The committee adopted the own-initiative report drafted by Johannes Blokland (IND/DEM, NL) in response to the Commission communication presenting a Thematic Strategy on the prevention and recycling of waste. The report emphasised the "key importance" of the five-stage waste hierarchy and said that the use of the comitology procedure should be limited to "non-political decisions", especially those of a technical and scientific nature.
As far as prevention was concerned, MEPs regretted "the lack of quantitative and qualitative reduction targets covering all relevant waste", which were indicated as one of the priority actions in the 6th Environment Action Programme (EAP). Although the Thematic Strategy had been presented together with the proposal for a revision of the Waste Directive (see COD/2005/0281), MEPs were critical of the fact that "many concrete implementing measures and instruments ....are still missing". They therefore called on the Commission to put forward various legislative proposals:
- a revision of the waste incineration directive;
- concrete waste prevention measures in the fields of product policy, chemicals policy and eco-design;
- concrete measures to promote re-use and repair activities;
- separate directives on biodegradable waste, construction and demolition waste and sewage sludge;
- a separate directive on PVC;
- a revision of the landfill directive with a clear timetable for a ban on landfill of various products: non-pretreated waste with fermentable components (from 2010); paper, cardboard, glass, textiles, wood, plastics, metals, rubber, cork, pottery, concrete, brick and tiles (from 2015); all recyclable waste (from 2020); all residual waste except where this is unavoidable or hazardous (from 2025).