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Environment Ministers call for stricter enforcement of EU waste shipment rules

7 november l 2003 - On Monday October 27th the EU Environment Council met in Luxembourg. At this meeting the Belgian Minister for Environment called the attention of the Council to the ongoing export of end-of-life-vessels and the environmental pollution associated with the current practice of breaking such ships. The call got full support from the Council. The Environment Ministers recognised there is a clear role for Europe in the discussions that take place at (inter)national level to stop the export of toxic ships to Asia.

The initiative to aim for a stricter enforcement of existing regulations on the export of waste was considered as one of the possibilities to prevent this type of environmental pollution. Considering the European ban on export of hazardous waste to non-OECD countries that has been in force since 1998, the Minsters feel that they should aim for a strict enforcement of this EU regulation and apply it also to ships exported for breaking. An existing enforcement program in European harbours (the Trans Frontier Shipment of Waste-project) would now be enlarged from controls of "waste on a ship" into controls of "a ship as waste".

Prior to the meeting of the EU Environment Ministers Greenpeace activists
presented 1500 individual calls for urgent action to the Italian President of the European Environmental Council Mr Matteoli and to the EU Commissioner of Environment Ms Wallström. In its appeal to the assembled European ministers Greenpeace urged on the EU to stop the illegal export of end-of-life-ships containing toxic substances.

More on the European Waste Shipment Regulation