Keywords
Summary

Keywords

1 Environment - Waste - Directive 75/442, as amended by Directive 91/156, and Regulation No 259/93 - Waste for recovery - Principles of self-sufficiency and proximity - Inapplicable - Application by means of Article 130t of the Treaty - Not permissible in the case of unjustified barriers to exports

(EC Treaty, Arts 36, 130s and 130t; Council Regulation No 259/93; Council Directive 75/442, as amended by Directive 91/156)

2 Competition - Public undertakings and undertakings on which Member States confer special or exclusive rights - National legislation requiring delivery of certain waste for recovery to a national undertaking with a monopoly in the incineration of dangerous waste - Obligation having the effect of increasing the dominant position of the national undertaking - Not permissible

(EC Treaty, Arts 86 and 90)

Summary

3 Directive 75/442 on waste, as amended by Directive 91/156, and Regulation No 259/93 on the supervision and control of shipments of waste within, into and out of the European Community cannot be interpreted as meaning that the principles of self-sufficiency and proximity are applicable to shipments of waste for recovery. That follows from the provisions of the directive and the regulation and from the preparatory texts. Furthermore, the difference in treatment between waste for recovery and waste for disposal reflects the intention of the Community legislature to encourage recovery of waste in the Community as whole, in particular by eliciting the best technologies, which means that waste of that type should be able to move freely between Member States for processing, thus excluding the application of the principles of self-sufficiency and proximity.

Article 130t of the Treaty, which authorises Member States to adopt protective measures which are more stringent than those adopted pursuant to Article 130s, in so far as they are compatible with the Treaty, does not permit them to extend the application of those principles to waste for recovery when it is clear that those principles create a barrier to exports which is not justified either by an imperative measure relating to protection of the environment or by one of the derogations provided for by Article 36 of the Treaty.

4 Article 90 of the Treaty, in conjunction with Article 86, precludes rules such as the Netherlands' Long-term Plan for the Disposal of Dangerous Waste of June 1993, whereby a Member State requires undertakings to deliver their waste for recovery, such as oil filters, to a national undertaking on which it has conferred the exclusive right to incinerate dangerous waste unless the processing of their waste in another Member State is of a higher quality than that performed by that undertaking if, without any objective justification and without being necessary for the performance of a task in the general interest, those rules have the effect of favouring the national undertaking and increasing its dominant position.