As reported by EUWID, the Federal Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety (BMUKN) published a revised draft bill for a law to adapt national battery legislation to the new EU Batteries Regulation (EU) 2023/1542 on 27 May 2025. This specifies the requirements for producers, take-back systems and authorities and replaces the draft from April 2024, which was passed by the old federal government but could not be finalised due to the early elections. The requirements of the EU Batteries Regulation from Section 8 (waste management) must be transposed into national law by 18 August 2025. The Batteries Regulation has been directly applicable in all member states since February 2024. The separate national regulations are intended to implement the opening clauses for national legislators provided for in the regulation as well as specific regulatory mandates addressed to the member states.
Statement of the VERE Association
VERE e.V. has once again submitted a statement on the draft bill for an act to adapt the battery law to Regulation (EU) 2023/1542, which, as with the first statement on the previous draft, focuses on the area of industrial batteries, but nevertheless takes a holistic view of the law. Here are the most important aspects of the VERE statement:
- VERE suggests that the legal structure be amended so that the trade mark is not a constituent part of the registration, but can be merely informative (without the need for examination by the competent authority).
- The chemical composition of the battery is not necessary information for the actual registration process with the competent authority and, from VERE's point of view, should ideally be omitted or at least summarised as broadly as possible.
- VERE welcomes the now more clearly formulated option for producers to fulfil their obligations individually.
- VERE expressly welcomes the consideration of the criticism previously expressed by the association regarding the level of the security deposit, but points out that the placing on the market of industrial batteries will become more expensive as a result of the security deposit and thus the incentives to circumvent this German law will remain high.
- With regard to the obligation to take back batteries which the seller sells or has sold as new batteries in his range, VERE suggests a clear specification (e.g. a time limit of one year to a maximum of three years), as it is presumably not the intention of the legislator that sellers who have ever sold batteries of a certain category in their range are obliged to take them back at all times. In this context, VERE also suggests a restrictive formulation such as "batteries with the same area of application and comparable functionality" in order to avoid stationary micro-sellers being obliged to take back large storage units weighing several tonnes free of charge.
- In VERE's view, the labelling of collection points should be differentiated so that end users who wish to dispose of batteries can clearly assign the collection points to their battery category. VERE believes that standardised labelling for take-back and collection points across all battery categories is counterproductive.
- In VERE's view, the period of one month for subsequent notification or correction of data is too short and impractical, as previous practice has often shown that producers have had to correct incorrectly determined quantities, sometimes for years. VERE therefore believes that the correction period must be kept open for as long as possible (= permanently).
- VERE welcomes the efforts to establish a modern, digitised authority with automated administrative procedures that can dispense with unnecessary manual administrative tasks.
The complete statement of the VERE Association can be downloaded here (in German language) from the website of the Federal Ministry for the Environment.
VERE e.V. will be happy to keep you informed about further developments. Would you also like to have your interests represented by a strong SME association? Then join our VERE e.V. today: Thanks to our many thousands of members, the annual membership fee is only 25.00 euros plus VAT (cancellable annually). You can find the VERE membership application form here: Become a member now!
