Alexandra Aragão - Pontevedra Province, ES-PT

The province of Pontevedra is implementing the Interreg project ESTRAEE (Cross-border sustainable strategy for the management of WEEE, in English) to create a secondary raw material market favouring the implementation of a circular economy for waste of electrical and electronic equipment (WEEE) in the cross border area between Spain and Portugal.

However, the absence of unified environmental management criteria for the waste of electrical and electronic equipment impedes a cross-border treatment of the electrical and electronic equipment. To resolve this hurdle, the province of Pontevedra presented the Advice Case “Consolidation of the circular economy concerning the WEEE” (ES-PT) in the framework of the pilot initiative b-solutions.

The legal expert Alexandra Aragão suggests following solutions to achieve harmonised standards for waste of electrical and electronic equipment:

• dedicated trainings could be organised by bilingual legal support centres to facilitate the simultaneous fulfilment of legal procurement obligations in both countries. For instance, the Portuguese electronic public procurement platform (www.base.gov.pt) could be used to award the simultaneous construction of the reception centres in Portugal and Spain;
• Interreg funds could be used to promote the standardisation of the technical options for collection centres. The presence of the same design and functioning rules would indeed facilitate the work of the staff involved, resulting in higher rates of material treated and re-used.

Professor Aragão’s full report on the Advice Case “Consolidation of the circular economy concerning the WEEE” offers a complete insight on the obstacles identified and the solutions proposed.

The information here provided have been developed in the framework of b-solutions, an initiative of the European Comission’s DG REGIO managed by the Association of European Border Regions (AEBR).

The reports here included are the result of a consultation provided by legal/cross-border cooperation experts on obstacles of a legal or administrative nature - referred to as Advice Cases - selected in the framework of the II Call for Proposals of the initiative b-solutions.