What are the emerging issues facing the industry in your country?
Top-1 issue is the structural (energy policies, climate change policies) and conjonctural (cold winter, fossile fuel prices (but is it only conjonctural?)) effects of energy developments in Europe that are driving prices up and impacting on the competitiveness of the sector. The slow-down of the activity last year has led industry to perform rather well in terms of emissions’ reduction, in some countries well beyond the allocations granted in the framework of the Emissions Trading System. Voices are asking for more stringent allocations in the future and better monitoring and verification. The focus on renewable energy is increasing with more incentives being put in place in European countries to develop further the production of Green Energy. Biomass-based energy is considered as a promising option that has not been fully valorized yet. The recently published Biomass Action Plan and the EU Strategy for biofuels have been adopted to give a further push to biomass-based energy. The side-effect of such policy developments and national support policies is that price of wood – and more specifically of some assortments – is increasing and challenges industry’s wood procurement. The issue of wood availability is increasingly sensitive in several countries.
A High-Level Group has been set up by the Commission to come out with recommendations on how to reconcile energy security of supply and market transparency with environmental sustainability and economic competitiveness. This High-level Group, where the Paper industry is represented and where CEPI actively participates is expected to come with conclusions by the end of 2007.
On the environmental side, the focus at EU level will be on climate change and biodiversity. The Commission’s services have been reorganized to reflect this prioritization.
A 5 years Forest Action Plan is expected to be adopted before summer, as a follow-up to the European Forest Strategy of 1998. Because of a lack of clear mandate, it is foreseen that the Action Plan will lack of ambition and concreteness.
Public procurement has been identified as a tool to improve the environmental performance in the EU, as well as a response to FLEGT. An increasing number of governments have developed their procurement policy for wood and paper products. These policies rely very much on forest certification and might lead to discriminations vis-à-vis wood compared to other materials.
At the end of this year the political process on the so-called REACH regulation will be finalised. This regulation is a complete overhaul of all current legislation on chemicals in Europe. Because of the character of a regulation it is applicable to all member states directly, without any translation to be made in national legislation. Core of the proposal is the fact that all chemicals in Europe will be re-assessed, tested and registered. User of chemicals or products containing chemicals are now included in this information chain. The first registration of chemicals will have to be done within 1,5 years (app. 2008) after the final approval, the final testing is to be finished within three years (app. 2010). Companies, including maybe those abroad the EU, will have to register the chemicals they produce, import or supply. Downstream users will need to provide information to their suppliers and customers on use and exposure. Pulp and paper companies will need to register their by-products (black liquor, white liquor, green liquor, cooking liquor, wood turpentine, crude tall oil, lignosulphonates) if marketed as well as their process wastes (ashes, sludges, lime mud, green liquor dregs) if marketed and not being considered as waste.
December 21, 2005, the Commission proposed a complete revision of the Waste Framework Directive. This has a major impact on paper industry as legally speaking recovered paper is “waste” with not only image related but also very strong economic implications. E.g. sometimes a waste permit is required (a case study showed a cost for that to be 12.50 euro per ton), or transportation is more expensive as the mill can only choose from a limited number of trucks holding a waste transport permit. With a view to a growing volume of recycling this has a major impact on us. It is also more difficult to promote quality management on something that is considered waste, yet, as all the good sources of recovered paper are already tapped, quality is and remains an issue.
Commission presented December 21 also a “Thematic Strategy on Waste and Recycling”, where two important ideas were adopted: Europe is to become a “Recycling Economy” and within the next decades decoupling economic growth from environmental impacts should have been achieved in Europe. Both ideas present an opportunity for CEPI to communicate on industry’s past performance and show progress already made along those lines, and aiming ever higher. For paper industry this also opens new possibilities to seek recycling for process residues within other industries, a solution that is also important with the increasing cost of disposal.
For paper it was interesting to notice that Commission thoroughly considered issuing also product and/or material specific measures and at least the idea of compulsory recycled fibre contents was once again investigated by the EU. However, the Commission announced that no new measures in the field of waste are to be expected by 2010 – there the Commission will assess the situation and if necessary propose new legislation where not sufficient progress is made.
In order to follow up the success of the first voluntary industry commitment of increasing paper recycling to 56 percent by 2005 a wide group of stakeholders along the paper chain started drafting a New European Declaration on Paper Recycling. This time also DG Environment has shown support to the work, which was not the case in 2000 when the first declaration was launched.
