Summary of EUROMETREC President Björn
Grufman at the EUROMETREC March 8, 2006 General Assembly

2005 has been a busy and successful year for the EUROMETREC secretariat.

Successful because the revised framework directive on waste contains an article 11 which clearly refers to our long-lasting request to look at the “end of waste” criteria in order to distinguish between our end-products and our infeed and unprocessed materials. Our main task will now be to convince the authorities that non-ferrous metals scrap must be among the top of their priorities.

The year was busy because the secretariat had to follow-up a wide range of issues or pieces of legislation. This has resulted in many meetings and e-mails exchanges between our Brussels secretariat, and our national member federation, the E.U. authorities and – at the federation level – I hope, between our colleagues and their national competent authorities.

Among the files which we had to monitor let me particularly mention REACH, the Thematic Strategy on waste prevention and recycling, the proposed revision of the waste shipment regulation, WEEE.

EUROMETREC is now employing an external consultant to assist the Brussels office to prepare some position papers and technical documents in a more professional and “political” manner. External assistance is very useful as it can help our organisation not to over-react and to have a more global view of some legislative proposals such as REACH. In this respect, non-Ferrous metals are among the substances which will need to be registered, evaluated, and authorized but this would have to be done first of all by those who produce metals and put them on the market.

Our infeed materials which are labelled “waste” (as long as they don’t meet the non-waste criteria) are not covered by REACH. In addition our end-products (processed scrap) are supposed to have the some chemical properties as the infeed materials which have already been checked by the producers/manufacturers.

EUROMETREC must continue to defend this position (which is also supported by some authorities and legislators) and avoid too much publicity on this issue.

EUROMETREC as the association of the European Non-Ferrous scrap merchants and traders must continue to be very attentive to any attempt from the European Union consumers to hamper the free (and fair) trade of our materials. We are all aware that despite some good financial results in 2004 and 2005 the Non-Ferrous metals industry is suffering from a fierce competition from new emerging markets.

We must cooperate with EUROMETAUX and other non-ferrous metals associations to ensure a fair trade but we must oppose any suggestions that there is a problem of scrap supply in the world as some consumers may tell their governments.

The E.U. scrap operators are not responsible for the closing of some smelting facilities in Europe or for the delocalisation of secondary mills to emerging countries.

The E.U. non-ferrous metals industry has a free access to our scrap by they have to pay a fair price for it. (Monique Jones from EUROMETAUX has been invited to our dinner and this item would certainly have been debated…)

2006 will be a crucial year for the definition of our end-products: we must
convince the authorities that non-ferrous metals scrap must be on their list of
priorities.

More input from the secretariats of the EUROMETREC national member
federations will be necessary if we want to be successful. The national associations must regularly inform our office of the difficulties which their national members are facing because of the implementation of the national / E.U. directives and regulations.

Finally it is important that all national member federations are supporting the secretariat of EUROMETREC and that we react to the questions put forward to us. The national member federations are welcomed to an active dialog in trying to develop the best possible market circumstances for our industry

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