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The New Approach in Setting Product Standards for Safety, Environmental Protection and Human Health

5 General Plenary Discussion (Session IV)

Facilitator: Preben Kristensen, Head of Cleaner Products Division, Danish Environmental Protection Agency.

5.1 Rapporteurs Conclusions

5.1.1 Day I: Session II

Christa Huygh (Federal Department of Environment, Belgium) found mainly two different positions during Session II, i.e., either defending or questioning the use of the New Approach for setting health-or environment-related standards. This proves that there is certainly a need for dialogue among defendants of both positions.

The New Approach has proved to be a successful instrument for safety aspects, but certain problems concerning health protection have emerged. The complexity of environmental impacts indicates that changes might be needed in the current use of the New Approach to guarantee a high level of environmental protection. There were some fears that the application of the New Approach in the environmental arena might result in soft standards that would not always be met by all producers. This illustrates the need for a framework directive on environmental demands for products, similar to the Product Safety Directive.

Financial support is needed both for NGOs and industry to ensure balanced participation in the standards-setting process.

The New Approach is still an interesting tool in product policy. However, a number of issues are to be considered:

	Clear essential requirements
	Clear mandates and uniform interpretation
	Increased coordination between standardisation bodies and the political institutions.
	Strengthened safeguard mechanisms, including involvement of NGOs and other stakeholders at earlier stages of the process.

5.1.2 Day II: Session III

Jürgen Kühn (Ministry of Environment, Germany) indicated that, in part due to the very different use and understanding of terms and definitions, there were too many defending positions on the topics developed in the workshop and not enough discussion among stakeholders. Nevertheless, some consensus was reached concerning the fact that already a variety of methods, tools and measures are in place which could be used to enhance environmental innovation if adequately combined. The next step could be to investigate the advantages of the various instruments available, e.g., environmental product declarations, BAT reference documents (BREFs), eco-labelling, EMAS, etc.

The New Approach has its merits in setting safety-related standards and partially in health issues, but it still needs to be improved in relation to environment. This does not mean that the New Approach necessarily needs to be discarded for environmental purposes. However, it will need to be adjusted and amended to guarantee sufficient protection of environmental goals.

Management standards may prove to be a valid instrument to enhance innovation for wide groups of products. However, as the Packaging and Packaging Waste Directive shows, essential requirements have to be unambiguous. Only if there is a clear political will when drafting such minimum requirements should delegation of technical specifications be transferred.

Green behaviour does not pay for itself; it needs a link to economic advantages for actors in the market, i.e., both producers and consumers. Transparency of the process is essential for consumers.

The use of benchmarks may help to define the own position (producers) and the relative position (consumers) of the company.

If the New Approach, understood as a combination of political and legislative elements and standards, is to be applied on the basis of management standards, some changes might still be necessary:

	Standards will need to describe performance instead of technical solutions
	Essential requirements will have a more descriptive nature and relate to more than one product. They will be avoiding specific technical aspects in order to stay in pace with "moving targets".

5.2 General discussion

Michail Papadoyannakis (European Commission, DG Enterprise) remarked that the workshop concluded with a common sharing of opinions, although it was too early to reach any consensus.

Mario Calderón (AENOR, Spain) completely disagreed on the need to change the existing New Approach. It is clear that during the workshop some difficulties in applying the existing scheme were raised, but this proves only the need for improvement. Such improvement may occur via better monitoring of the system, better drafted essential requirements, or more guarantees to ensure that all interested parties are involved at relevant stages of the process. There is a need to differentiate what the process is and which results are obtained.

Eva Schmincke (Büro für Ökologische Studien) indicated that there are mainly two kinds of products to be delivered by standardisation, i.e., product standards and management standards. Product standards are closely linked to legal aspects and should not be too soft, while management standards are "moving targets", which should focus on procedures rather than on performance.

Christer Arvius (National Board of Trade, Sweden) noted that discussion mainly focused in enumerating existing tools to promote environmental protection and innovation. However, there seemed to be no clear idea as of yet concerning what exactly needs to be built with such tools. There should be a clear definition of goals before adjusting or/and combining existing tools. The New Approach does not need to be changed at this point, but differently applied.

5.3 Conclusions and next steps

Preben Kristensen, Head of Cleaner Products Division, Danish Environmental Protection Agency

The workshop has revealed the need to adjust and brush up the existing New Approach in order to better address environmental and health issues.

There should exist a more dynamic discussion between the people writing the essential requirements and those working in the standardisation bodies who are in charge of drafting technical specifications. This means that there should be a feedback mechanism where everybody is allowed to learn during the process.

If interest in management standards has increased and there is no available legislation to develop them, then it could be useful to look for "pull" mechanisms to enhance innovation via market mechanisms. But there is a need to ensure that if market mechanisms are used, the consumer will be informed and involved. The system needs to be flexible, but also credible.

Although no uniform conclusions were reached in this workshop, the sponsors’ intention was to obtain a common understanding of the most important challenges in relation to the New Approach and its potential use for setting environmental standards. A number of potential options to follow when facing such challenges were actively addressed in the workshop.

It is thus too early to make specific proposals for the next stage of this process, but all stakeholders who attended this workshop are encouraged to continue the discussion in the future.

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