The Beverage Can Makers in Europe has welcomed the advocate general’s conclusions in the EU Court cases regarding the German packaging regime. He found that the discriminatory elements of the German packaging order regarding the refill protection are a clear infringement of EU law.
The advocate general also supported the view of the EU Commission that the present deposit regime contains discriminatory practices not in compliance with the EU Packaging Directive and has lead to distortion of competition within the internal market. He did not endorse the mandatory deposit as a valid and justified instrument to protect national refill bottle systems and questioned life cycle assessments as basis for a discriminatory packaging policy.
“It will be very difficult for the German government to ignore the additional criticism from an EU Institution commenting on the advocate general conclusions,” said Lars Emilson, chairman of the BCME, which is made up of Ball Packaging Europe, Crown Bevcan Europe and Rexam.
Emilson believes that it is now in everyone’s interest to work towards the immediate establishment of a national solution that promotes free trade without discriminatory elements.
“The beverage can is meeting all essential requirements of the Packaging Directive for its manufacture and recyclability and it should not be possible to more or less completely eliminate such a packaging from the market in less than a year. This explicit warning was given by the Advocate General to Germany in the same way as he did towards Denmark in the past.”
There has been intense opposition to Germany’s current one-way can deposit system from both Europe’s packaging industry and the general public. The Association of European Steel Producers (APEAL) for example claims that the majority of Germans want to see the one-way can deposit system scrapped. Over 75 per cent of consumers feel that one-way drinks packaging should be sorted for recycling at home, as was done until the end of 2002.
The current system, which was introduced on 1 January 2003, means that consumers must return the can to the shop in which they purchased it.