On 30 June 2011 COCIR, MITA, JIRA and AMCHAM cosigned a Joint Contribution to the public consultation of the draft “Technical guidelines for the transboundary shipment of e-waste under the Basel Convention”.

The draft Guidelines identified set of requirements to be applied to the transboundary shipment of used EEE. Such criteria should be useful to stop the illegal shipment of e-waste to developing countries for illegal treatment and landfill, by helping custom authorities to distinguish between used EEE and waste EEE.

The HealthCare industry worldwide is worried about the set criteria as they could hinder if not prohibit legitimate shipment of used medical devices for repair, refurbishment, reprocessing, remanufacturing, root cause failure analysis or meeting regulatory requirements.

COCIR is also active in the context of the recast of the WEEE Directive where similar criteria have been added to the Annex VI.