Producer responsibility of third-country producers in ecommerce

The research project examines changes to waste-management legislation which would ensure that producers with registered office outside the EU also meet their extended producer responsibility (EPR) obligations when selling electrical and electronic equipment, batteries and packaging via electronic marketplaces in Germany. Up to now, third-country free-riders take advantage of a ‘legal loophole’, which allows electronic marketplace operators and fulfilment service providers to accept producers without ensuring that these have complied with waste-law registration and notification obligations. The existing enforcement rules are inadequate for German authorities to take effective action against third-country free-riders. As a consequence, these have little incentive to contribute to the costs for collecting and disposing of waste electrical and electronic equipment or batteries and packaging. The project developes various proposals for addressing the free-rider problem in German legislation and examined their compatibility with constitutional, European and world-trade law. To introduce compulsory verification for electronic marketplace operators and fulfilment service providers is recommended as the most important measure.

In a thematically independent research question, the factual and legal situation regarding the handling of returned new goods by online traders is researched and analysed. For this purpose, it will be estimated to what extent and for what reasons online traders dispose of returned functional goods or put them to another use, e.g. through third-party marketing or donations. In addition, amendments to the legal framework are proposed, in particular to counteract the disposal of functional goods.