The Environment Ministry's proposed amendment to the act on waste is to be discussed in fast-track proceedings in parliament as decided by MPs on Tuesday, October 16, the TASR newswire learned. A total of 99 legislators decided that the process of adopting this piece of legislation will, in effect, take several hours rather than several weeks.
The haste is due to the fact that Slovakia has failed to implement an EU directive on waste management that it was supposed to incorporate into its legislation by the end of 2010. Consequently, sanctions of €17,136 loom over the country for every day of delay in implementing the directive. It was reported in April of this year that Slovakia's failure to incorporate the waste directive framework into its legislation had resulted in the European Commission referring the matter to the European Court of Justice in Luxembourg.
Meanwhile, a European Commission report published in August revealed that Slovakia is ranked among the EU member countries with major shortcomings in implementing an efficient approach towards waste management. The report assessed all 27 EU member states using 18 criteria in areas such as total waste recycled, infringements of European legislation and the pricing of waste disposal. The results showed that "the member states with the largest implementation gaps are Bulgaria, Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Greece, Italy, Lithuania, Latvia, Malta, Poland, Romania and Slovakia".
(Source: TASR)
Compiled by Zuzana Vilikovská from press reports
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