Michail Tremopoulos, on behalf of the Verts/ALE Group. – (EL) Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, we are a step away from an important agreement to improve the management of waste electrical and electronic equipment. Following an arduous consultation procedure with the Commission and the Council, we have arrived at a compromise text which we, the Group of the Greens/European Free Alliance, support. It is not a radical approach to the issue, but it is certainly an important step.

As the Group of the Greens, we pushed, in particular, for collection targets to be increased and calculated on the basis of the waste produced, for distributors to be forced to collect waste electrical and electronic equipment without any obligation to buy it from the consumer and for stricter controls of such waste to be introduced in terms of reuse and exportation to non-OECD countries.

We were the only group to make proposals on nanomaterials. We did not manage to squeeze a commitment out of manufacturers to state that waste electrical and electronic equipment contains nanomaterials, but we did manage to persuade the Commission to evaluate if selective treatment of nanomaterials in such waste is necessary.

I trust that Parliament will cast a positive vote and, of course, will deal with low collection rates, improvements to management and treatment and controls of illegal exports of waste electrical and electronic equipment to third countries.