EU won’t back down to oil states in plastic treaty talks

The European Union has sent a strong message to oil and plastic-producing countries: "We will fight to the end to secure the plastic treaty we want," News.az reports citing Politico.

Hungarian Environment Minister Anikó Raisz said the EU is "not interested in a waste management convention," pushing back on oil-rich and plastic-producing countries who want it to focus on waste management only.

With Hungary holding the rotating presidency of the Council of the EU, Raisz has been representing the bloc during the talks.

Oil-rich countries like Iran, Russia and Saudi Arabia are seen as the biggest impediment to a deal that goes to the root of the plastic pollution crisis: production. Almost all plastic is made from oil and gas.

"We do think that if we want to call it a plastic pollution convention, plastic pollution ... cannot be tackled without tackling the upstream issues," Raizs said. "That's a very important point for us."


Another country that has been more reluctant to reduce plastic production is China — the world's number one producer and consumer of plastic. "We still hope that there can be a version that can be acceptable for us all and get China on board with having production [in the treaty]," she said.

The EU, alongside more than 100 other countries and the U.K., on Thursday backed a new proposal spearheaded by Panama pushing for a global target to reduce plastic production to “sustainable levels.”

That's been integrated into a new draft text for the treaty — alongside an alternative option of not touching plastic production at all.

The proposal suggests defining the precise reduction target at a later date in an attempt to show "flexibility," said Raisz, "but we really would like to have meaningful results."

"We are convinced that as we, so far, haven't invented a recycling process that may help us recycle 100 percent of the plastics that are produced on Earth, we need to reduce production in the sense that we reach a sustainable level of production," she added.

In a press conference Friday, Panamanian official Juan Carlos Monterrey Gómez was more blunt: "We seek the leadership of our colleagues that until this point are not committed to production reduction ... but if they are not willing to lead, please leave it to the rest of us and get out of the way."

News.Az