End-of-life vehicles

KEY POINTS

• Vehicle and equipment manufacturers must factor in the dismantling, reuse and recovery of the vehicles when designing and producing their products. They have to ensure that new vehicles are:
  • reusable and/or recyclable to a minimum of 85% by weight per vehicle
  • reusable and/or recoverable to a minimum of 95% by weight per vehicle.
• They cannot use hazardous substances such as lead, mercury, cadmium and hexavalent chromium.
• Manufacturers, importers and distributors must provide systems to collect ELVs and, where technically feasible, used parts from repaired passenger cars.
• Owners of ELVs delivered for waste treatment must receive a certificate of destruction. This is necessary to deregister the vehicle.
• Manufacturers must meet all, or a significant part, of the costs involved in the delivery of an ELV to a waste treatment facility. For a vehicle owner, they should incur no expenses when delivering an ELV to an authorised waste treatment facility, except in the rare cases where the engine is missing or the ELV is full of waste.
• Waste treatment facilities must apply for a permit or register with the competent authorities of the EU country where they are located.
• ELVs are first stripped before further treatment takes place. Hazardous substances and components are removed and separated. Attention is given to the potential reuse, recovery or recycling of the waste.
• Clear quantified targets for annual reporting to the European Commission exist for the reuse, recycling and recovery of ELVs and their respective parts. These have become increasingly more demanding.
• This legislation applies to passenger vehicles and small trucks but not to big trucks, vintage vehicles, special-use vehicles and motorcycles.

Amending Directive (EU) 2018/849

Directive (EU) 2018/849 amends Directive 2000/53/EC giving the Commission the power to adopt:

• implementing acts concerning the detailed rules necessary to control EU countries’ compliance with the ELV targets and the exports and imports of ELVs;
• delegated acts to supplement the directive by:
  • exempting certain materials and components containing lead, mercury, cadmium or hexavalent chromium (other than in cases listed in Annex II), if their use is unavoidable and establishing maximum concentration levels allowed as well as deleting materials and components of vehicles from Annex II, if their use is avoidable,
  • introducing coding standards to facilitate the components suitable for reuse and recovery,
  • establishing the minimum requirements for the certificates of destruction,
  • establishing minimum requirements for the treatment of ELVs (Annex I).