Sparks fly over new Liikanen plan for ‘EEE’ design mark

Date: 19/10/00

By Peter Chapman

EU COMPANIES have launched a fierce attack on re-worked European Commission plans for tough new rules to govern the design of electrical and electronic equipment (EEE).

Under Enterprise Commissioner Erkki Liikanen's proposals, firms would be forced to comply with a raft of basic requirements to ensure that their goods have been produced in an environmentally friendly way. But electronic industry critics claim Liikanen and his team have so far ignored the concerns they expressed after the initial draft of the plan was leaked to a sceptical business community in April.

Crucially, they argue that recent changes to the proposal made by the Commission would foist an unnecessary extra layer of bureaucracy upon firms, which already have to comply with a host of other requirements before they can market their products in the Union.

Their anger has been sparked by plans to force firms to apply for a new 'EEE' mark demonstrating that their products have reached acceptable levels of eco-friendly design.

Critics point out that EU companies are already required to obtain a 'CE' mark showing that they meet essential safety requirements, and argue that this could be updated to include the new ecological obligations instead of launching an extra logo. They add that an eco-label system already exists which rewards companies for producing energy efficient products, and say the proposed new regime would therefore impose an unnecessary regulatory burden on business.

In addition, industry fears that Likkanen's proposal could clash with plans tabled by his environment counterpart Margot Wallström, which set out recycling targets for electronic waste and called for a ban on certain harmful substances such as lead. Finally, industry complains that the scope of the directive is ill-defined, arguing that it could in theory cover everything from cars to nuclear submarines.

"Industry does not need these measures at all," said Val Herman, EU affairs expert for Anglo-Japanese

IT company ICL. "They are badly thought-out, many of the key elements are ill-defined, and they seem to put industry in the middle of a political game between different Commission departments."

Townsend Feehan, secretary-general of European consumer electronics lobby EACEM, added: "We are not dead against the approach - it is just that the proposals need a lot of work. We think that the timing of the electronic waste, substance bans and EEE is kind of chaotic. If one day we get the EEE directive, it will require us by law to do the things that the electronic waste proposal is aiming at giving us competitive incentives to do."

This is because the electronic waste proposals would allow firms which produce environmentally friendly products to shoulder less of the cost burden of recycling waste products.

Liikanen's staff are bracing themselves for a deluge of comments from critics ahead of a series of meetings on the issue scheduled for the next few weeks.

EU companies have launched a fierce attack on re-worked European Commission plans for tough new rules to govern the design of electrical and electronic equipment (EEE).