This project was based mainly on the requirements addressed in the Annex I of the Regulation (EC) No 66/2010 of the European Parliament.
The following issues were addressed:
1: Product definition and categorization of the product group
2: Economic and market analysis
3: Technical analysis
4: Improvement potential
5: Elaboration of draft criteria and technical background reports
This project began in October 2017 with a scoping questionnaire asking for opinions about the then existing criteria for ‘Hard Coverings’ set out in Commission Decision 2009/607/EC and concluded with a webinar in April 2021 about the new revised criteria adopted in Commission Decision (EU) 2021/476.
During the revision process, a first stakeholder meeting was held via 3 webinars in December 2018 to discuss the preliminary research and initial proposals for revisions (in Technical Report v1.0). Following feedback and further research, a second stakeholder meeting was held in Brussels in October 2019 to discuss the latest proposals (in Technical Report v2.0). More feedback, further research and bilateral discussions led to the next proposals, which were presented to the EU Ecolabelling Board in February 2020 (in Technical Report v3.0). Feedback from the EU Ecolabelling Board was taken into account and the proposals were then subjected to Inter-Service Consultation with other Directorate Generals of the Commission. Finally, the criteria proposals were voted positively by the EU Ecolabelling Board in November 2020 and, after passing through scrutiny of the European Parliament and of the Council, were officially adopted and published in the Official Journal of the European Union in March 2021.
The final activity of the EU Ecolabel criteria revision project was an explanatory session held via webinar on the 20 April 2021 to explain in more detail how the criteria should be applied and to introduce participants to the User Manual. The User Manual files and the slides and recording of the webinar should be available on the DG ENV website.
The Manual containing Green Public Procurement criteria is under development.