EU Action Plan for the Circular Economy

Stephen Kinnock Excerpts

Monday 7th March 2016 General Committees

[Stephen Kinnock (Aberavon) (Lab)]

I am better late than never, Mr Stringer. It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship.

It might be helpful to the Committee if I take a few minutes to explain the background to the documents and the reasons why the European Scrutiny Committee recommended them for debate. The Commission has long attached considerable importance to the more efficient use of resources within the European Union, and in July 2014 produced a communication on a zero-waste programme. That has now been superseded by a further communication setting out an action plan for the circular economy.

The action plan focuses on steps that can be taken at the EU level, including the design of products, consumer choice, waste management and the reuse of raw material. It also considers in more detail certain priority areas. The plan is accompanied by a number of proposed directives, set out in the other documents before us today, which would amend existing EU legislation on waste disposal, as well as on landfill, packaging and packaging waste, end-of-life vehicles, waste batteries and waste electrical equipment. Those include more stringent recycling targets and restrictions on the quantities of waste sent to landfill.

The Government note that many of the measures identified are already being taken forward by the EU and the member states and they stress the importance of any new legislation complementing, rather than duplicating, measures taken by individual member states. The Government have welcomed the broad direction of the action plan, which they see as adopting a more joined-up approach than that in the 2014 communication, but say that the likely costs, although difficult to assess, could be considerable and have an impact on a wide range of interests, including individual households. In addition, the Government have expressed a couple of subsidiarity concerns regarding provisions of the waste framework proposal relating to extended producer responsibility or “pay as you throw”, although the European Scrutiny Committee found that such concerns had not been set out fully.

The European Scrutiny Committee noted that the proposals are wide ranging and raise a number of important issues relating to their practicality and affordability, as well as to subsidiarity. It considered that today’s Committee would be a timely opportunity for the House to address that. It therefore recommended the documents for debate in European Committee A.