose of this initiative is to conduct an Ecodesign preparatory study on potential product-specific requirements on recycled content and on scarce, environmentally relevant and critical raw materials, and to propose possible implementing measures under the Ecodesign and Energy Labelling Regulatory Framework.

The specific study objective includes:

• Investigating in detail, the materials and the products that could be subject to these requirements
• Investigating the technical, economic, environmental, market and societal impacts of these potential requirements; and
• Providing the elements needed for the identification of policy options in the subsequent impact assessment.

If on the basis of the study findings, the Commission finds it appropriate to develop an implementing measure under the Ecodesign Directive and/or the Energy Labelling Regulation, working documents will be drafted.

First stakeholder meeting

The first online meeting is scheduled for 19 October 2023 10:00-12:30. Registration for this meeting is available on https://www.ecodesignmaterials.eu/meetings.

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Short summary

This event is jointly organized by the German Environment Agency (UBA) and GIZ Proklima on behalf of the German Federal Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation, Nuclear Safety and Consumer Protection (BMUV) and the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ).

Green Cooling Summit 2023

The Green Cooling Summit 2023 will feature a diverse range of experts from industry, academia, and government who will share their insights and experiences on how to promote Green Cooling solutions along the cold chain. Green Cooling refers to the combination of natural refrigerants that harm neither the ozone layer nor the climate and highly energy-efficient systems that are ideally powered by electricity from renewable energy sources. From net-zero emission solutions for transport refrigeration to smart stationary refrigeration solutions, the latest technologies and best practices that can help making the cold chain more sustainable and climate-friendly will be explored.

Registration and agenda

Members interested in the participation can register here. A detailed agenda of the 2-days event is available at the same link.

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Ecobalyse

Ecobalyse is an ecolabel currently under development in France. It serves to give consumers information about the environmental impacts of products.

The first product priorities are textiles and food. The calculation methodology for the environmental impact scoring of those products should be ready by the end of 2023.

Product Environmental Footprint (PEF) methodology

The scheme seems at least partly based on the EU’s PEF methodology. The scheme for textiles references the PEF Category Rules (PEFCR) for Apparel & Footwear. PEF is also referenced in the methodology for food products. The product’s PEF score is listed among the environmental indicators to be shared with consumers for both food and textiles.

It is not clear on first analysis to what extent the PEF rules have been changed or supplemented to fit the French scheme.

EU Ecodesign rules for sustainable products

The French scheme clearly anticipates the EU’s Ecodesign for Sustainable Products Regulation (ESPR) and the Digital Product Passport (DPP). The ESPR should allow the development of requirements to make products more sustainable and share environmental impacts of products with consumers through the DPP. Textiles have also been identified as one of the products priorities for the ESPR. It is reasonable to expect the French authorities to advocate for the use of Ecobalyse as a blueprint for ESPR and DPP requirements.

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Background on the CRM Act

The European Commission published its proposal for a Critical Raw Materials Act on 20 March 2023. It includes new requirements for cooling generators, heat pumps and electric motors (and products containing electric motors).

In short, Articles 27 and 28 stipulate that products that contain permanent magnets must bear a label with a data carrier that specifies the type of magnets in the product, where they are located in the product, and how to remove them.

More information can be found in GEN – 1484 and GEN – 1487. The full Commission proposal and its annexes can be found here.

ITRE report

The ITRE report is dated 7 September 2023. It outlines the ITRE position (i.e., proposed changes to the legal text) on the CRM Act. It is accessible here.

The ITRE report proposes only minor amendments to Articles 27 and 28 which affect HVACR products (see below), including some safeguards for commercially sensitive information.

Additional resources

The ITRE report will be proposed to the full Parliament (the Plenary) for adoption on 2 October 2023. Note that the report can still be amended during the Plenary vote.

The text adopted by the Plenary on 2 October (as amended) will be the Parliament’s negotiating position with the other institutions (Commission and Council).

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Background

The European Commission published a legislative proposal for a Packaging and Packaging Waste Regulation on 30 November 2022. This Regulation would have the effect of repealing and replacing the 1994 Packaging and Packaging Waste Directive and should prevent fragmentation of packaging rules across the EU to protect the Single Market. It also aims to increase the use of recyclable and reusable packaging, and packaging made with recycled materials.

ENVI report under development

The leading Committee on the Environment, Public Health and Food Safety (ENVI) published the rapporteur’s draft report on 11 April 203 and the draft amendments have since followed. These are available here.

ITRE opinion published

The ITRE committee has adopted and published its opinion on 19 July 2023. It is available here.

The rapporteur for opinion has emphasised the need to prevent Member States from setting additional packaging labelling requirements, to further specify the delegation of powers to the Commission, to provide more clarity on lead times and the applicability of requirements, and overall to leave more flexibility to businesses.

Next steps

The lead ENVI Committee is scheduled to vote on the final report on 20 September 2023. The indicative Plenary sitting date for adoption of the Parliament’s negotiating position is 2 October 2023. The Council is working on its negotiating position, which is expected before the end of 2023.

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Background

The European Commission published its proposal for a CRM Act on 20 March 2023. It aims to make EU’s supply of critical raw materials more resilient and includes new proposed requirements for cooling generators, heat pumps and electric motors – and products containing those as components.

Requirements for HVACR products in Articles 27 and 28

According to articles 27 and 28, companies that place on the market the products above, including as components, must provide information on whether or not the product integrates permanent magnets, including how many, which type, their weight and chemical composition, their location within the product, the type of coatings, glues and additives used for the magnet, and information enabling access and removal.

ITRE draft report

The lead committee in the European Parliament is the ITRE committee and its rapporteur published her draft report on 15 May – committee amendments were published on 26 May. These documents can be retrieved here.

The rapporteur did not suggest any amendments to articles 27 or 28 in her draft report. Other committee members tabled some amendments to articles 27 and 28, which mostly deal with protecting business-sensitive information and moving up the entry into force of certain requirements in article 28 to an earlier date (2025 instead of 2030).

ENVI opinion

The ENVI committee was appointed as opinion-giving committee. Its final opinion was adopted and published on 19 July 2023 here. The ENVI opinion proposes to move up the entry into application of the requirements in article 27 from 3 years after publication to 2 years after publication, and to create an exemption for products equivalently regulated under the ESPR to avoid double-regulation.

Next steps

The ITRE Committee is scheduled to vote on the file on 7 September 2023. The indicative plenary sitting date for adoption of the Parliament’s negotiating position is 2 October 2023.

The Council has not yet adopted its negotiating position.

After the Parliament and Council have adopted their positions, the interinstitutional negotiations will start.

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