Under the Waste Shipment Regulation adopted in 2024, the EU will stop exporting waste to non-OECD countries as a general principle from 21 May 2027, with an earlier, narrower ban on plastic waste exports specifically to non-OECD countries already set to take effect from 21 November 2026, the deadline Recycling Europe flagged in its own position paper earlier this year as a source of concern for landfilling and incineration volumes without adequate domestic processing capacity in place. As an exception to the broader 2027 rule, non-OECD countries can request continued authorisation to receive EU waste if they can demonstrate the capacity to manage it sustainably; 32 countries have submitted such requests, and the Commission's assessment of these requests, summarised alongside the draft list, is now open for stakeholder feedback until 16 October.

Separately, the Commission published its assessment of plastic waste exports specifically to Türkiye, the EU's largest OECD destination for such waste, which received 510,000 tonnes out of the EU's total 1.4 million tonnes of plastic waste exports in 2025. While the report acknowledges that Türkiye has strengthened its waste management legislation and enforcement, including through increased controls and higher fines, it flags continuing gaps in transparency around waste generation and treatment data, insufficient information on how legislation prevents environmental harm from imported waste, and unclear governance arrangements, issues the Commission says it intends to raise directly with Turkish authorities.

The tightening rules add to a broader set of dynamics already reshaping the EU's plastic recycling landscape, including the harmonised End-of-Waste criteria for chemical recycling that Cefic and Recycling Europe have separately called on the Commission to develop, and the recycled content mandates now taking effect under the End-of-Life Vehicles Regulation and the Packaging and Packaging Waste Regulation, all converging on the same underlying question of how much of the EU's plastic waste ends up processed domestically rather than shipped abroad.

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