EU / WEEE Directive
The EU WEEE Directive puts three separate obligations on a producer that places electrical and electronic equipment on the market: mark it with the Annex IX symbol, help meet the 65% collection rate, and finance its treatment.
Last updated 30 September 2026 · By Vas Parshin and Anabel Amar
Under the EU WEEE Directive (2012/19/EU), Member States must ensure producers appropriately mark EEE placed on the market with the symbol shown in Annex IX, and in exceptional cases where necessary because of the size or function of the product, print the symbol on the packaging, on the instructions for use and on the warranty of the EEE.
Member States must also ensure that private-household users of EEE are given the necessary information about the requirement not to dispose of WEEE as unsorted municipal waste, the return and collection systems available to them, their role in recycling and other forms of recovery of WEEE, the potential effects of hazardous substances in EEE, and the meaning of the symbol shown in Annex IX.
Source: https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX:32012L0019; Directive 2012/19/EU of the European Parliament and of the Council of 4 July 2012 on waste electrical and electronic equipment (WEEE).
From 2019, the minimum collection rate Member States must achieve annually is 65% of the average weight of EEE placed on the market in the three preceding years, or alternatively 85% of WEEE generated on their territory.
Member States must ensure the implementation of the producer responsibility principle so that this minimum collection rate is achieved annually, and may set more ambitious rates for separate collection of WEEE.
Member States must ensure that all separately collected WEEE undergoes proper treatment; other than preparing for re-use, this treatment must as a minimum include the removal of all fluids and a selective treatment in accordance with Annex VII.
Member States must ensure that producers or third parties acting on their behalf set up systems, individually or collectively, to provide for the recovery of WEEE using best available techniques.
Member States must ensure that producers provide at least for the financing of the collection, treatment, recovery and environmentally sound disposal of WEEE from private households that has been deposited at collection facilities.
For products placed on the market later than 13 August 2005, each producer is responsible for financing this for the waste from their own products, either individually or by joining a collective scheme, and Member States must ensure each producer provides a guarantee when placing a product on the market showing that the management of all WEEE from it will be financed.
The work is mostly paperwork that has to be right before the first unit is placed on the market: which marking and collection rules cover the product, whether the financing guarantee is in place, and which symbol goes on the product and its packaging.
We check a product against these requirements as part of the same market-access review we run for other markets, so the marking, the collection-scheme registration and the financing guarantee are settled before stock arrives.
Contact usProducers must mark the product with the symbol shown in Annex IX to the WEEE Directive, or in exceptional cases have it printed on the packaging, the instructions for use and the warranty.
65% of the average weight of EEE placed on the market in the three preceding years, or alternatively 85% of WEEE generated on the Member State's territory.
The producer, either individually or by joining a collective scheme, must provide a guarantee when placing a product on the market that its WEEE will be financed.
Source: https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX:32012L0019; Directive 2012/19/EU of the European Parliament and of the Council of 4 July 2012 on waste electrical and electronic equipment (WEEE).