Waste Management Regulations and Approaches in the EU: Potential Areas for Enhancement or Harmonization

This paper describes the results of a survey and study performed for the European Commission on “Regulations Governing Radioactive Waste Disposal in EU Countries”. Its main purposes were to provide a survey of the regulations governing the disposal of all forms of radioactive waste in all EU Members States and, based on this study, to consider the potential for harmonization in different regulatory areas. Three key parts of the study are presented and the results discussed: collection and assessment of national data, including its verification by national stakeholders, application of multiattribute analysis methodology to identify optimal waste classification scheme and a workshop of national authorities regulating disposal of radioactive waste. For five determined regulatory issues, the workshop carried out a “strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats” (SWOT) analysis of the impacts of harmonization. Opinions expressed in the paper are those of the authors and do not represent the EC’s official position.