WSR draft implementing regulation on the interoperability of systems for electronic submission and exchange of information and documents

FEAD thanks the Commission for the draft document and possibility to provide feedback. FEAD has long promoted safe and efficient waste shipments as indispensable for the circular economy, most notably during the revision process that resulted in the new WSR. In these new rules, FEAD has particularly welcomed the digitalisation of procedures to increase the speed, efficiency, transparency, and traceability. Therefore, when laying down the detailed requirements for the electronic submission and exchange of information and documents, as per the draft implementing regulation at hand, it is of outmost importance that all tools provided in the new WSR to streamline procedures are also rigorously integrated.

In relation to the draft regulation, FEAD notes a number points that must be urgently revised, especially to ensure that simplification options under the WSR text are also possible in practice via DIWASS. These remarks align with the overall objective of the EU of reducing administrative burden:

1. The COM proposal is not in line with Article 15.5 of WSR 2024/1157 and with delegated regulation 2024/2571, and would represent an enormous increase of administrative burden, namely regarding:

• Requesting an ‘Art 15.5 subsequent operation certificate’ individually for each shipment. The possibility of making such certificates for several initial shipments of the same notification is explicitly allowed by Regulation 2024/2571, (see also the second subparagraph of paragraph 5 of Article 15 WSR). FEAD already raised strong concerns about the administrative burden if such certifications would be foreseen to be completed for each shipment.

• The fact that application is not limited to subsequent operations within the country of destination but also extended to cases where the subsequent operation takes place in another Member State or in a third country. Such limitation is explicitly set by paragraph 5 of Article 15 of WSR, while such other cases are specifically foreseen in paragraphs 7 and 8 of Article 15 WSR.

FEAD is seriously concerned about the additional administrative burden for all parties involved that would be generated by these iterative updates of the initial movement documents by each subsequent facility. Such transports to subsequent facilities are related, in most cases (except simple interim storage and simple pretreatment operations that does not significantly change the waste), to waste that are classified under another code and/or another waste designation. By consequence, there are no direct correspondence between the movement document related to waste that comes in the interim facility and the document related to the subsequent interim operation. Facilities in subsequent operations are in most case in a complex branched scheme and not in a simply linear chain. A facility can act in more than one occurrence in this scheme. In addition. such transports to subsequent facilities can take place in the same country (under the competence of the same competent authority or not), by intra-EU shipments (under a separate notification or under Annex VII) or with third countries (under separate notification or under Annex VII).

2. We do not see any specific reference in the proposed procedures to the simplification provided for in Article 9(3) WSR (renewal of previously authorised notifications). FEAD considers it very important to have an ad hoc procedure in the DIWASS delegated act whereby the notifier, by entering the previously authorised notification number into the system, can re-use the same data and attachments of the past notification, in which the notifier can then update:

• Only the quantity of waste subject to notification (obviously maintaining the type of waste, place of shipment, consignee, destination facility, countries of transit – as provided for in Art. 9(3))

• Some attachments (for example, list of carriers, new authorisations of the destination facility, new waste analyses, etc….)

The simplification allowed by Art. 9(3), by means of renewal of previously authorised notifications, can only be effectively used once DIWASS is fully operational. If it is not regulated now, the provisions of Art. 9(3) will be left to the discretionary judgement of the various competent authorities without the possibility of defining criteria that are as uniform as possible in the EU for notifiers.

3. The possibility of a general notification covering several shipments as foreseen by Art. 13 WSR is not sufficiently addressed. The draft act does not address the issue of how a submission should take place when several actors are involved, such as, for example, the original waste producer and another possible notifier under Art. 3(6). When a general notification under Art. 13 WSR takes place, the submission option should cover several notifiers, which we do not see foreseen by the current draft. All parties involved must use the same system, so that they can process the notification before it is submitted. There should be a draft version of a notification, which the parties involved can add their input to.

4. Carriers must be able to access the central system. Art. 5(2) of the draft act foresees that users representing operators acting in the roles referred to in Article 10(1), first subparagraph, point (d), shall access the central system through GUI or using an eFTI platform interconnected with the central system through an API. This, however, does not hold true for carriers, which will use their company’s WSR system via API. These carriers, however, must also be able to access the central system not only via GUI.

5. The operator and the user registration under Art. 6 and 7 must provide the possibility that service providers can work. It must be possible for providers (operators of portal applications for waste management stakeholders) to register companies and act as master users for these companies. Additionally, the providers must be able to download the companies’ data and upload new data via API access.

6. We would like to have a clarification on how the provisions in Articles 15(9) and 17(9) would work in practice and make sure that there will be no confusion potential for operators. According to Article 15(9), the notification number of movement document number cannot be used again, including for cancelled withdrawn or otherwise ineffective cases. Article 17(9) states that such cancelled movement document shall not be counted in the systems towards the number of movement documents that can be generated following a notification. If our interpretation is correct, this means that cancelled transports will no longer count towards the total amount of transports you can execute on a notification, however the specific number will be considered as used. If that is the case, on a notification with 100 transports of which 10 were cancelled, an operator would also be able to request transport 101-110. This will be very confusing on an operational level.

7. Article 19 on the storage requirements should be formulated more clearly. It is not sufficiently clear what information should be stored, if only the information that has been sent or also all the information stored internally.

8. Under Annex III, Number 19 to the draft act, only the notifier is mentioned as a suitable person to complete the notification. In Annex II Part A 19, it is written “This operation is used by the CA to close a completed notification.” So, it is unclear, who shall use this operation and for what purpose. This should be clarified.

9. There is no function for preparing a notification, only SUBMIT NOTIFICATION for submitting a completed notification. This becomes a problem if the original waste producer and notifier are different. And if this is the case and the producer and notifier work in different systems, the notification must first be exchanged between the software providers.

10. With regard to the EU-LoginID, it must be ensured that the UserID is connected to the person involved (the person behind). This is not sufficiently clear under the current draft.

11. Identification of third countries by their EORI number alone will create confusion. This would be the case, for example, when a waste recipient shares the same EORI number with their different recovery facilities.

12. Visibility on how the connection of operators’ software to these new platforms will be handled is lacking. Additional provisions regarding the timeframe, the means to establish such connection, the need for a dedicated group to address IT development issues are needed so that operators have enough visibility to establish the specifications for the evolution of their software.

13. It should be avoided that the system will operate based on the attachment of documents that include the relevant information, rather than the relevant information being immediately submitted.

14. FEAD would welcome a test system for the private sector to check and practice the functioning before the system will have to be used mandatorily. Moreover, it is unclear how the costs for this system will be covered, for example, if they will have to be borne by the national authorities implementing the system.

FEAD is committed to the important work of digitalising and simplifying waste shipments and remains available to contribute with its experience and expertise in the matter. We acknowledge that such a system will require time and effort to be properly implemented in practice and would welcome a closer involvement of the private waste management industry, as the impacts on our sector– not least the costs – are very significant.

FEAD is the European Waste Management Association, representing the private waste and resource management industry across Europe, including 20 national waste management federations and 3,000 waste management companies. Private waste management companies operate in 60% of municipal waste markets in Europe and in 75% of industrial and commercial waste. This means more than 320,000 local jobs, fuelling €5 billion of investments into the economy every year.

For more information: contact us at info@fead.be