The European Parliament’s Committee on the Environment, Public Health, and Food Safety (ENVI) met on Thursday, Jan. 11, 2024, to discuss a potential expansion to the definition of plastic pellets in the proposal on preventing plastic pellet losses to reduce microplastic pollution, adopted on Oct. 16, 2023.
Rapporteur João Albuquerque, a Portuguese MEP representing the Socialists & Democrats (S&D) party in the European Parliament, made his case first. He argued for expanding the plastic pellet definition to include powders, flakes, or dust, as set out in the draft report of Dec. 12, 2023. He also suggested that lighter requirements should only apply to micro enterprises or to operators handling less than 250 tonnes of plastic pellets per year. The original proposal says lighter requirements should apply to small and medium enterprises or operators with a yearly capacity bellow 1,000 tonnes.
The draft report was praised by a lot of the attendants for ‘raising the level of ambition’ of the regulation. It received support from representatives of Renew, Greens, and The Left parties, who also made suggestions for amendments or additions. France and Spain representatives showed photos of the spillage in Spain and brought along specimens of plastic pellets.
“I want to say that I’m very happy to hear the agreements between the Renew, Green, and Left groups in behind the proposal,” said Rapporteur Albuquerque. “And I hope that this tragic incident in Galicia can soften the hearts of the [European People’s Party] (EPP) a little bit. This is not something to be disregarded. Even a small spill, of a small quantity, can have a very strong impact in the environment, on our coasts, and human health. No one desired this disaster in the coast of Galicia to happen, but I hope this can serve as an example of what we cannot allow to happen again,” he concluded.
The EPP, a political party with Christian-democratic, liberal-conservative, and conservative member parties, showed opposition to the draft. Its shadow reporter expressed ‘a number of concerns’.
“The expansion of the definition of microplastics moves away from the Commission’s intended scope, which may have important cost-benefit consequences for the wider proposal,” she argued. The reduction of the tonnage per year from 1,000 to 250 tonnes “is a considerable expansion of the scope and does not reflect the outcome of the impact assessment,” she continued. Narrowing the exception criteria to only microenterprises “does not take into account the potential consequences such a move would have for the competitiveness of the broader E-sector, as the narrowing of such exemptions would have significant bureaucratic and administrative strain,” she concluded.
MEPs will be able to submit their amendments to the draft until Jan. 16. An ENVI vote is scheduled for March 19. The plenary vote should take place in April.
