The Evolution of Municipal Waste Management in Europe: how Different are National Regimes

International audienceThe 1994 European directive on packaging waste let a diversity of conceptions of waste management to be developed and tested by reality in various countries. Such a diversity may raise drawbacks related to the achievement of the single market and the European law of competition. The paper describes the main differences in the regimes in five countries: France, Germany, the Netherlands, Italy and Greece. This comparative approach allows to identify four main variables in order to characterise policy regimes, which explain the degree of orientation of waste regimes to cost-effectiveness. A second result is to show that, in each country, implementation has resulted in learning, correction and self-regulation, which have reduced the initial divergences between national regimes. So an efficient harmonisation may be unexpectedly achieved by such a soft way without passing stringent European directives. Moreover, by playing the option of experimenting competing organisational and policy concepts, this approach of the European harmonisation would allow to reveal in 2004 the cost-effectiveness of alternative solutions at a moment when the European policy has to be reconsidered