Point of view of the PRO WEEE Coalition, an organization that represents, in 2025, 49% of the quantities of EEE placed on the market and 55% of the quantity of WEEE collected
Romania needs better performance in collecting waste electrical and electronic equipment. The question is not whether we need to increase results, but how we do it: through a functional, coherent and reality-based system or through financial pressure that risks affecting the very mechanisms we should be strengthening.
From the perspective of the PRO WEEE Coalition, any intervention on the compliance mechanism must start from the real capacity of the system to collect, transport, treat and report correctly, not just from the legitimate intention to increase pressure to achieve targets.
An increase in the penalty may seem, at first glance, a simple solution. In practice, however, financial pressure does not act in vain. It intervenes in an ecosystem already marked by insufficient infrastructure, partial traceability, volatility in access to waste and imbalances between the actors who bear the costs and those who effectively influence the flows. In such a context, an increase from 2 lei/kg to 4 lei/kg risks producing additional costs and tensions in the market rather than a real and sustainable increase in collection.
An effective WEEE management system is not built through sanctions alone. It is built through infrastructure, coordination and clear rules. Romania needs accessible collection points, real geographical coverage, services available at national level, unified information campaigns and a functional coordination mechanism between the actors involved. When these elements are missing or incompletely functioning, the penalty does not solve the problem, but only transfers the cost of the system's non-functioning to the actors at the end of the compliance chain.
In this context, the development of infrastructure through voluntary collection centers (CAV) can represent an exceptional step, provided that this infrastructure is implemented with the real application of the proximity principle. For the citizen, easy and predictable access to the drop-off points is essential. Infrastructure only produces effects when it is close to the community, easy to use and integrated into a clear system of services. Equally, the success of the CAV network will also depend on a proactive usage campaign, which makes these points visible, easy to understand and effectively used by citizens.
There is, moreover, an increasingly evident paradox between the European direction and the way in which the compliance mechanism in the WEEE field is built today. On the one hand, the European Union is clearly moving in the direction of extending the life of products, stimulating repair and reducing waste generation. The Right to Repair Directive and the new ESPR framework send exactly this signal: products must be more durable, more repairable and more compatible with the circular economy. On the other hand, in the Romanian WEEE area, compliance remains defined almost exclusively by the obligation to collect and recycle, under the pressure of a penalty.
This is where the fundamental contradiction arises. In a genuine circular economy, the first priority should be to keep the product in use for as long as possible, not to hasten its transformation into waste to meet an administrative target. As long as repair is not truly incentivized, and failure to meet the collection target remains the main sanctionable benchmark, we risk reversing the natural order of the circular economy and treating end-of-life as the main performance benchmark.
One of the clearest examples of the lack of correlation between the methodology and the reality on the market is that of photovoltaic panels. For 2026, the target calculated at 65% of the average EEE placed on the market in the previous 3 years reaches 268.179 tons, while the target calculated at 85% of the WEEE generated is 220.301 tons, and the total WEEE generated is estimated at 259.177 tons. Furthermore, 54.000 tons of the target for 2026 comes from the increase in the volumes of photovoltaic panels placed on the market, although the actual waste generation is only a few hundred tons.
Here is the essential problem: photovoltaic panels have a long lifespan — 20 years of manufacturer warranty and 22,5 years of duration recognized in European calculation tools — but the target calculation system treats them after a cycle of only 3 years. In other words, the product enters the equation of the collection obligation long before it actually becomes waste. This creates an artificial target, accounting rather than operational, and risks penalizing a lack of available waste, not a lack of performance.
Therefore, before any contribution increase, An independent and updated study is needed on the quantities of WEEE actually available for collection in Romania, by equipment category. An effective public policy must be based on realistic assessments, solid data and a correct understanding of how waste actually becomes available for collection.
The economic effects of an increase are, moreover, predictable. A higher contribution tends to increase the market value of reportable WEEE, intensify competition for access to quantities and raise compliance costs. In other words, a further increase risks fuelling a cost spiral transferred further down the commercial chain and, ultimately, to the consumer.
The risk of institutional instability should not be ignored either. The additional financial pressure on organisations taking over responsibility from producers could generate severe imbalances, especially in a system where tariffs have already been eroded by competition from new entrants who benefit from the absence of a collection target upon entry. In parallel, the priority should be to build a private coordination system, efficient and transparent, with the participation of all relevant actors, capable of distributing responsibilities and costs in a balanced manner in the market.
This coordination system must be based on real data, on national coverage of collection services and on unitary awareness and continuous information campaigns, so as to support compliance through the functionality of the system, not just through sanctions. Equally, it is necessary to strengthen traceability, so that WEEE flows can be clearly and verifiably tracked.
Ultimately, the stakes are not just about hitting an annual target. The stakes are what kind of circular economy we want to build. One in which we focus first on prevention, sustainability, repair and responsible use of resources? Or one in which compliance is defined almost exclusively by the amount of waste that enters, under administrative pressure, the recycling circuit?
From the perspective of the PRO WEEE Coalition, the response must be balanced, pragmatic and oriented towards real results. In the field of WEEE, the real challenge is not to make the penalty higher, but to make the system smarter, more balanced and more compatible with the authentic logic of the circular economy.
Author: Alexandra C.Ghenea – Executive Director of the PRO WEEE Coalition www.prodeee.ro
