LUXEMBOURG (CN) — The EU’s top court has invalidated some electronic-waste disposal rules, ruling Tuesday that the Czech green-energy company Vysočina Wind does not have to foot the bill for the disposal of solar panels. The duty falls on manufacturers.
The case was referred to the European Court of Justice by the Nejvyšší soud, the Supreme Court of Czech Republic, after Vysočina Wind sued Prague for forcing it to pay for the disposal of photovoltaic panels in 2015 and 2016.
The EU first passed the Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment Directive, or WEEE Directive, in 2003, aiming to reduce the amount of hazardous waste placed in household trash as well as standardizing rules for disposal across the 27 member states. The regulation has been updated several times, including a 2012 update that required “polluters” to pay for the disposal of solar panels. Previous versions of the legislation allowed countries to decide who would be obligated to foot the bill: manufacturer or users. The Czech Republic opted to require users, such as Vysočina Wind, to pay for disposal.
Vysočina Wind sued in a Czech court, arguing it was the manufacturers that should pay, and was successful. Czech authorities repeatedly appealed the verdicts, with the case eventually ending up at the Supreme Court.
Tuesday’s decision out of Luxembourg marks Vysočina Wind the winner again. The 15-judge panel found that the legislation required producers, not users to pay for disposal, referring to a recommendation the court received in 2021. “For such panels, [the directive] provides that the financing of the costs for the collection, treatment, recovery and environmentally sound disposal of such equipment is to be provided for by producers,” Advocate General Juliane Kokott wrote last year.
The court also found fault with the timing of the directive. The regulation included all solar panels on the market since 2005, despite coming into effect in 2012. The Grand Chamber held that this was unfair to manufacturers. “Producers of photovoltaic panels were unable to foresee, when designing the panels, that they would subsequently be required to provide for the financing of the costs relating to the management of waste from those panels,” the court wrote in a statement.
The European Union has set ambitious goals to reduce its dependence on fossil fuels, aiming to be climate neutral by 2050. To date, however, only 3.6% of the bloc’s energy usage comes from solar, according to the European Commission. It is funding research into improving the efficiency and storage of solar power.
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