According to the European Commission’s recent ‘End of Life’ vehicle directive, a large part of Europe’s ambitious vehicle recycling plan has gone missing, writes retired policeman Dr Ken German; a former president of the UK branch of the International Association of Auto Theft Investigators (IAATI).
IAATI UK Branch are running their 2018 National Vehicle Crime Conference on June 6 and 7 at Loughborough.
It has been discovered in a European Commission report that 3.5 million of the estimated ten million end-of-life cars in Europe have not been recorded as either having been de-registered or scrapped and appear to have simply disappeared into the ether. These 3.5 million missing cars relate to not only millions of tons of metal, plastic, rubber and glass that will not get recycled but also between 20 million and 55 million litres of hazardous liquids such as oil, air conditioner fluid and fuel that won’t be collected and dealt with. This has left the European Commission no option other than to declare an environmental hazard; except they do not know where it is!
This missing fleet of vehicles has become a real headache for the for the Commission’s circular economy package which under EU rules prescribes that these now defunct vehicles when found must be stripped of all hazardous substances by authorised dismantlers in safe surroundings and that at least 85 percent of the car’s weight be recycled. Interestingly the commission assumes that about 5 percent may simply have been stolen and not recorded as recovered.
If the commission is right that 5pc of 3.5 million vehicles are stolen that is 175,000 missing cars no one knows about! Interestingly Interpol with 7.19 million records of stolen motor vehicles on its database used by 126 countries worldwide identified 118,000 vehicles as stolen last year.
They also believe that Illegal exports to countries in the Middle East where European end of life cars can be cheaply repaired might account for another unknown percentage of the missing total, whilst others simply have ‘fallen through the cracks’ never to be seen again. This may be where a car is sold second hand in one country, but never de-registered in its original country of origin, translating into a missing vehicle. By way of explanation the bulk of the missing cars are presumed to be lost in Europe’s illegal ‘black market’ of dismantling.
The End of Life Vehicle Directive, passed in 2000, says that manufacturers and importers themselves must arrange for the handling of old cars and meet either all, or a significant part of the costs. Companies can either negotiate with dismantlers or set up extended producer responsibility (EPR) programs and charge a fee to new car buyers to cover end-of-life costs.
The EPR systems vary from country to country. Anywhere from three to four euros per car is charged in Finland and Austria to 66 euros in Slovakia. In the Netherlands car owners pay a yearly road use charge. They also have to report any changes in ownership and a final scrapping to the national vehicle register to get it de-registered, otherwise they continue to pay the fee. Germany has no end-of-life fees but instead authorizes car salvage companies to pay a small amount to the final owner thus earning a profit by selling on spare parts and scrap materials. In Denmark, car owners pay a minimum annual recycling fee of 11 euros, which accumulates over the car’s life. The final owner gets the money when the car is scrapped with a legitimate dismantler.
What the directive forbids is that the car owner at its demise is charged thus avoiding the problem of cars being abandoned to avoid the fee. Clearly there is an underworld of illegal car scrappers who don’t follow the EU’s safety and environmental rules by flouting the law and offering higher prices to car owners thus undermining the authorised salvage companies. The Commission suggests the illegal collection and shipment of cars is a flourishing business and the worst offender is Poland where more than a million cars went missing each year from 2010 to 2013, accounting for 85 percent of all vehicles being scrapped.
Italy and Spain followed with more than half a million missing cars each, whilst 85 percent of vehicles in Finland and 57 percent in Belgium were scrapped illegally. In 2015 the UK closed 989 scrap yards operating illegally. In the EU, the trafficking of illicit waste is typically carried out by major organised crime groups operating globally with the assistance of their ‘legal’ business structures, corruption and money laundering activities.
Recently the police from the Europol and Ameripol agencies operating out of Spain with the Guardia Civil dismantled a criminal group illegally trading in used car tyres being exported to 17 countries across Africa, America and Europe. The criminal gang acquired 200,000 used tyres from Spain and other European countries, particularly where tyres are generally changed early; and then sold them illegally to countries in Africa, America and Europe obtaining profits amounting to two million euros. As a result of the five year investigations 17 premises were searched and nine people have been arrested with five more under investigation arrested.
Whatever EU-wide system is chosen in 2020 to close this loop in the Commission’s circular economy it will face resistance from the car industry who see this as a power grab by Brussels and that ultimately someone will have to pick up the tab for scrapping those millions of missing cars that might magically reappear.
Picture by Mark Rowe; graffiti, downtown Glasgow.
