Germany’s Bundestag amended the Batteries Act on Thursday, 17 September 2020. The CDU/CSU, SPD and FDP parties agreed to the federal government’s bill to amend the Batteries Act (19/19930, 19/22364 No. 1.19) in the version amended by the Environmental Committee (19/22607). The AfD, the Left party and Bündnis 90/Die Grünen (the green party) voted against the bill. The opinion of the Bundesrat (Germany’s upper house) and the counter-statement by the federal government were also tabled for a vote to be taken (19/21610). In future, this will be based on a purely competitive system between the manufacturers’ own take-back systems.
Motions from the Left party group on deposits for electrical appliances and batteries (19/19642) and by the Bündnis 90/Die Grünen on stopping the waste of resources in waste batteries (19/20562) were rejected.
The association VERE e.V. (Association for Take-back and Recycling of Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment) endorses the rejection of deposits for portable batteries and had also opposed it strongly in advance.
Owing to new market conditions, the government wanted to ensure a smooth process of collection and disposal of used portable batteries and wanted to amend the Batteries Act for this reason.
According to the government, the objective is to establish fair competitive conditions for all manufacturers’ own take-back systems and uniform requirements for the systems themselves and for take-back by such systems. In order to ensure uniform standards of assessment, the task of registering manufacturers and approving take-back systems is to be carried out by the EAR Foundation in a bundled manner in the future.
If you have any questions on the Batteries Act, please do not hesitate to contact the take-e-way GmbH consultants by calling +49/40/750687-0 or sending an e-mail message to beratung@take-e-way.de.
