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The Directive governing our activity is being debated in the ENVI Committee of the European Parliament – the Committee on the Environment, Public Health and Food Safety. 

However, the European Commission's draft was strongly criticized by the associations within the industry and other NGOs, since it transfers all collection and treatment obligations to the producers, although the industry has no means to control these processes. For example, it cannot control parallel circuits of WEEE management, and it cannot force local authorities to return WEEE to the industry's management systems. In addition, the way in which the Commission has come to propose a collection target of 65% of the amount put on the market in the last two years has not been exempt from criticism, since this figure does not take into account all economic and social realities, or even the life of products in EU member states. Furthermore, the diversity elements of mature markets compared to emerging ones were not taken into consideration, therefore establishing an average figure between these two is not realistic.

The draft directive is subject to the co-decision procedure. At the moment it is debated in the European Parliament, according to a provisional schedule that has several stages. The debate of the proposal in the Environment Committee is set for the end of February 2010 and the Committee members will have until mid-March to table amendments. These will be analysed in a further meeting at the beginning of April, so the final version of the draft is supposed to be voted by the Environment Committee in May, and in the plenary in mid-June.