Reference metadata describe statistical concepts and methodologies used for the collection and generation of data. They provide information on data quality and, since they are strongly content-oriented, assist users in interpreting the data. Reference metadata, unlike structural metadata, can be decoupled from the data.
Eurostat, the statistical office of the European Union
1.2. Contact organisation unit
E2: Environmental statistics and accounts; sustainable development
1.3. Contact name
Restricted from publication
1.4. Contact person function
Restricted from publication
1.5. Contact mail address
2920 Luxembourg LUXEMBOURG
1.6. Contact email address
Restricted from publication
1.7. Contact phone number
Restricted from publication
1.8. Contact fax number
Restricted from publication
2.1. Metadata last certified
16 October 2024
2.2. Metadata last posted
16 October 2024
2.3. Metadata last update
16 October 2024
3.1. Data description
The European Union (EU) has a system to supervise and control shipments of waste within its borders and with the countries of the European Free Trade Association (EFTA), the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and non-EU countries that have signed the Basel Convention.
In the EU, the regulatory framework for transboundary shipments of waste is Regulation 1013/2006 on shipments of waste, commonly referred to as the Waste Shipment Regulation (WShipR).The Regulation implements the Basel Convention and its ban on exporting hazardous waste from OECD countries to non-OECD countries, since these countries do not have proper and sufficient waste treatment capacity. The Regulation also implements the OECD-Council Decision on the control of transboundary shipments of waste. The OECD countries have developed a system for the notification of waste destined for recovery in the OECD countries. The WShipR also sets some additional requirements for transboundary shipments within and out of the EU.
A planned shipment subject to the procedure of prior notification and consent may take place only after the notification and movement documents have been completed. According to the WShipR, all wastes for disposal operations and for recovery operations, all hazardous waste as well as some problematic waste streams and other wastes defined by the WShipR, must be notified to the authorities before it is allowed to be transboundary shipped. The notification document is described in Annex IA of the WShipR. Typically the notification document covers the whole intended amount for shipment (block 5 of the notification document). This intended amount is not necessarily the same amount as the actual quantity shipped and received at the disposal or recovery facility, which is reported to the authorities according to the so called movement document described in Annex IB of the WShipR (block 18 and 19 of the movement document).
The notification and movement documents shall include the codes that identify the waste type according to Annex III, IIIA, IIIB, IV or IVA of the WShipR. That is to say in practice mainly the codes applied by the Basel convention, additional codes according to OECD-Council Decision and the European list of waste. Furthermore the notification and movement documents shall include information about hazardous characteristics (so called H-code and UN-class), the disposal and recovery operation code.
Based on the above mentioned notification and movement documents Member States report to the EU on the basis of Article 51 of the WShipR. Article 51 point 2 requires Member States to send to the Commission before the end of each calendar year a copy of the report for the previous year in accordance with Article 13(3) of the Basel Convention, which is submitted to the Secretariat of that Convention. The report consists of three parts: Part I, Part IIA and Part IIB. Part IIA of the Basel report includes three tables Table 4 (export), Table 5(export), Table 6 (Total amount of hazardous waste and other wastes generated).
Moreover, Member States shall also submit a report for the previous year based on the questionnaire in Annex IX to the WShipR.
Eurostat manages the quantitative data reporting included by Part IIA, whereas the DG Environment is in charge of managing information received via Part I, Part IIB and Annex IX to the WShipR.
3.2. Classification system
All waste, which has to be notified before dispatch, is to be included by the reporting to EU according to Article 51 of the WShipR. Article 51 (1) includes all hazardous waste and other wastes (Y-46 and Y47) as defined by the Basel Convention and reported to the Basel Secretariat. Article 51 (2) includes other wastes that have according to the WShipR to go through a prior notification procedure. For example, the shipments of certain non-hazardous wastes (green listed wastes) for recovery to certain non-OECD countries have to be notified according to the WShipR. Shipments of green listed waste not requiring notification are excluded from reporting.
The shipments of waste data are broken down by type of waste, hazardous characteristics, treatment type, dispatch and destiny country. The amounts are reported in tonnes. The reporting details are laid down in the same format used by Member ´States for the reporting to the Basel Secretariat (Basel reporting format) and Annex IX of the WShipR 1013/2006/EC.
Regarding the type of shipped waste Member States are requested to report data according to the breakdown laid down in the Basel Convention:
Y-codes
A-codes according to Annex VIII
B-codes according to Annex IX
National code (European List of waste codes)
In addition, Member States have also been requested to report all notifiable waste streams in their Basel reports (not just the hazardous waste), in order to minimize the discrepancies observed between the imported and the exported quantities of waste in the Member States.
3.3. Coverage - sector
All economic sectors active in the transboundary shipment of waste(regulation).
3.4. Statistical concepts and definitions
The notified shipped waste has to be reported according to:
Waste category stated by Basel code according to the Convention’s Annex I, II, VIII or IX if applicable, OECD-code if different from Basel code or European List of Waste code
Hazardous characteristics (H-code and UN-class)
Amount stated in tonne
Country/countries of transit stated by ISO-code
Country of destination or country of origin stated by ISO-code
Final disposal operation stated by each of the individual disposal codes D1 to D15.
Final recovery operation R1 to R13 stated by each of the individual recovery codes R1 to R13
In the database the reported data are presented in the following way:
'Partner' shows the country of destination or country of origin. The label 'WRL_NAL' covers instances where information about the country of destination or country of origin is missing, or instances where more than one country of destination or origin are reported.
'Hazardousness of waste' stated either as 'Hazardous waste' or as 'Total waste', which includes all notified waste and not only hazardous waste;
'Geo' states the reporting country;
'WST OPER' states how the waste is treated. It is possible to choose between 'Total waste treatment, 'Disposal' (total amount of shipped waste for disposal (D1-D15), 'Recovery' (total amount of shipped waste for recovery (R1-R13) or 'Waste operation R and D not allocated'. The last category covers wastes, where a mixture of disposal and recovery codes have been reported or no code has been reported;
'Stock or flow' states whether the waste is exported or imported,
'Unit' states the shipped amount of waste in tonne.
3.5. Statistical unit
The statistical unit is the reporting company or institution. Statistical unit may vary across reporting countries. Reporting units might be: producers, importers, exporters, enterprises, local units or establishments active in the transboundary shipment of waste.
3.6. Statistical population
All notified waste registered under Block 18 and Block 19 of the Movement document for transboundary shipments of waste according to the WShipR. That is to say the amount actually received at the disposal or recovery facilities. Amounts are reported according to the year arriving at the facility pursuant to Article 16(d) of the the WShipR.
3.7. Reference area
EU Member States and EU aggregates; the reported amounts are linked to each of the partner countries, where the waste is exported to or imported from.
The partner countries are presented as:
EU Member States;
EU aggregate;
Each of the non-EU countries;
Total of OECD countries;
Total of all countries
3.8. Coverage - Time
Data in the database are presented from 2010 onwards whereas data on shipments of waste from 2001 onwards is shown in the excel file 'Data on waste shipments, all available years' published on the dedicated website on waste statistics: Information on data - Eurostat (europa.eu).
3.9. Base period
Not applicable.
Tonnes.
The reference period is the calendar year.
6.1. Institutional Mandate - legal acts and other agreements
European Parliament and Council Regulation 1013/2006/EC of 14 June 2006 on shipments of waste (consolidated version of 26 May 2014).
International law on waste shipments:
Basel Convention > The Convention > Overview: Basel Convention on the Control of Transboundary Movements of Hazardous Wastes and Their Disposal - adopted 1989, with later amendments.
OECD Decision C(2001)107/ (as amended by C(2004)20, unofficial consolidated text) - applies to shipments of green-listed wastes for recovery.
There is no data sharing with other international organisations; international organisations can use the data as published in the dissemination database.
7.1. Confidentiality - policy
Regulation (EC) No 223/2009 on European statistics (recital 24 and Article 20(4)) of 11 March 2009 (OJ L 87, p. 164), stipulates the need to establish common principles and guidelines ensuring the confidentiality of data used for the production of European statistics and the access to those confidential data with due account for technical developments and the requirements of users in a democratic society.
7.2. Confidentiality - data treatment
Not applicable, there are no confidential data in this dataset.
8.1. Release calendar
There is no release calendar; data dissemination is explained in item 9 below.
8.2. Release calendar access
See 8.1.
8.3. Release policy - user access
In line with the Union legal framework and the Eurostat disseminates European statistics on Eurostat's website (see item 10 - 'Accessibility and clarity') respecting professional independence and in an objective, professional and transparent manner in which all users are treated equitably. The detailed arrangements are governed by the Eurostat protocol on impartial access to Eurostat data for users.
Data received by 31 of December, 12 months after the end of the reference period (T+12; where T = reference year), will be published 10 months later T+22). The long period before publication is due to the quality checks which imply an intensive dialogue with the Member States.
A ‘zipped' file containing an Excel xlsx file with data on very detailed level to be used only with Excel versions able to read xlsx files can be found Information on data - Eurostat (europa.eu)
Details on the reporting intervals, definitions and breakdown of data can be found in the Regulation 1013/2006/EC of 14 June 2006 on shipments of waste (consolidated version of 26 May 2014).
The original data collection is made by the Member States, while Eurostat collects and checks the assembled country compilations. The quality assurance and documentation of the quality is a joint responsibility of Eurostat and the Member States.
The validation routines at Eurostat include checks related to consistency, plausibility, development over time and observations are discussed with the countries.
A validation report is submitted each year to the European Commission DG Environment, as the responsible body for the monitoring of the implementation of the Waste shipment Regulation
11.2. Quality management - assessment
Overall data are of good quality. Data are collected from reliable sources applying high standards.
12.1. Relevance - User Needs
Data is collected for the monitoring of the shipment of waste according to the Regulation 1013/2006/EC of 14 June 2006 on shipments of waste.
12.2. Relevance - User Satisfaction
No systematic user satisfaction survey has been conducted. User satisfaction is discussed with the main user from the European Commission.
12.3. Completeness
Reporting is mandatory, the data sets are of a high level of completeness.
13.1. Accuracy - overall
See 10.7 and 11.1.
13.2. Sampling error
Not applicable.
13.3. Non-sampling error
Not applicable.
14.1. Timeliness
Data has to be submitted 12 months after the reference period (T+12). The delay between the reference period and the data publication is about 22 months (T+22).
14.2. Punctuality
Data has to be submitted 12 months after the reference period. Most countries do respect this deadline, some countries deliver with a small delay. In a few cases the delay is more than 4 months.
15.1. Comparability - geographical
Not applicable.
15.2. Comparability - over time
Reporting is mandatory, comparability over time is fairly high.
15.3. Coherence - cross domain
Not applicable.
15.4. Coherence - internal
Internal coherence is ensured by Eurostat thus aggregates are coherent with sub-aggregates.
Every year Eurostat publishes the complete time series, which may lead to revisions of data previously published. Data are revised once in between annual releases.
17.2. Data revision - practice
Every year the questionnaire requests data for a given reference year. If data are revised by countries, it is done for the reference year.
Reported errors are assessed for seriousness to determine whether they should trigger a correction of already disseminated data. Reported errors may be corrected in the disseminated data but are usually revised once in between annual releases.
18.1. Source data
The notification approach is very detailed prescribed in the European Parliament and Council Regulation 1013/2006/EC of 14 June 2006 on shipments of waste. The reported data are therefore collected from the same sources. However, in some Member States the regional authorities and not one single authority are in charge of the administration of the shipment procedures. In these cases the data are reported from the regional authorities to the Federal authority, which then submits the data to Eurostat.
18.2. Frequency of data collection
Annual.
18.3. Data collection
Data collection is done by Member States, by either the Ministry of Environment or Environmental Protection Agencies.
The eDAMIS workflow for Shipment of waste data is: WASTE_BASEL1_A; WASTE_BASEL2A_A, WASTE-BASEL2B_A; WASTE_EUQUEST_A
18.4. Data validation
Data validation is done by Eurostat in close cooperation with Member States' competent Authorities.
Analysis of the data is performed and in case of outliers or breaks in series clarification requests are sent to the Member States.
A special data validation is carried out by checking the consistency in what export and import Member States are reporting. The quantities reported by Member State A as import from Member State B should correspond to the respective export reported by Member State B. A significant difference in the reported quantities indicates that a reporting error might have happened at some point during the waste shipment registration.
18.5. Data compilation
Not applicable
18.6. Adjustment
Not applicable.
No further comments.
The European Union (EU) has a system to supervise and control shipments of waste within its borders and with the countries of the European Free Trade Association (EFTA), the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and non-EU countries that have signed the Basel Convention.
In the EU, the regulatory framework for transboundary shipments of waste is Regulation 1013/2006 on shipments of waste, commonly referred to as the Waste Shipment Regulation (WShipR).The Regulation implements the Basel Convention and its ban on exporting hazardous waste from OECD countries to non-OECD countries, since these countries do not have proper and sufficient waste treatment capacity. The Regulation also implements the OECD-Council Decision on the control of transboundary shipments of waste. The OECD countries have developed a system for the notification of waste destined for recovery in the OECD countries. The WShipR also sets some additional requirements for transboundary shipments within and out of the EU.
A planned shipment subject to the procedure of prior notification and consent may take place only after the notification and movement documents have been completed. According to the WShipR, all wastes for disposal operations and for recovery operations, all hazardous waste as well as some problematic waste streams and other wastes defined by the WShipR, must be notified to the authorities before it is allowed to be transboundary shipped. The notification document is described in Annex IA of the WShipR. Typically the notification document covers the whole intended amount for shipment (block 5 of the notification document). This intended amount is not necessarily the same amount as the actual quantity shipped and received at the disposal or recovery facility, which is reported to the authorities according to the so called movement document described in Annex IB of the WShipR (block 18 and 19 of the movement document).
The notification and movement documents shall include the codes that identify the waste type according to Annex III, IIIA, IIIB, IV or IVA of the WShipR. That is to say in practice mainly the codes applied by the Basel convention, additional codes according to OECD-Council Decision and the European list of waste. Furthermore the notification and movement documents shall include information about hazardous characteristics (so called H-code and UN-class), the disposal and recovery operation code.
Based on the above mentioned notification and movement documents Member States report to the EU on the basis of Article 51 of the WShipR. Article 51 point 2 requires Member States to send to the Commission before the end of each calendar year a copy of the report for the previous year in accordance with Article 13(3) of the Basel Convention, which is submitted to the Secretariat of that Convention. The report consists of three parts: Part I, Part IIA and Part IIB. Part IIA of the Basel report includes three tables Table 4 (export), Table 5(export), Table 6 (Total amount of hazardous waste and other wastes generated).
Moreover, Member States shall also submit a report for the previous year based on the questionnaire in Annex IX to the WShipR.
Eurostat manages the quantitative data reporting included by Part IIA, whereas the DG Environment is in charge of managing information received via Part I, Part IIB and Annex IX to the WShipR.
16 October 2024
The notified shipped waste has to be reported according to:
Waste category stated by Basel code according to the Convention’s Annex I, II, VIII or IX if applicable, OECD-code if different from Basel code or European List of Waste code
Hazardous characteristics (H-code and UN-class)
Amount stated in tonne
Country/countries of transit stated by ISO-code
Country of destination or country of origin stated by ISO-code
Final disposal operation stated by each of the individual disposal codes D1 to D15.
Final recovery operation R1 to R13 stated by each of the individual recovery codes R1 to R13
In the database the reported data are presented in the following way:
'Partner' shows the country of destination or country of origin. The label 'WRL_NAL' covers instances where information about the country of destination or country of origin is missing, or instances where more than one country of destination or origin are reported.
'Hazardousness of waste' stated either as 'Hazardous waste' or as 'Total waste', which includes all notified waste and not only hazardous waste;
'Geo' states the reporting country;
'WST OPER' states how the waste is treated. It is possible to choose between 'Total waste treatment, 'Disposal' (total amount of shipped waste for disposal (D1-D15), 'Recovery' (total amount of shipped waste for recovery (R1-R13) or 'Waste operation R and D not allocated'. The last category covers wastes, where a mixture of disposal and recovery codes have been reported or no code has been reported;
'Stock or flow' states whether the waste is exported or imported,
'Unit' states the shipped amount of waste in tonne.
The statistical unit is the reporting company or institution. Statistical unit may vary across reporting countries. Reporting units might be: producers, importers, exporters, enterprises, local units or establishments active in the transboundary shipment of waste.
All notified waste registered under Block 18 and Block 19 of the Movement document for transboundary shipments of waste according to the WShipR. That is to say the amount actually received at the disposal or recovery facilities. Amounts are reported according to the year arriving at the facility pursuant to Article 16(d) of the the WShipR.
EU Member States and EU aggregates; the reported amounts are linked to each of the partner countries, where the waste is exported to or imported from.
The partner countries are presented as:
EU Member States;
EU aggregate;
Each of the non-EU countries;
Total of OECD countries;
Total of all countries
The reference period is the calendar year.
See 10.7 and 11.1.
Tonnes.
Not applicable
The notification approach is very detailed prescribed in the European Parliament and Council Regulation 1013/2006/EC of 14 June 2006 on shipments of waste. The reported data are therefore collected from the same sources. However, in some Member States the regional authorities and not one single authority are in charge of the administration of the shipment procedures. In these cases the data are reported from the regional authorities to the Federal authority, which then submits the data to Eurostat.
Data received by 31 of December, 12 months after the end of the reference period (T+12; where T = reference year), will be published 10 months later T+22). The long period before publication is due to the quality checks which imply an intensive dialogue with the Member States.
Data has to be submitted 12 months after the reference period (T+12). The delay between the reference period and the data publication is about 22 months (T+22).
Not applicable.
Reporting is mandatory, comparability over time is fairly high.
