Waste

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Stakeholder consultation on

Adaptation to scientific and technical progress under Directive 2002/95/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council on the restriction of the use of certain hazardous substances in electrical and electronic equipment for the purpose of a possible amendment of the annex

1. Introduction

Article 4(1) of Directive 2002/95/EC on the restriction of the use of certain hazardous substances in electrical and electronic equipment ⁽¹⁾ provides ‘that from 1 July 2006, new electrical and electronic equipment put on the market does not contain lead, mercury, cadmium, hexavalent chromium, PBB or PBDE.’ The annex to the Directive lists a limited number of applications of lead, mercury, cadmium and hexavalent chromium, which are exempted from the requirements of Article 4(1).

According to Article 5 (2) of Directive 2002/95/EC the Commission is required to consult the relevant stakeholders before amending the annex. The results of this consultation will be forwarded to the Technical Adaptation Committee of the Directive 2002/95/EC and the Commission services will provide an account of the information received. Although the Commission will analyse the results of this stakeholder consultation carefully, please note that as with all stakeholder consultations, this action is only one part of the decision making process.

Neither the fact that a stakeholder consultation is being launched, nor the results of this stakeholder consultation should be interpreted as a political or legal signal that the Commission intends to take a given action.

2. Proposal for additional exemptions

Article 5(1)(b) of Directive 2002/95/EC provides that materials and components can be exempted from the substance restrictions contained in Article 4(1) if their elimination or substitution via design changes or materials and components which do not require any of the materials or substances referred to therein is technically or scientifically impracticable, or where the negative environmental, health and/or consumer safety impacts caused by substitution outweigh the environmental, health and/or consumer safety benefits thereof.

On the basis of this provision the Commission has received from industry additional requests for applications to be exempted from the requirements of the RoHS Directive.

It should be noted that since the wording for some of the exemptions is not self explanatory, some exemption requests may overlap with exemption requests covered by previous consultations. The Commission services have published the requests as worded by the submitters.

The titles for the exemptions as submitted by industry and the request for exemptions, with the substantiated evidence (available by clicking on the title), are:

4. Consultation of interested parties

In preparation of the decision for the consideration of the items listed above based on Article 5(1) (b), the Commission services would like to consult interested parties.

In particular, stakeholders are requested to provide, for each entry, information on: the current existence of feasible substitutes in an industrial and/or commercial scale; any restrictions that apply to such substitutes; the costs and benefits and advantages and disadvantages of such a substitutes; provide a precise wording for each exemption. Stakeholders are requested to support, as far as possible, their contribution with technical and scientific evidence.

1. Linear incandescent lamp