EU Green Deal Continues with the Re-Election of Ursula von der Leyen
SOURCE: TTI MarketEye
By Mike Kirschner, Design Chain Associates
If you followed the recent European Parliamentary elections, you know that predicting the outcome was going to be extremely difficult. Ultimately, Ursula von der Leyen’s win of a second term as president of the European Commission gives her five more years to continue implementing the Green Deal. There will be no pause in its roll-out, as could have been expected had she lost.
Indeed, her “Political Guidelines for the Next European Commission 2024-2029” has already been published. In the world of the environment, the Guidelines include
- “a new Circular Economy Act, helping to create market demand for secondary materials and a single market for waste, notably in relation to critical raw materials,”
- “a new chemicals industry package, aiming to simplify REACH and provide clarity on ‘forever chemicals’, or PFAS”
- Investment “in energy efficiency measures.”
These all will impact the electronics industry and its supply chains, so stay focused on the EU because compliance isn’t going to get any easier over the coming five-year term.
How the Ecodesign for Sustainable Products Regulation will Affect Manufacturers
Regulation (EU) 2024/1781, the Ecodesign for Sustainable Products Regulation (ESPR), replaces the current Ecodesign framework regulation, 2009/125/EC, and expands the scope of both products and parameters that can be regulated. As a framework regulation it, too, will require addition legislation in the form of “delegated acts” to define the ecodesign requirements for specific types of products.
Annex I of ESPR sets out the laundry list of product parameters that regulators will have to choose from when defining implementing measures:
| Durability | Use or consumption of energy, water and other resources | Carbon footprint |
| Reliability | Use or content of recycled materials and recovery of materials | Material footprint |
| Ease of Repair and Maintenance | Use or content of sustainable renewable materials | Microplastic and nanoplastic release |
| Ease of Upgrading, Reuse, Remanufacturing and Refurbishment | Weight and volume of the product and its packaging, and the product-to-packaging ratio | Emissions to air, water or soil |
| Design for Recycling | Incorporation of used components | Amounts of waste generated |
| Technical Solutions Detrimental to the Above | Consumables | Functional performance and conditions for use |
| Use of Substances of Concern | Environmental footprint | Lightweight design as expressed through reduction of material consumption |
Not all are relevant to electrical and electronic equipment (EEE) and the components and materials they’re typically designed with. On the other hand, many are not only relevant, but are not well understood or measured today. For instance, material footprint, environmental footprint, and lightweight design represent metrics that few manufacturers of EEE are currently familiar with. Self-measurement of energy consumption is also not a typical feature of most EEE, yet per Article 4 paragraph 6(c)(i), delegated acts implementing ESPR may require its collection and even reporting to the European Commission.
Numerous other requirements, including a “Digital Product Passport” and labeling are defined in the regulation. Brand owners and their supply chains will probably have to research and implement significant changes to how products are defined, designed, produced and supported in order to meet these new requirements.
The Commission will be producing its first “working plan” by April 19, 2025. This will prioritize the types of products to be addressed by delegated acts over at least the following three years. Electronics, and particularly information and communication technology products, can be expected to garner plenty of attention in this plan. So, stay tuned.
EU RoHS Exemption Renewal Status
The extreme delay in resolving outstanding RoHS exemption renewals applied for in 2020 for products in Categories 1 through 7 and 10 seems interminable. However, there is now a glimmer of light at the end of the proverbial tunnel for at least some of the more widely used exemptions. The Commission says to expect draft delegated directives covering the 6-series, 7(c)-series and 7(a) exemptions in the “Third quarter 2024.” Since it’s now August, and Europe is on vacation this month, that means we should expect drafts in September.
That’s just in the nick of time because those exemptions, if they’re not set for later expiration in the upcoming drafts, will expire in July 2026, so – in theory – a new set of exemption renewal applications will be required by January 21, 2025, just a few months away! Pack 27 recommends to the Commission to extend “expiry dates in 2024, 2025 and early/mid 2026.” Hopefully they will follow this advice. Note that the wording of Article 5(2) does not clearly provide the Commission with discretion to extend these validity periods beyond the defined 5- (or 7-) year duration. To change this would require a directive, rather than a delegated directive.
In addition, these drafts must adequately resolve the conflicting conclusions in Packs 22 and 27. For instance, Pack 22, finalized in February 2022, proposes a (ridiculous, IMHO) bifurcation of exemption 7(a) into seven separate narrowly scoped exemptions. Pack 27 was finalized this past May, on the contrary recommends extending exemption 7(a) with no changes.
Reminder – the SVHC Registry of Intentions
While there is technically no grace period between when substances are added to ECHA’s Candidate list of Substances of Very High Concern (SVHCs) and when producers must start reporting on them per REACH Article 33 and enter the information into the SCIP database, ECHA does, in advance, identify the substances being considered for addition to the list. This is the purpose of the Registry of SVHC Intentions (RoI).
Right now (early August 2024), there are a dozen substances in the list that may be added to the Candidate list of SVHCs. While it appears that most will not appear in EEE, one of the substances – Triphenyl phosphate (TPP) – is a commonly used flame retardant.
TPP is a suspected endocrine disruptor and information supporting its addition to the Candidate list was submitted by France to the RoI in February 2024. That it wasn’t added to the Candidate list in June indicates that it is still under review.
Six of the substances have an “Expected date of submission” of August 1, 2024. This implies that one or more of them could potentially be added in the next tranche due usually in December or January. The remaining five will not be submitted until February 3, 2025, pushing them out to at least the June/July 2025 tranche.
Keep your eye on the RoI to get a preview of additions to the Candidate list of SVHCs. While their addition to the list is not guaranteed, the visibility will give you time to review the substances and your products for risk.
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