Industrial Emissions Directive revision and E-PRTR recast: Glass industry’s views
Industrial Emissions Directive revision and E-PRTR recast: Glass industry’s views
The European glass industry is an innovative and highly strategic sector from which the EU benefits greatly. Glass Alliance Europe supports the EU Green Deal and actively pursues pathways to reduce emissions.
Glass products have a crucial societal contribution insofar as they are feeding important value chains (energy, building, transport, food & drink, medical, etc.). Glass is also a key enabling material for the transition in other sectors, which have the highest emissions reduction potential (energy, building, transport).
The on-going industrial transformation process requires important investments in the coming years. The regulatory framework needs to allow for an investment-conducive environment, which is key to the materialisation of the EU policy objectives. It needs to carefully combine on one hand the incentives for the reduction of pollution and on the other hand to provide for sufficient flexibility for the integration of new technologies, including potentially disruptive.
Glass Alliance Europe appreciates that the European Commission is considering how the Industrial Emissions Directive could contribute to the green transition and transformation of the industry. However, some of the proposed measures go against the proportionality and/or subsidiarity principles and raise serious concerns regarding their compatibility with competition rules and confidentiality of business information. Moreover, these proposals would exert a significant regulatory pressure on EU industry, in a limited timeframe, at a time of crises, where the Covid-19 waves are being followed by the impact of war on the European continent.
Glass Alliance Europe takes this opportunity to comment on the proposals for the revision of the Industrial Emissions Directive (IED) and for the recast of the European Pollutant Release and Transfer Register (E-PRTR), looking at them from the industrial reality perspective and focusing on three aspects:
- The IED and E-PRTR contribution to the Green Deal objectives, to innovation and to industrial transformation,
- The compatibility of the measures proposed by the European Commission with competition rules and confidentiality of business information,
- The need to preserve a coherent set of legislation.
