Last November 18th, EGARA had her Fall Meeting in Brussels. New to the group were Carina Hagström from Sweden and Kari Laine and Veli-Matti from Finland. We were also very happy to welcome Mrs. Artemis Hatzi-Hull for the morning session.
Main items were:
Stakeholder consultation on missing ELV’s. Many have contributed to this consultation and the results are discussed at November 21st and 22nd. What is special, is that for this issue 2 DG’s coöperate: DG Environment and DG Move. For Environmental reasons, a good vehicle registration is necessary. Now too many possibilities exist in the current national systems to drop out without knowing what happened exactly with the vehicle. Every year 3.5 million vehicles at least are missing which is way too much. Missing vehicles are an EGARA item also which was confirmed during the meeting.
VAT margin scemes. In some countries the full VAT rate has to be paid over used parts. This means VAT is paid twice. EGARA is doing a questionnaire to find some bast practises that could help some members to convince their governments to work out margin scemes for our spare parts. Paying the full rate means not only paying twice, it’s also a disadvantage to illegals who pay no VAT at all. Denmark started a court case and so far it was concluded that spare parts are second hand goods. (This is also good news for the ones living in a country that qualifies spare parts as waste.) In the beginning of 2017 the court’s decision is expected (ECJ case C-471/15).
Ownership EV batteries. It becomes clear that some manufacturers do not want EV batteries to be used for reuse in (for instance) household energy storage. It seems that in case of replacement of worn batteries, the old ones stay within the producers network. But in case of accident vehicles or (in a few years) EV ELV’s, they end up in our companies. As long as there no contractual limitations with others like producers or insurance companies, we are owners. In any discussion it should be defined first what we are talking about exacly to avoid any confusions.
Parts data. This is still an issue. We seek for possibilities to get acces to producers info. At this moment there are 88 brands, 4030 types and 86320 types. It’s not getting any easier.
Persistant Organic Pollutants. In some countries POP’s keep popping up as an item. Producers have stated that POP’s are no longer used, in trails hardly any POP’s are found, but still some governments seem to find POP’s more urgent than good registration or enforcement against illegals.
IARC. EGARA will speak at the International Automotive Recyclers Congress in Berlin. We had contact with the organisation and we are happy to get some speaking time in the morning of March 23rd.
In all we had a fruitful meeting. It was a good contact moment with the EGARA board and the EC. We are happy to have these short lines with both our members as well as with the EC.
Next meeting will be the Spring Meeting in Helsinki on May, 19-20.
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