Legal basis
In Belgium, EC Directive 94/62/EC was transposed into national law as a Cooperation Agreement between the three Belgian regions Brussels, Flanders and Wallonia. The law came into force on 5 March 1997. The revised Packaging Directive 2004/12/EC has still not been transposed.
The Cooperation Agreement obliges any company responsible for placing a product on the Belgian market to take back its used packaging in order to achieve individual recycling and valorisation rates.
The fundamental principles of the cooperation agreement are:
- The take back obligation, i.e. the obligation to achieve
- 50 % recycling;
- 15% recycling minimum by packaging material;
- 80% recovery
- The information obligation, i.e. the obligation to communicate every year to the interregional Packaging Commission information specified by the cooperation agreement.
The establishment of the prevention plan funded by every packaging responsible which brings more than 10 tons of packaging a year to the market.
The take back obligation and the major part of the information obligation can be fulfilled by an accredited organisation, on condition that it has been charged by packaging responsibles to fulfil their own obligations. Each party responsible for packaging has the option of joining an accredited organisation. This is FOST Plus for household packaging.
Respect of the agreement is supervised by the Interregional Packaging Commission (CIE)
The regions constituted an Interregional Packaging Commission composed of nine decision-makers (three per region) and a permanent secretariat.
The CIE's main responsibilities are:
- To approve the way in which a packaging responsible which has not assigned an approved organism to fulfill its take back obligations, actually fulfils those obligations itself.
- To grant, suspend and withdraw the licence of any approved organisation.
- To verify how the minimum valorisation and recycling percentages are achieved by packaging responsibles or approved organisations
- To verify the information communicated to it.
