Environment and health: electrical and electronic equipments WEEE, restriction of hazardous substances RoHS

The committee unanimously adopted the report by Mr Karl-Heinz FLORENZ (EPP-ED, D) amending the Council's common position under the codecision procedure (2nd reading). It reinstated a number of amendments adopted by Parliament at 1st reading, sometimes in modified form, and also tabled several new amendments. In particular, the committee reiterated Parliament's call for the date for phasing out certain substances to be brought forward to 1 January 2006, rather than 2007 as originally proposed. It also spelt out that Member States could keep existing bans or introduce prohibitions of such substances prior to that date. Other reinstated amendments stipulated that the directive should not apply to spare parts placed on the market before the ban entered into force and, in the interests of consumer safety, provided for exemptions for materials and components where safer alternatives were not available. The committee also wanted to solve the contradiction between the RoHS directive and the WEEE directive with regard to re-use of WEEE (which was one of the priorities of the WEEE directive). It therefore adopted an amendment specifying that the RoHS directive should not apply to the re-use of electrical and electronic equipment or its components put on the market before the entry into force of the ban on hazardous substances. Lastly, the committee wanted it to be explicitly stated in the proposal that any further prohibitions or adaptations should be dealt with by codecision and not by commitology. �