PPWR unpacked - Part 17: Trilogue half-time - What has been achieved so far?

Today, on 5 February 2024, negotiators from the Council and Parliament will meet for the first time to negotiate a compromise on the EU's packaging regulation (PPWR) at political level (known as a trilogue because the Commission is also taking part). Prior to this, experts from both institutions had exchanged views and explored possible compromises in a total of nine meetings at technical level. In parallel, officials from the Member States are meeting to assess the Parliament's proposals and make possible changes to the general approach of 18 December. At present, no one expects an agreement to be reached in the first trilogue, as the PPWR is simply too large and complex, and the positions of Council and Parliament are too far apart on many issues. As a reader of this blog, this is probably not news to you. However, it is news to many experts in the Council and the Parliament, who had previously focused exclusively on their own position. As a result of this realisation, there are increasing indications from negotiating circles that it may not be possible to reach an agreement in the remaining four weeks until 4 March (second and final political trilogue).

There is already a provisional compromise on 691 of the 1,095 individual provisions and recitals in the PPWR. In 80% of the cases, agreement has been reached on the Commission's original proposal, which is always the most straightforward. The Council's position prevailed in 14% of cases, and the Parliament's in only 6%. After the vote in Strasbourg at the end of November, we had already seen that the Parliament's chief negotiator, Belgian MEP Frédérique Ries, was entering the trialogue weakened because she had been unable to assert herself internally on many points, particularly on bans and re-use quotas.

Looking at the compromises reached so far, it quickly becomes clear that agreements have only been reached on the uncontroversial regulations. The 404 regulations that are still open contain all the major points of conflict: For example, in the case of re-use quotas, agreement has so far only been reached on the removal of a re-use quota for wine, with all other regulations still disputed. No agreement has been reached on the equally controversial packaging bans, with the specific bans in Annex V curiously not even appearing in the so-called four-column document.

No agreement has yet been reached on the special rules for plastic packaging and the exemptions for paper and cardboard packaging (in particular in Articles 6, 7, 26, 38 and Annex V), which have been strongly criticised by the plastic packaging industry. Industry representatives had criticised the fact that such material-specific rules are incompatible with the objectives of the PPWR and also violate the principle of equal treatment. There is also still no agreement on the definition of the "recycled at scale" criterion (in Article 3(32)), which will apply as an additional requirement for packaging from 2035. Council and Parliament are also still arguing about the minimum recycled content quotas for plastics in so-called contact-sensitive packaging, e.g. for food, (10% or 7.5%) and the design of the so-called safety net in case of a shortage of recyclate.

There is currently a particularly intense debate about "fair access" to recyclates. The background to the proposal is the recognition that the minimum recycled content quotas, particularly for food packaging, are very high and that their achievement is linked to a number of conditions, for example that, in addition to recycled PET, recyclates made from other plastics are also authorised by the Commission for food contact and that sufficient capacity is available for chemical recycling from 2030. The plastic packaging producers' proposal to achieve more flexibility by pooling different producers was narrowly rejected by the Parliament. Instead, the Parliament proposed that Member States should be able to give producers subject to the quotas "safe and fair access" to recyclates, without specifying how this should be organised. The Belgian Presidency of the Council recently presented a similar proposal for priority access to recyclates to Member States. Plastic packaging converters and recyclers have criticised this idea of privileged access (link): If each Member State is allowed to set its own rules on who gets which recyclates, the internal market for recyclates will be history. The concept is also impractical: the idea is that there will be a conflict between, say, a manufacturer of plastic packaging (quota) and a manufacturer of plastic pipes (no quota yet). But who should decide whether a bag of PET recyclates should be used for yoghurt pots (10 or 7.5% quota), beverage bottles (30%) or screw crates (35%)? Ultimately, the proposal leads directly to a planned economy with an application and allocation decision.

The key in the coming weeks will be whether Parliament and Council can reach an agreement on the bans (Article 22, Annex V) and on the reuse/refill quotas (Article 26), where their positions are very far apart, as readers of this blog will know. If Member States prioritise the reuse/refill quotas over the bans, and there is much to suggest that they will, they may be forced to show a willingness to compromise with the Parliament on the bans. After all, the Council negotiators are aware that an agreement still has to be adopted by the Parliament and that Ms Ries has something to show MEPs on these two points in particular.

EUROPEN has published a good overview of the main differences between the positions of the Parliament and the Council (link). The sometimes aggressive behaviour of paper industry representatives in the European Parliament has had an impact: The Parliament has launched an official investigation into whether there has been a breach of the Transparency Register's code of conduct (link). If found guilty, the paper industry lobbyists could be struck from the register and thus lose access to MEPs.

To be continued.