End-of-life vehicles. ELV Directive

The Commission presented a report on the implementation of Directive 2000/53/ EC on end-of-life vehicles (the ELV Directive) for the periods 2008-2011 and 2011-2014.

For the period 2008-2011, all Member States submitted their implementation reports to the Commission, whereas for the period 2011-2014, two Member States have not done so. The information provided was complete and, overall, of satisfactory quality.

(1) Transposition of the Directive: the evaluation concluded that the Member States have fully transposed the ELV Directive. Some cases of non-conformity have resulted in infringement procedures and have been resolved as Member States have aligned their ELV legislation with the Directive.

Member States reported on measures to:

·         encourage vehicle manufacturers to limit the use of hazardous substances in vehicles;

·         restrict the use of lead, mercury, cadmium and hexavalent chromium for materials and components of vehicles placed on the market after 1 July 2003;

·         ensure that vehicle manufacturers implement ELV collection systems and that adequate collection facilities are available;

·         require the presentation of a certificate of destruction as a condition for vehicle deregistration;

·         ensure that the delivery of ELVs to an authorised treatment facility is carried out at no cost to the last holder or owner;

·         oblige treatment establishments to hold a permit issued by the competent authorities or to be registered with them;

·         require component producers to make information on dismantling, storage and testing of components available to authorised treatment facilities.

(2) Implementation of the Directive: overall, the implementation of the ELV Directive is considered positive, with the exception of the issue of the ELV of unknown whereabouts:

·         Member States reported good practices working with manufacturers on the composition of materials and the reuse of materials and components; ecodesign is improving. The majority of Member States reported that ELVs have a positive market value, provided they are delivered complete and are not stripped of essential components;

·         statistics on the ELV targets show that almost all Member States had reached the 2006 ELV targets of 80% reuse/recycling and 85% reuse/recovery. Nice Member States had already reached the 2015 targets of 95% for reuse/recovery and 17 Member States had reached those of 85% for reuse/recycling per vehicle. The remaining Member States are close to the targets applicable as of January 2015, although achieving the reuse and recovery target of 95% is challenging for several Member States;

·         Member States also reported qualitative improvements. In most Member States, the number of authorised treatment facilities increased. The total number of vehicles transferred to authorised treatment facilities in the EU rose sharply from 6.3 million in 2008 to 9 million in 2009. This increase is to be attributed to the introduction of scrapping incentives schemes in more than 10 Member States in the 2008 and 2009.

(3) Unknown whereabouts and illegal dismantling of ELVs: according to assessments carried out on behalf of the Commission, there may be between 3.5 and 4.5 million vehicles per year with ‘unknown whereabouts’.

These ‘missing vehicles’ are deregistered in the Member States but are not reported to the Commission as legally treated ELVs. Nor do they appear in the data of foreign trade statistics on legal exports of used vehicles.

The illegal collection and trafficking of ELVs threatens the effectiveness of the Directive. A study is being carried out to assist the Commission in examining the causes of illegal collection and trafficking of ELVs

and measures that need to be taken to address this issue at different levels/

At EU level, the Waste Shipment Correspondents’ Guidelines on waste vehicles agreed on 8 July 2011 are a helpful tool for national authorities. However, further measures may be required, such as reviewing Commission Decision 2005/293/EC to reinforce the monitoring of the national vehicle market.

The Commission considered that issues relating to the data quality and comparability of reporting have already been addressed, but require further attention.

Improved annual reporting on the ELV targets, accompanied by national reporting methodologies, will help improve the monitoring of the implementation of the ELV Directive.