Category: EU European Union

Are You Ready? WEEE Directive Full Implementation Starts 15-Aug-18

Many man­u­fac­tur­ers sell­ing indus­tri­al prod­ucts into the EU mar­ket have come to under­stand at least one of the envi­ron­men­tal pro­tec­tion Direc­tives, RoHS — the “Restric­tion of the Use of Cer­tain Haz­ardous Sub­stances.” In this post, I’m going to be look­ing at anoth­er envi­ron­men­tal direc­tive: WEEE — the “Waste Elec­tri­cal and Elec­tron­ic Equip­ment” Direc­tive (2012/19/EU).

As of 14 August 2018...ALL waste electrical and electronic equipment comes under the directive.


The WEEE Direc­tive requires pro­duc­ers of elec­tri­cal and elec­tron­ic equip­ment who sell their prod­ucts in the EU to oper­ate a recy­cling pro­gram. This direc­tive exempt­ed indus­tri­al prod­ucts in the first years of its imple­men­ta­tion, focus­ing pri­mar­i­ly on waste con­sumer elec­tron­ics and elec­tri­cal equip­ment. As of 14 August 2018, the tran­si­tion peri­od ends and ALL waste elec­tri­cal and elec­tron­ic equip­ment (EEE) comes under the direc­tive, except those spe­cif­ic class­es exempt­ed in Arti­cles 3 & 4.  How does this affect machine builders and man­u­fac­tur­ers of oth­er kinds of prod­ucts? Read on for the answer to these ques­tions and more. 

Con­tin­ue read­ing “Are You Ready? WEEE Direc­tive Full Imple­men­ta­tion Starts 15-Aug-18″

Brexit is such a waste

This morn­ing I read news of the tests that the May Gov­ern­ment plans to use when assess­ing the Brex­it deal they are try­ing to nego­ti­ate with the EU.

If you scroll down through the tests you will dis­cov­er that the UK real­ly doesn’t want any­thing to change, includ­ing CE Mark­ing, a fun­da­men­tal part of the EU Sin­gle Mar­ket. Don­ald Tusk has made it very clear that the UK will not have access to the sin­gle mar­ket after Brex­it, so the items relat­ing to reg­u­la­to­ry har­mon­i­sa­tion are traps that will almost cer­tain­ly cause rejec­tion of the deal.

Fur­ther down, you will also see that May does not want to lose the free­dom of move­ment of peo­ple or mon­ey. If you know any­thing about the EU, you prob­a­bly know that the three pil­lars of the EU are the free­dom of move­ment of:

  • Peo­ple
  • Goods
  • Cap­i­tal

The tests show that the UK hopes to keep all of these, which begs the ques­tion, why leave at all? The UK already has all the items in the tests as a mem­ber of the EU. These are grant­ed as part of mem­ber­ship. The costs asso­ci­at­ed with main­tain­ing this cha­rade are astro­nom­i­cal while stay­ing in the union pro­vides sig­nif­i­cant ben­e­fits and rel­a­tive­ly few costs.

Isn’t it time for Prime Min­is­ter May and her gov­ern­ment to give up this game and admit that Brex­it is a bad deal for the UK, and that con­tin­ued mem­ber­ship is the best way for­ward?

CETA in force!

CETA comes into force today, 21-Sep-2017

If you are unfa­mil­iar with CETA, the Com­pre­hen­sive Eco­nom­ic and Trade Agree­ment, this ground­break­ing trade agree­ment between Cana­da and the Euro­pean Union will be a game-chang­er for Cana­da. Until today, the actu­al date for imple­men­ta­tion of the agree­ment has been a mov­ing tar­get. There were at least two pre­vi­ous dates announced by the Cana­di­an gov­ern­ment, but each time the dates passed with­out the agree­ment com­ing into force due to issues that need­ed to be resolved.

So what does this mean for Cana­di­ans? As of today, 98% of Cana­di­an prod­ucts can now enter into the EU tar­iff-free. With­in two years, 99% of prod­ucts will be tar­iff-free. The agree­ment embod­ies much of what the EU sys­tem is based upon: Four pil­lars of free­dom are entrenched in the agree­ment.

The Four Pil­lars include the free­dom of move­ment of peo­ple, goods, ser­vices and cap­i­tal. This phi­los­o­phy has brought sig­nif­i­cant pros­per­i­ty and free­dom to Euro­pean cit­i­zens. With­in the“Schengen Area”, EU cit­i­zens can move freely across nation­al bor­ders with­out pass­ing through cus­toms, in a very sim­i­lar way to Cana­di­ans mov­ing from Province to Province. EU cit­i­zens can work in any Schen­gen coun­try with­out the need for work­ing visas or cit­i­zen­ship in the new coun­try they have cho­sen. Sim­i­lar free­doms exist for goods, ser­vices and mon­ey.

Under CETA, sim­i­lar free­doms are avail­able to Cana­di­ans, although with some restric­tions since CETA does not mean that Cana­da is now an EU Mem­ber State. Goods can flow from Cana­da to the EU, and from the EU to Cana­da with­out tar­iff restric­tions, except in some lim­it­ed cas­es. Busi­ness­es who want to set up oper­a­tions in the EU can do this with lim­it­ed restric­tions, and Cana­di­an pro­fes­sion­al work­ers can move to the EU to staff these new oper­a­tions with­out the need for restric­tive work visas. Invest­ment in EU oper­a­tions has gained pro­tec­tions through EU law so that these invest­ments are bet­ter pro­tect­ed. Cana­di­an ser­vice busi­ness­es can now pro­vide their ser­vice prod­ucts to EU cus­tomers with lit­tle restric­tion. Cana­di­an busi­ness now has free access to a mar­ket­place of 500 mil­lion new cus­tomers, near­ly 14 times larg­er than the Cana­di­an mar­ket. The EU mar­ket is worth near­ly €2.4 tril­lion in exports alone. This is an oppor­tu­ni­ty Cana­di­ans can’t afford to miss.

With the insta­bil­i­ty being cre­at­ed by the cur­rent US admin­is­tra­tion and the bul­ly tac­tics that are being used to force the rene­go­ti­a­tion of NAFTA, Cana­di­an busi­ness should take the oppor­tu­ni­ty pre­sent­ed to us today to turn our eyes to the EU, a union of coun­tries who are open and friend­ly to Cana­di­ans. Peo­ple who want to work with us, who want our prod­ucts and ser­vices. Many Cana­di­ans sup­port scrap­ping NAFTA if key pro­vi­sions can’t be met.

For more infor­ma­tion on CETA and what it will mean for Cana­di­ans, please see Doing Busi­ness in Europe — CETA: Cana­da and the Euro­pean Union Ush­er In a New Era of Trade.

21-Sep­tem­ber-2017 is a day to cel­e­brate. The future looks bright!