On 15 April 2021, take-e-way had reported that each EU Member State has its own national WEEE implementation. This is linked to the fact that electrical equipment has to be registered and subsequently managed separately in each EU Member State. A WEEE registration in Germany is therefore not equivalent to an EU-wide registration and thus applies only to Germany.
In supplementation to this, the Federal Environment Agency already reported the following in 2017: “Producers wanting to place electrical and electronic equipment (EEE) on the market in Germany are first required to register with stiftung elektro-altgeräte register (ear) since they will later be responsible for the proper disposal of their products. Along with this requirement, which is valid in all EU Member States, the European legislator updated the Directive on waste electrical and electronic equipment (WEEE Directive 2012/19/EU) in 2012 to include a new requirement for producers who are not established on the market of the respective Member State: the appointment of an authorised representative in the country where they sell EEE without being established. The purpose of having this new legal entity (authorised representative) is to ensure that every national register has a domestic contact for a producer established in another country.”
Non-compliance by the authorised representative may result in regulatory offence procedures. To prosecute these violations more effectively, the enforcement authorities responsible have formed the European WEEE Enforcement Network (EWEN). The network will reduce translation and notification problems because only the sanctioning authority of the country in which the producer is established will be responsible for tracking activities.
In a current case referred to take-e-way, the German Federal Environment Agency (Umweltbundesamt/UBA) sent a “hearing as a secondary party to an administrative offence” notice to a company based in Germany for delivering electrical appliances from Germany to Austria, Denmark, Spain, France and Italy without first commissioning an authorised representative in the respective countries.
If you sell electrical equipment to other EU Member States and you are not registered there or you need an authorised local representative, you are advised to take appropriate measures without delay.
Florian Spreu will gladly assist you on this subject. Please call +49/40/750687-159 or send an e-mail message to international@take-e-way.de.
For more information on our international compliance services related to the placing on the market of electronic equipment, batteries/rechargeable batteries and packaged products or packaging, please click here: https://www.take-e-way.com/services/international-compliance/
