Fighting Waste Trafficking in the EU: A Stronger Role for the European Anti-Fraud Office
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On 20 May 2024, the new Waste Shipment Regulation (WSR) entered into force. The Regulation aims to better ensure that waste exported outside the EU is properly managed and to modernise shipment procedures to reflect the objectives of a circular economy and climate neutrality.
The new provisions include a mandate to the European Commission to carry out inspections in complex cross-border cases of illegal waste shipments. The Commission will entrust OLAF with implementing these enforcement powers. This will reaffirm and extend the role that the Office and its investigators have been playing in recent years under existing legal frameworks. In the future, OLAF will be able to act on its own initiative, not only in the case of illegal waste shipments entering, transiting or leaving the EU, but also for intra-EU shipments. The new rules will allow for a better fight against waste trafficking, contribute to the protection of the environment and human health and improve the overall enforcement of the WSR. These OLAF-related provisions will be applicable from 21 May 2026.
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