Focus on… Lithuania

New proposals for WEEE, batteries and packaging

10 May 2023

At the end of January 2023, the Lithuanian Ministry of Environment published a package of regulatory changes affecting the EPR regimes for WEEE, batteries and packaging.

From 2024, the Draft of Waste Management Law 1998 June 16 No. VIII-787 proposes to set new definitions of producer, importer and put on the market applicable to producers of batteries, electrical and electronic equipment, and packaging.

It also provides details on setting up the financial guarantee for all three waste streams. Producers are obliged to sign a contract with only one PRO for each waste stream.

Another changed regulatory instrument – Draft of Packaging and Packaging Waste Management Law 2001 September 25 No. IX-517 – proposes the following changes to the EPR regime for packaging:

Excluding packaging of products used for country security interests and defence of the territory from the registration obligation, and
Requesting distributors of plant protection products to accept packaging from those products, and giving producers of such packaging the possibility to set up their own collection systems or join collective ones

The biggest change within the package proposes to affect the Environmental Taxation Law of 1999 May 13 No. VIII-1183, which currently regulates the environmental pollution tax payment for batteries and packaging.

The draft proposes new or adjusted wording of articles related to exemption from tax payment (maintaining the opt-out option when a collection or deposit system is established ), indexation of the tax rate, and the basis of calculation of the tax for packaging, which is recyclable and non-recyclable.

Although the obligation to collect the tax from non-recyclable packaging is postponed to 2025, the draft imposes the tax payment on such packaging without exemptions, enforcing at the same time a non-recyclable packaging tax obligation.

Lithuania is one of the jurisdictions covered by Landbell Group’s regulatory tracking service. Find out more about the service here.