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AmCham EU has joined over 30 industry associations in calling on EU co-legislators to confirm the repeal of the Substances of Concern In articles as such or in complex objects (Products) (SCIP) database, as proposed in the Environmental Omnibus. SCIP costs companies around €225 million a year, yet its intended users, recyclers, barely use it. The Commission itself acknowledges that waste operators find the data unusable and most companies lack the resources to maintain millions of notifications. Repeal would remove a disproportionate reporting layer while keeping obligations for suppliers to inform customers about substances of very high concern. Any future approach should build on existing obligations, not add new ones.

After frying frites, bitterballen, churros or arancini, many people don’t think twice about disposing of used cooking oil. Yet one litre of waste oil can contaminate one million litres of water, according to the European Commission. At Cargill’s facility in the port of Ghent, Belgium, used cooking oil and other residual oils and fats are treated as raw materials, cleaned and converted into biodiesel for trucks and ships. This puts circularity into practice on an industrial scale at one of Europe’s largest facilities of its kind. Since production began, Ghent’s biodiesel is estimated to have reduced greenhouse gas emissions by 1,188,000 tonnes compared with fossil diesel, equivalent to taking about 550,000 cars off the road for a year. Read the full story on Invested in Europe.

The revised Merger Guidelines1 (‘Guidelines’) should ensure that the EU merger control framework supports competitiveness, innovation and investment while preserving legal certainty, predictability and effective competition. The Guidelines should remain firmly anchored in the significant impediment of effective competition (SIEC) test, apply resilience and scale considerations in a headquarters-neutral and effects-based manner, and provide clearer analytical and evidentiary standards for resilience assessments and the new theories of harm.

The Guidelines should recognise the benefits of scale where these deliver demonstrable advantages for EU consumers, apply the innovation shield consistently across all acquirers, maintain appropriate safe harbours and ensure a balanced and symmetrical assessment of harms and benefits. The Guidelines should also strengthen predictability across overlapping transaction review regimes and provide greater certainty for both EU and non-EU investors. Together, these refinements would help ensure that merger control contributes to competitiveness, innovation and economic growth while maintaining a transparent and proportionate enforcement framework.