Consistent with the European Union's ("EU") increasingly strict environmental controls and the prohibition of hazardous materials in products made and sold in the EU, the so-called End of Life Vehicles Directive (2000/53/EC) was adopted by the EU recently to address pollution resulting from vehicles that have reached the end of their useful life, also known as End of Life Vehicles (ELV). This ELV Directive, which requires national member state legislation, imposes increasingly strict and broad based controls on the manufacture and disposal of motor vehicles. It should be of particular interest to both vehicle manufacturers and parts suppliers selling into the EU.

The ELV Directive establishes mandatory requirements for the 25 EU Member States to adopt legislation to encourage re-use, recycling and other forms of recovery of ELVs and their components and to ban certain hazardous substances. Approximately 25 percent of each ELV currently goes into landfills. The ultimate goal is to reduce this to a maximum of 5 percent by 2015.

To achieve this, the legislation places both organizational and financial responsibility for the collection and treatment of ELVs on vehicle manufacturers and certain others. A key requirement of the ELV Directive is the so-called "free-take-back" of ELVs, ensuring that the last owner of the vehicle bears no cost for the return of the motor vehicle to a treatment facility even though the value of the vehicle is negative. Manufacturers must cover all, or a significant part of, the cost of applying these measures.

In addition, the ELV Directive prohibits the use of lead, mercury, cadmium and hexavalent chromium in materials and components in vehicles put on the market after 1 July 2003.

Main requirements of the ELV Directive

The Directive’s requires Member States to enact legislation:

  • banning the use of substances hazardous to the environment in new vehicles;
  • increasing the percentage of required recyclable material;
  • insuring that ELVs are scrapped by authorized treatment facilities, which themselves must meet tightened environmental standards;
  • imposing certification requirements to insure destruction for scrapped vehicles; and
  • mandating a "free-take-back" of ELVs from the last owner of the vehicle.

Waste prevention is the priority objective of the Directive. To this end, it stipulates that vehicle manufacturers and material and equipment manufacturers must limit the use of hazardous substances when designing vehicles, design vehicles for easy recycling and increase the use of recycled materials used in the manufacture of their vehicle. Generally, they must ensure that components of vehicles sold after 1 July 2003 do not contain mercury, hexavalent chromium, cadmium or lead.

The Directive requires the establishment of collection systems for end-of-life vehicles and for waste used parts. The system must ensure that all vehicles are transferred to authorized treatment facilities, and that they are de-registered following transfer to a treatment facility.

The last holder of an end-of-life vehicle will be able to dispose of it free of charge. In this regard, the ELV Directive mandates "free take-back" principle pursuant to which the producers must bear all cost of the vehicle's being "taken back." (1) Exemptions from the heavy metal ban . Annex II of the ELV Directive

Initially, at the time of adoption of the ELV Directive in 2000, Annex II contained a list of exemptions from the heavy metal ban for 13 materials and components with the hazardous substances mercury, lead, cadmium or hexavalent chromium. These materials and components were exempted from the heavy metals ban of Article 4(2)(a) either generally or up to a certain concentration or absolute mass limit. Annex II further mentioned five applications, which were to be examined by the European Commission as a matter of priority, three of which refer to potential additions to the list of exemptions and two of them to potential deletions.

In general terms, under Article 4(2)(b) the Commission is required to amend Annex II on regular basis according to technical and scientific progress in order to:

  • exempt materials and components from the heavy metals ban if the use of lead, mercury, cadmium or hexavalent chromium in those materials or components is unavoidable ; and
  • delete from the list of exemptions those materials and components in which the use of those substances is avoidable.

In 2002, the European Commission adopted a Decision 2002/525/EC1 amending the list of exemptions of Annex II for the first time. This Commission Decision introduces some exemptions for certain materials and components or maintains some existing ones, since the use of hazardous substances in those specific materials and components is still unavoidable.

Moreover, the Commission Decision establishes maximum concentration values of the hazardous substances, which will be tolerated, provided that these substances are not intentionally introduced.

The European Commission is currently working on a review of the scheduled phase-out date of certain entries of Annex II and it launched in January of this year a consultation of interested parties.2 The Commission is expected to finalize and make public its findings by 31 December 2004 at the latest.

To summarize, the ELV time line is as follows:

BY JULY 1st 2002

  • Cost free take back by economic operators of all new vehicles put on the market as from this date

FROM JULY 1st 2003

  • Ban on the use of lead, mercury, cadmium & hexavalent chromium in new cars other than in cases listed in Annex II

BY JANUARY 1st 2006

  • 85% of a vehicle's weight shall be recovered and at least 80% recycled.

Note: Member States may use a lower target of 75% for recovery and 70% for recycling by average weight per vehicle and year for vehicles produced before 1 January 1980.

FROM JANUARY 1st 2007

  • Free take back by car manufacturers from last owner for all ELV’s.

BY JANUARY 1st 2015

  • 95% of a vehicle's weight shall be recovered and at least 85% recycled.

Implementation of the ELV Directive

The ELV Directive does not set common EU-wide standards and systems for ELV collection and treatment but leaves it to Member States to define how the prescriptions of the ELV legislation should be implemented in their territory.

The ELV Directive was due to be transposed into national law in all Member States by 21 April 2002. But most Member States missed the deadline.

After the Commission referred these countries to the European Court of Justice to invite them to act quickly to implement the Community provisions, most of the EU Member States have now transposed the European Directive into national law.

The regulatory options chosen by Member States to implement the ELV Directive vary a great deal from country to country. Some countries have even chosen to go beyond the ELV Directive's requirements in terms of targets or deadlines (i.e. Germany, The Netherlands).

Therefore, to comply with the ELV provisions, any economic operator involved in the ELV chain shall closely review the national implementing measures of the country where he is located.

Footnotes

1 Commission Decision of 27 June 2002 amending Annex II of Directive 2000/53/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council on end-of-life vehicles, OJ L 170/81 of 29.6.2002

2 For further information about the stakeholder consultation on the preparations of a revision of certain entries of Annex II of Directive 2000/53/EC on end-of-life vehicles, see the DG Environment website at http://europa.eu.int/comm/environment/waste/elv_index.htm

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