"The increase in exports of recyclable waste from the EU is worrying: it damages our companies and threatens the European circular economy," Forza Italia-Ppe MEP Massimiliano Salini stated today, having signed with 68 other members of the European Parliament a letter addressed to the executive vice president of the EU Commission and Commissioner for the European Green Deal Frans Timmermans and the Commissioner for the Environment Virginijus Sinkevičius. The MEPS asked for an urgent revision of the European Regulation on the export of waste and secondary raw materials.
"These exports must be authorized only to countries with environmental, climatic and health standards in line with Europe," said Salini. In the letter to the commissioners, it is noted that in 2019 the EU-27 exported 15 million mt of ferrous scrap, compared to 9 million mt in 2015. Such volumes reached mainly "non-EU countries with climate, work and safety requirements much lower than European standards, and therefore with negative environmental consequences that would have been avoidable if the same volumes were recycled in the EU," said the MEP. "This alarming export of waste depresses the European production of green steel through electric furnaces: ferrous scrap is in fact a precious resource for our steel industry which, depending on the process it uses, has an enormous potential for reducing emissions, up to five tons of CO2,” Mr. Salini stated.