First "Fast Track Notification" has been positively closed

Cross-border shipments of waste within Europe are essential for recycling companies. The movement of goods, services and people within the EU is fundamentally free. Cross border traffic waste is not and particularly for wastes with hazardous substances such as E-Waste notifications are required. These notification processes are often lengthy and include a lot of bureaucracy. Although notifications are considered to be necessary to prevent the illegal shipment of hazardous wastes, a 3-year long notification process for a shipment of CRT Displays from Austria to Germany seems a bit long and is definitely a stumbling block to enhance Circular Economy practices.

The North Sea Resources Roundabout (NSRR) has followed that issue and included it in an "International Green Deal". The NSRR was established by the Netherlands, Great Britain, France and Flanders (Belgium). This initiative aims to promote sustainable growth in the North Sea region by facilitating trade and transport of secondary raw materials.

The concept of “Fast-Tracking Notifications” has been developed with the objective to make the transport of waste to recyclers, who comply with all regulations, simpler and faster within the EU. To this end, Article 14 of the European Waste Shipment Regulation must be applied to enable compliant recyclers to have their facilities acknowledged as "pre-consented" facilities. This should significantly simplify waste shipments to such "pre-consented" facilities by minimizing the bureaucratic burden.

The aim of the concept is to ensure positive processing of such notifications within seven days, resulting in faster processing of materials, better economic conditions for recycling companies and much less effort on the part of the public authorities.

Recently the first Fast-Track Notification has been approved. Although this project has been successfully completed, there is still a lot of improvement potential in order to make the process more efficient. This would include the definition of a generally accepted business practice for the Fast Tracking Notification or the establishment of one centrally coordinating agency per EU country.