The study "The proposed revision of the Waste Framework Directive: An assessment of the Impact Assessment and the Implications of the Integration of the Hazardous Waste Directive" examined the quality of the Impact Assessment issued by the European Commission on their proposal to amend the Waste Framework Directive and analysed the impacts of the suggested merger of the Hazardous Waste Directive with the Waste Framework Directive.

The current Waste Framework Directive (WFD) has been amended many times in the past decades. In December 2005, the European Commission adopted the Thematic Strategy on Waste Prevention and Recycling, which was accompanied by a proposal to amend the Waste Framework Directive (herein referred to as the DoW), which is fundamental to the implementation of many ideas put forward in the Strategy. Annexed to both the Strategy and legislative proposal was an Impact Assessment (IA) of both the Thematic Strategy and its immediate implementing measures. The proposed DoW would update the text of the WFD considerably, adding important new provisions and integrating requirements previously dealt with by the Hazardous Waste Directive (HWD) and the Waste Oils Directive (WOD). The proposed DoW would replace both of these Directives, as well as the WFD.

The aim of the study was to undertake an assessment for the European Parliament of the following two aspects of the proposed DoW:

• The IA of the proposed DoW; and
• selected potential changes to hazardous waste law resulting from the integration of the HWD into the proposed DoW.

Ecologic had the lead on the part on the impacts of the suggested merger of the Hazardous Waste Directive into the Waste Framework Directive.

The study is available for download [pdf, 1 MB, English].