Eco-design plan too vague, say MEPs

Date: 04/03/04

THE European Commission is on the right track with a proposal promoting eco-design in energy-saving appliances, but the "woolly wording" of the fledgling plan must be tightened up to make it workable, a cross-party coalition of MEPs has warned.

The deputies claim that the EU executive may be biting off more than it can chew before it has made clear what exactly it suggests companies do to make their products better - which could make the proposal dead on arrival.

"This is too vague and should be sent back to the Commission for clarification," said Claude Turmes, a Luxembourg Green who drafted a report on the eco-design directive for Parliament's industry and energy committee.

Peter Liese, a German Christian Democrat and a shadow rapporteur for the same directive, said the European People's Party (EPP-ED) group was of the same mind. "If we don't get it right now," he said, of the new law, "it runs the risk of being totally ineffective".

And that would be a real pity, given the measure's main mission.

The eco-design directive aims to increase the efficiency of energy-using products, such as laptops, cell phones or air conditioners which would, in turn, help the EU meet its Kyoto climate-change goals.

Liese predicted its impact would be enormous: "This is one of the most grossly underestimated directives in the European Union. It will apply to everything from electric shavers to hairdryers to washing machines.

"This is probably the one piece of EU legislation that will affect more individual companies than any other that came before it."

Yet Turmes, while in agreement that the directive's long-term potential for curbing carbon dioxide output cannot be stressed enough, said he was not so sure it would affect more firms than any other EU law as it would essentially apply to a fixed list of specific energy-using products.

Liese, however, pointed out that the Commission makes this claim itself in the opening passages of the draft directive, which was put forward during Brussels' annual summer break last August.

"Crucial things like this can easily get overlooked when the Commission does something during late summer," he mused in a reference to the traditional month-long period when Eurocrats, MEPs and just about everyone else with any EU-related job is on holiday.

Liese also said he was shocked when he began looking into it to learn how much can be done to improve the efficiency of energy-using devices.

"A more intelligent use of energy could save up to 40% of current demand," he said.

In Germany alone, 5% of total electricity consumption is wasted, via equipment such as computers kept on "unnecessary stand-by mode", with annual electricity waste in households equalling the entire electricity consumed in Berlin per year.

"And these are not figures some "radical" group made up," he added. "They come from the German government."

Member state representatives have also been busy discussing the directive and a revised version crafted by the Council of Ministers slightly narrows its scope in several areas.

Actually a merger of two different proposals on both eco-design and energy efficiency, it does not ask for any requirements from producers, but authorizes the Commission to accept so-called implementing measures.

According to a Council text released in February by the Irish presidency, the Commission would have to embark upon stakeholder consultation before drawing up a three-year work programme focused on selected product groups.

Implementing measures setting out eco-design rules for individual products would follow.

But, before this process gets under way, the Commission would be allowed to develop implementing measures for products already identified by the European climate change programme as offering "high potential for cost-effective reduction of greenhouse gas emissions". These priority groups are listed by name and cover a huge swathe of appliances, presumably leaving the Commission free to choose where it first puts the new law into action: heating and water heating equipment, electric motor systems, lighting, domestic appliances, office equipment, consumer electronics and air conditioning systems.

Frédérique Ries, the Belgian Liberal who was rapporteur of the directive, but has since left the Parliament to pursue a career in national politics, proposed an almost identical list.

(She was recently replaced by Finnish Liberal MEP Astrid Thors.)

The directive was drawn up by the Commission's energy and enterprise directorates, but is being overseen by the EP's environment committee.

Liese, who sits on the committee along with Thors, remains sceptical over the proposal's scope and, more crucially, over how it will be enforced.

He said the priority groups suggested by the Council are at present merely listed in an annex, whereas he would like to see the list woven into the main body of the proposal.

Moreover, Ries' proposed amendments were aimed mainly at the law's conformity assessment procedures, under which producers should check compliance either through an "internal design control" of their products or by following an environmental management system.

She wanted the EU's eco-management and audit scheme (EMAS) to be the only management system permitted, while other environment committee members - including Liese - want the design control to be mandatory.

There could, for instance, be a kind of "third-party certification" by national authorities to ensure that a product deserves the label it gets, he said.

This would also reduce some of the burden on small- and medium-sized enterprises, which usually do not have their own departments to assess products' environmental performance as do the larger companies.

This is a reason to avoid the EMAS scheme, Liese claims, as it is a voluntary method for firms to assess their own performance.

"The idea that every company sets its own priorities for eco-design is neither helpful in promoting a common market, nor for the environment, and it puts an unacceptable burden on small- and medium-sized companies," he said.

"Some colleagues," he added, "argue that EMAS must be the basis of the monitoring on this directive, but others argue that EMAS and similar systems are not linked with the product and therefore should not be addressed by this directive."

Liese said he is also wary of the "CE" label, which the Commission has suggested be used as an implementing measure for a new EU-wide eco-design labelling regime.

The CE (Conformité Européene) label has been slapped on the backs of computers and other electronic items in the EU since 1993.

It is required on a range of products, from air traffic control equipment and explosives used in road construction, to refrigerators, gas water heaters and toys.

But Liese warned that there has been "a lot of fraud with the CE label", leading him to question its long-term credibility. "If a CE label were put on a product, it would automatically be assumed that all the requirements of implementing measures are fulfilled by the producers," he explained.

Meanwhile, Germana Canzi, a climate and energy efficiency policy officer with the World Wide Fund for Nature, suggested that the US government-backed Energy Star label, used across the Atlantic, could serve as a model for Europe.

"We think a similar system over here could be the best way forward," she said, of the voluntary labelling programme introduced by the US Environmental Protection Agency in 1992.

But, besides all the inevitable haggling over getting the nitty-gritty of the eco-design directive right, she said the "really good news" for environmentalists and consumers alike was that the proposal has garnered "broad, cross-party support" in Parliament.

The law looks likely to complete a first reading before the Parliament dissolves in May for elections the following month.

This should be preceded by an environment committee vote due in mid-March, followed by a plenary vote at the end of the same month.

MEPs considering the European Commission's proposed Directive on the eco-design of energy-using products say the wording of the proposal is unclear and should be sent back to the Commission for clarification.

http://ec.europa.eu/comm/enterprise/eco_design/index.htm http://ec.europa.eu/comm/enterprise/eco_design/index.htm

---