When you are eye is focused on the big-picture legislative agenda, you are going to miss the important files.
For years I’ve always been a small minority in thinking that the eco-design legislation would have a profound impact.
If you are a regulator, it has big advantages. If you get a measure on the agenda, tabled for a measure, and adopted, there is little that anyone can do about it. To block a delegated act is tough – 20 Member States or 353 MEPs. You no longer have to go through the time-consuming ordinary legislative process to get what you want. Here governments and MEPs can, and sometimes do remove pet policy asks added by officials/ member states.
But soon, we are going to open up the ability to introduce design changes for a broader group of products. How about requiring all fishing nets to be ‘environmentally sustainable’, so that when lost at sea, they don’t cause harm to marine life? You now have a more straightforward and faster legal instrument to get the design changes needed in place and mandatory on to the market places. The still to be agreed on proposal Ecodesign for Sustainable Products opens up the doors.
The options for action are almost limitless in the hands of creative policy entrepreneurs.
Here is the initial list of products.
| End-use products: Textiles and Footwear; Furniture; Ceramic Products; Tyres; Detergents; Bed Mattresses; Lubricants; Paints and Varnishes; Cosmetic Products; Toys; Fishing Nets and Gears; Absorbent Hygiene Products;
Intermediary products: Iron and Steel; Non-Ferrous Metals; Aluminium; Chemicals; Plastic and Polymers; Paper, Pulp Paper and Boards; Glass; Horizontal measures: Durability; Recyclability; Post-Consumer Recycled Content. (For each horizontal measure, potential provisions via which they could be applied are put forward.) |
If you want to bring your ideas to the table, you have until 25 April 2023 to make your input (see link)