Page 22 from: December 2011

22 December 2011

EU manufacturers and importers of electrical and electronic equipment

should be well aware of their obligations under the EU’s WEEE

Directive and under the RoHS Directive covering restriction of the use

of certain hazardous substances in the self-same equipment. But what

about batteries contained in such products? This article assesses the

key points to consider and comes to the conclusion that, when selling

electrical and electronic equipment, your obligations do not end with

the WEEE and RoHS Directives.

ucts. However, regarding the scope of the direc-

tive, Article 2 provides that the directive ‘shall

apply without prejudice to Directives 2000/53/

EC and 2002/96/EC’. Directive 2000/53/EC cov-

ers vehicles and end-of life vehicles (ELVs) as

well as their components and materials, while

Directive 2002/96/EC is the WEEE Directive.

This means that products required to comply

with the ELV or the WEEE Directives may still

be obligated under the Batteries Directive.

Furthermore, Article 2 of the Batteries Directive

provides that it ‘shall not apply to batteries and

accumulators used in: (a) equipment connect-

ed with the protection of Member States’ essen-

tial security interests, arms, munitions and war

material, with the exclusion of products that are

not intended for specifically military purposes;

and (b) equipment designed to be sent into

space. This further emphasises that the Batteries

Directive covers not only batteries that are sup-

plied separately, but also batteries supplied

along with or inside other kinds of equipment.

Individual evaluation
Even though the Batteries Directive imposes

obligations on batteries and accumulators

similar to those on electrical or electronic equip-

ment under the WEEE and RoHS Directives,

the practical reality is that they are separate

regimes whose specific obligations must be

evaluated individually. For instance, both the

WEEE and the Batteries Directives effectively

require EU manufacturers and importers to

register the electrical/electronic equipment or

the batteries, respectively, with the national reg-

ister where they are placed on the market. (Arti-

cle 12 of the WEEE Directive requires Member

States to set up a register of producers and Arti-

cle 17 of the Batteries Directive requires Mem-

ber States to ensure each producer is registered.)

Both directives also require schemes to be set up

for the separate collection of electrical/electronic

equipment and batteries. However, as transposed

and implemented in the Member States, these

registration and collection processes differ when

applied to batteries as opposed to electrical and

electronic equipment. For example, some Mem-

ber States have opted to combine the registration

requirement for electrical/electronic equipment

and for batteries so that producers only need to

register once with one national register (eg, in

Austria and France). Other Member States, how-

ever, have separate national registers for electrical/

electronic equipment and for batteries (eg, Slo-

Obligations under the EU’s Directive on Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment
(WEEE) include registration, setting up or par-

ticipating in a scheme for separate collection and

recycling, specific labelling requirements, provid-

ing information for customers, and reporting

requirements. Meanwhile, obligations under the

EU Directive covering restriction of the use of

certain hazardous substances in electrical and

electronic equipment (RoHS) focus on reducing

the presence of six such substances to below

specified maximum concentration levels.

The WEEE Directive is in the final stages of a

major revision whereas the revised RoHS

Directive was published on July 1 this year. The

deadline for Member States to incorporate the

new RoHS requirements into their national

legislation is January 2 2013.

Compliance with the WEEE and RoHS Direc-

tives does not extend to batteries contained in,

or sold along with, electrical and electronic

equipment because they do not cover registra-

tion, separate collection, reporting, labelling,

heavy metals restrictions and other producer

obligations for the batteries themselves. In the

EU, batteries contained or sold along with elec-

trical and electronic equipment must still com-

ply with the Batteries Directive.

All battery types
According to its Article 2, the Batteries Directive

applies to ‘all types of batteries and accumulators,

regardless of their shape, volume, weight, mate-

rial composition or use’, and therefore covers

batteries as tiny as those used in medical devices

or watches as well as to large industrial batteries.

The Batteries Directive never explicitly states

that it covers also batteries supplied inside prod-

L E G I S L A T I O N By Tzvi Levinson and Tina Bao

Batteries
not included?

p22_WEEE-Battery Directive.indd 22 30-11-11 08:52