FINAT Public Affairs Blog #5
The last few months saw a couple of major milestones: 31st of May 2018 was the third registration deadline for REACH, the European Chemicals regulation. The long-awaited Circular Economy Package was published in the official Journal in June, tightening recycling and landfilling targets and focusing in particular on the reduction of plastic waste in the so-called Plastic Strategy. In the area of Food Safety, the Commission announced a disappointing delay in its work on the highly anticipated EU measure on Printed Food Contact Materials.
Meanwhile, the discussion concerning the use of serialized labels in the EU falsified medicines directive still continues, with the expectation that the issue will be resolved in the upcoming version of the Q&A document. More information can be found in the presentation by Mr. Dieter Mößner given at the European Label Forum.
Sustainability and Recycling
Sustainable Brands - 17-19 April, Istanbul
The Sustainable Brands network, consisting of leading brandowners committed to sustainability, proved to be a great platform to spread the message on release liner recycling and other sustainability initiatives of the self-adhesive label industry, with talks with representatives of P&G, Unilever and many others. As a next step, we will discuss opportunities for presentations and promotion in future events.
CITPA Environmental and Product Safety Committee meetings – 8 May, Brussels
This meeting, which I unfortunately could not attend myself, focused on regulatory developments in the area of sustainability and recycling. Amongst others, the planned EU measure on Printed Food Contact Materials, the Circular Economy Package and the Product Environmental Footprint pilot projects were discussed.
Food Safety
UVFoodSafe Steering Group – 7 June, Dublin
A wide group of representatives met to discuss the different groups and tasks under the UVFoodSafe initiative. As a next step, leaders for the different subgroups will set up a project plan with deliverables and agree on the group membership.
BREF STS
ESVOC BREF STS meeting - 23 April, Brussels
Purpose of this meeting was to prepare and align the input from the industry for the workshop of the European Commission in Seville.
BREF STS Workshop – 5 June, Seville
In this meeting, comments from industry and Member States on the first draft of the new BREF STS document were discussed.
ESVOC BREF STS telcon – 11 June
This telcon was a debrief of the Workshop the week before, to agree on the key takeaways and the necessary actions.
Other
CEPI Specialty Paper meeting – 24 April, Cologne
At this meeting, I presented FINAT and the self-adhesive label industry to this CEPI group to discuss ways to work together.
Upcoming meetings in Q2 2018
- 27 June CEN Workshop, Milan on future needs of standardisation in the paper and board sector
This workshop aims to produce a CEN Workshop Agreement identifying the immediate standardization needs in the European paper and board value chain and describing them in an Industry Guideline.
- 28 June Product Environmental Footprint webconference
A webconference by Pré consultants, who worked on the FINAT-TLMI LCA project. Main topic will be the takeways and next steps of the Product Environmental Footprint pilot projects.