MSW management in EU Accession Countries

Ever pondered over how much they recycle in Romania, how much landfilling is liked in Latvia, whether Cypriots covet compost and so on through all the EU members-in-waiting?



Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Hungary, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Cyprus, Malta



Eurostat have just produced a comprehensive overview of waste management in these states which makes interesting reading.



The first chapter of the study is a description of the situation of waste management in the 12 accession countries. All information available at EU and national level was used to prepare this information. The following chapter deals with data on municipal waste management that was collected with the Joint Questionnaire. The study concludes with a chapter that provides an outlook, trying to assemble the most important elements of current and future waste management and statistics in accession countries. Finally, the annex gives a complete overview of the current EU waste reporting obligations.



Waste management in the candidate countries needs still further development despite the enormous efforts undertaken in the past. The situation which confronts the candidate countries is enormously demanding because they have not only to reach a certain stage of development already achieved by EU Member States but have also to reach the difficult and costly objectives as formulated in the landfill directive which even most EU Member States have not yet attained.



Although the situation is quite different from country to country, important general problems, relevant to most of the countries, should be noted.



Most countries have to face the following crucial waste management problems:



treatment and disposal facilities are not completely established and equipped according to the conditions formulated in the EU waste framework directive treatment and disposal is restricted to landfilling the systems established for municipal waste collection services are not covering the whole country and/or not collecting separate fractions



The waste management problems listed above are dealt with by a developing administration still under construction. The following points can be seen as the main administrative problems:

regional and municipal authorities dedicated to the supervision of waste collection, treatment and disposal have not yet been completely established or the operators have not yet been recruited

the registration of enterprises carrying out waste management, which is requested by national law, has not yet been completed

the administrative handling of the enterprise documents (licenses, waste declarations and waste reports) has just started and consequently supervision is still just developing

Eurostat tell me that the study is free. this means that I can send you a copy if you like, or you can collect it from the following address:



http://europa.eu.int/comm/eurostat/Public/datashop/print-catalogue/EN?catalogue=Eurostat&theme=8-Environment%20and%20Energy&product=KS-47-02-301-N-EN