Wallström forced to delay integrated product plan

Date: 29/06/2000

By Gareth Harding

The European Commission's long-awaited paper on its plans for an integrated product policy (IPP) has been delayed until the autumn because of staff changes and ongoing squabbles between the institution's environment and enterprise departments.

Following a pioneering seminar in December 1988, the Commission promised to draw up a Green Paper outlining its initial thoughts on the issue by last autumn. After this deadline came and went, Environment Commissioner Margot Wallstrom vowed to publish the paper in March. But the difficulties facing the environment directorate-general in drafting the document mean that an even later June target has also been missed.

IPP involves a 'cradle to grave' approach to products by seeking to minimise their potential impact on the environment from the moment they are designed. The Commission hopes this will reduce Europe's growing waste mountain and make it easier to recycle scrapped goods.

Wallstrom wants this approach to be at the heart of the EU's sixth environmental action programme, due to be published in the late autumn. Sweden also plans to make the issue one of the priorities of its Union presidency in the first half of next year.

However, not everyone is happy about the prospect of being told how to manufacture products. The American Chamber of Commerce in Brussels recently wrote to Wallstrom expressing fears that a raft of new IPP laws would erect barriers to innovation and punish some companies more than others.

Industry would prefer product standards to be set by standardisation bodies. This view is increasingly shared by the Commission's enterprise department, which tried to wrestle control of the IPP initiative from the environment directorate-general during discussions on planned new legislation to govern electrical and electronic equipment waste adopted by the full Commission earlier this month.

Before the draft legislation was published, Enterprise Commissioner Erkki Liikanen set out his department's ideas for reducing electrical waste, which rely more on greening the manufacturing process and less on the legally-binding waste reduction targets and substance bans preferred by environment officials.

Christian Hey, of the European Environmental Bureau, says Liikanen's staff "captured the idea and the environment department does not know what to put in its place". Green groups fear the paper will not propose any new legislation but suggest instead relying on existing instruments, such as industry-dominated standardisation bodies, to achieve its goals.

Wallstrom's aides say her paper is unlikely to be as controversial as recent proposals on scrap cars and electrical goods as its aim is to spark discussion, not to lay down laws. They also deny allegations of 'turf wars' between the environment and enterprise departments, blaming the delays on internal staff changes.

The European Commission's long-awaited paper on its plans for an integrated product policy (IPP) has been delayed until autumn 2000 because of staff changes and ongoing squabbles between the institution's environment and enterprise departments.