Malcolm Dowden examines the impact of devolution on the UK’s waste law
Devolution has created the potential for European Directives to be implemented differently, or at different speeds, in the separate parts of the UK. For legislators in the devolved administrations there may be a strong temptation to move further and faster than Westminster. In Wales, successive administrations have made a point of putting “clear red water” between the Welsh Assembly government and the UK government. In Scotland, a similar tendency has been amplified by the surprise election of a Scottish Nationalist Party administration. However, divergence has the potential to create extremely complex regulatory differences and may even distort markets and competition. Waste law proposals in Scotland, discussed at the recent Association of European Lawyers (AEL) conference in Edinburgh, may provide a test case.
Zero waste
In 2010 the Scottish government published its Zero Waste Plan. The plan is extremely ambitious, and promises fuller and far more rapid implementation of key elements of the revised Waste Framework Directive than seems likely in England following
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