There is a need to strengthen the capacity of Market Surveillance Authorities (MSAs) to conduct Ecodesign related market surveillance activities with respect to new and pending industrial and tertiary sector products. Especially in the case of customised products which are unsuitable for testing in laboratories. There is a lack of expertise, experience, and resources available across Europe for such kind of testing. An increasing concern is that new regulations addressing these products risk being unenforceable. The aim of the INTAS project is to address these concerns and provide technical and cooperative support, as well as capacity building activities, to MSAs charged with enforcing these regulations. The need for the INTAS project arises from the difficulty that MSAs and market actors face in establishing and verifying compliance with energy performance requirements for large industrial products subject to requirements of the Ecodesign Directive. The focus of the project is to support compliance for very large industrial products, specifically transformers and industrial fans, with the requirements of the Ecodesign Directive. The energy consumption of transformers and industrial fans is very significant and thus the risk of losses due to poor compliance cannot be ignored. The project aims to: a. support European Member State MSAs deliver compliance for large products (specifically for transformers and large fans); b. support industry to be sure of what their obligations are under the Ecodesign Directive and to deliver compliance in a manner that will be broadly accepted by MSAs; c. foster a common European approach to the delivery and verification of compliance for these products. The INTAS project involves 16 partners among them there are 11 organisations, which are National MSAs or cooperating closely with the National MSAs, targeting 10 European countries (Austria, Belgium, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Spain and Italy).

The main objective of NANORIGO (NANOtechnology RIsk GOvernance) is to develop and implement a transparent, transdisciplinary and science-based Risk Governance Framework (RGF) for managing nanotechnology risks regarding social, environmental and economic benefits. A new risk management approach is formed based on available and new high-quality data and advanced scientific tools developed for industry and regulators decision-making, and on communication with all stakeholders (regulators, industries, politicians, the civil society). The RGF will use a life-cycle perspective and integrate available knowledge on ethical, social, environmental and economic concerns into a user-friendly format that can be easily adapted and transferred into regulation for hazard, exposure and risk assessment and management of nanomaterials. It will consist of: (i) risk management strategies based on reinforced tools for guidance and decision-making developed for risk assessment, (ii) validated methodologies to identify potential hazard and exposure, and (iii) a web-based information and communication platform to facilitate access to good quality data and a clear understanding of risks for all stakeholders, and their valuable feedback. The NANORIGO work plan consists of 8 work packages covering all major risk governance aspects. A self-sustained European Nanotechnology Risk Governance Council (NRGC) will be installed to implement the RGF, embedded in relevant international structures and in close cooperation with the International Risk Governance Center (IRGC). Case studies will demonstrate the sustainability of solutions and their consistent integration into regulatory applications under real conditions. Bringing all stakeholders together under a common umbrella will allow to share and integrate the most appropriate governance tools, frameworks and plans for future science and regulatory research and foster consistency of management approaches in the EU and synergies internationally.

Engineered nanomaterials (ENMs) are covered by REACH/CLP regulations; the general opinion is that the risk assessment (RA) approach routinely used for conventional chemicals is also applicable to ENMs. However, as acknowledged by OECD and ECHA, the OECD and ISO Test Guidelines (TGs) and Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) need to be verified and adapted to be applicable to ENMs. RiskGONE will support the standardization and validation process for ENM by evaluating, optimizing and pre-validating SOPs and TGs and integrating them into a framework for risk governance (RG) of ENMs. The framework will comprise modular tools and will rely heavily on current strategies for the RA of conventional chemicals, complemented by methods for estimating environmental, social and economic benefits. It will incorporate ethical aspects and societal risk perception and will manage acceptable and unacceptable risks through transfer or mitigation. The focus of RiskGONE will be to produce nano-specific draft guidance documents for application to ENM RA; or, alternatively, to suggest ameliorations to OECD, ECHA, and ISO/CEN SOPs or guidelines. Rather than producing assays and methods ex novo, this will be achieved through Round Robin exercises and multimodal testing of OECD TGs and ECHA methods supporting the “Malta-project”, and on methods not yet considered by OECD. This process will be accelerated by guidance documents for data storage/curation/accessibility optimisation, applied to well-characterized reference ENMs typifying the main physicochemical and toxicological features of ENMs. The conditions for a transparent and self-sustained organisational form for science-based RG, representing EU stakeholders, member states, industry and civil society, will be established. The RG framework and methods developed by RiskGONE will be transferred to the organisational form for RG.

The CEWASTE project contributes to an improved recovery of valuable and critical raw materials (CRMs) from key types of waste through traceable and sustainable treatment processes in the entire supply chain of secondary raw materials. As such, CEWASTE will address the specific challenge to secure the sustainable access to CRMs for the EU economy and objectives set by the EU action plan for the Circular Economy, the issue of illegal trade of wastes within the EU and to non-EU countries and the need to support the development of environmentally and socially sound recycling systems globally. Specifically, the project will develop, validate and launch a voluntary certification scheme for collection, transport and treatment facilities of key types of waste containing significant amounts of valuable and critical raw materials. To ensure a comprehensive approach and a robust result, the project will be developed along the following six specific objectives: Objective 1 - Understand existing recovery practice, standards and verification schemes; Objective 2 - Develop sustainability and traceability requirements; Objective 3 - Develop an assurance system and related verification procedures; Objective 4 - Validate the new voluntary scheme; Objective 5 - Ensure long term sustainability of the scheme; Objective 6 - Ensure a transparent stakeholder process.

ANTICSS objectives are (i) to assess and define "circumvention" in order to achieve a better product positioning in relation to EU Ecodesign and Energy labelling legislation and relevant harmonised standards; this includes clear delimitation from other effects to facilitate unambiguous public (media) communication; (ii) to collect, analyse and learn from cases of circum¬vention by literature research and dedicated expert interviews, as well as analysing existing EU Ecodesign and Energy labelling legislation and standardisation for possible loopholes. The potential relation between circumvention and "smart" products with specific embedded software will be also addressed. From these findings, conclusions how to better detecting and preventing future circumvention will be derived; (iii) to assess impacts 'if' and 'how much' energy consumption and/or functional performance modifications could be ascribed to circumvention by conducting appliance testing; (iv) to define alternative test procedures or check lists with the aim to by-pass any possible measurement circumvention; based on the results ANTICSS will ensure sustainability beyond the project life by (v) practical capacity building measures for key actors of market surveillance and test laboratories, (vi) supporting communication and collaboration platforms between major stakeholders and (vii) providing policy recommendations for policy makers and standardisation bodies to prevent future circumvention under EU Ecodesign and Energy labelling. ANTICSS will also provide reliability to manufacturers by specifying potentially vague legislation and standards which might be interpreted differently by market actors and some of them taking unfair advantages so far. By overall awareness raising on circumvention among stakeholders, ANTICSS will be supporting an effective EU legislation enforcement and thus increasing acceptance and trust of market actors and civil society into the Ecodesign and Energy labelling legislation.