Will Europe’s New ELV Rules Work for ATFs, or Against Them?

As the EU’s new End-of-Life Vehicle (ELV) Regulation moves through trilogue, EGARA warns that key details could make or break the economics of authorised treatment facilities, and with them, the credibility of Europe’s circular ambitions.

EGARA, the European Group of Automotive Recycling Associations, has published a series of position papers on the proposed ELV regulation, now in inter-institutional negotiations. Together, they send a clear message: if the rules don’t work for ATFs on the ground, they won’t work for the circular economy in practice.

The papers cover storage length, used parts sales, extended producer responsibility (EPR), illegal operators, technical wording and compensation for unprofitable materials. Read as a whole, they outline what a workable framework for professional dismantlers should look like.

Storage: 3 years, not 6 months

One headline concern is the idea that ATFs must “treat” ELVs within six months of delivery. EGARA argues this is far too short if the EU genuinely wants to maximise parts reuse.

The organisation fully accepts rapid depollution and suggests that doing this within about a month is realistic and reasonable. But it distinguishes clearly between making a vehicle safe and ending its life as a donor for parts. For younger, accident-damaged cars bought from insurers and fleets, demand for individual parts is slow and unpredictable. Often, the only efficient solution is to keep the vehicle complete in the yard until the right order arrives.

Existing EU waste law already allows storage of waste prior to treatment or recovery for periods of around three years under controlled conditions. EGARA says ELV rules should align with that framework, not undercut it with a six-month deadline that actively works against reuse. Anything less than a three-year allowance risks leaving value in the scrap pile and pushing more vehicles to premature shredding.

Used parts bans: safety measure or greenwashing?

Another paper addresses Article 31(3) and Annex VII Part E, which lists components to be excluded from reuse, including airbags and other pyrotechnic devices, exhaust systems, catalytic converters, diesel particulate filters, steering locks, immobilisers, and some ECUs.

EGARA points out that these parts are already being sold by ATFs under national law, and there is no evidence of widespread safety problems. Where specific defects are proven, the classic example being certain Takata airbags, targeted restrictions make sense. But a blanket ban on whole categories regardless of condition or traceability, it says, is something else entirely.

The likely outcomes are not hard to predict:

If new parts are unavailable or unaffordable and used parts are banned, many vehicles will stay on the road with non-functioning safety or emissions systems.
Others will be scrapped earlier than necessary, undermining climate and resource goals.
High-value ‘forbidden’ parts will attract theft and black-market trading, which strengthens the illegal sector and undercuts ATFs that are compliant.

EGARA proposes controlled reuse under strict conditions: professional installation, traceability back to the donor vehicle, clear inspection and test protocols, and proper documentation for safety-critical items. The underlying principle is simple: any part that can safely be reused should be reused.

A law that closes off safe reuse channels while talking up circularity, the organisation warns, risks looking more like greenwashing than serious policy.

Aerial view of neatly organized rows of stacked car doors and vehicle body parts in a scrapyard. — Image credit: Shutterstock

EPR and PROs: who runs the system?

The draft regulation also reshapes extended producer responsibility. Here, EGARA takes a pragmatic line: from an ATF’s perspective, a well-run producer responsibility organisation (PRO) is usually the most workable model.

If each OEM operates its own “individual system”, an ATF handling all brands could suddenly face a tangle of parallel schemes, contracts and reporting rules, creating a lot of extra paperwork for an industry already working on very tight margins.

Where individual systems are allowed, EGARA wants clear safeguards:

Common standards and formats at the national, ideally EU, level
Open, non-discriminatory access for all ATFs that meet objective conditions
Independent oversight or auditing

The concern is that unregulated individual systems could become tools for market control, with OEMs indirectly deciding which ATFs survive and which are excluded, or adding extra conditions such as restrictions on parts sales. For EGARA, EPR should be about funding proper treatment, not reshaping the dismantling sector around OEM commercial strategies.

Who pays for unprofitable materials?

Linked to EPR is the question of money. New regulatory obligations will require ATFs to remove, store, and manage materials with little or no market value, such as glass, while still investing in labour, space, and logistics.

EGARA’s position is blunt: don’t pretend those materials will pay for themselves. It is not asking for new profit streams, but for cost coverage where the law obliges ATFs to handle unprofitable fractions. Valuable materials remain the ATF’s income; low-value streams should be supported through EPR.

Without that, compliant ATFs face rising costs they cannot pass on, while illegal operators continue to ignore the rules and the taxman. The risk is a further tilt of the playing field towards illegals, just as the sector is preparing for a wave of electric ELVs, with more complex batteries and lower parts revenue than traditional ICE vehicles.

Illegals: the cost of being compliant

In another paper, EGARA confronts the growth of illegal dismantlers. In many countries, a significant share of ELVs never reaches an authorised treatment facility. Instead, they are processed at unpermitted sites that:

Skip depollution and mandated removals
Strip only the best parts and dump or export the rest
Avoid VAT, environmental investment and formal reporting

Legal ATFs, meanwhile, must meet reuse and recycling targets, invest in infrastructure and comply with fiscal and regulatory obligations. That makes compliant treatment expensive, and allows illegals to offer higher prices for ELVs and cheaper parts to customers.

EGARA links this directly to weak registration and enforcement. Where vehicles can leave the register without a certificate of destruction, or be exported as “used cars” that are in reality ELVs, illegals thrive. Once exported, the vehicles disappear from control and are dismantled without oversight, often outside the EU.

The solution, it argues, is risk-based enforcement that focuses on unpermitted sites, irregular parts flows (including online), questionable storage and transport, and dubious exports, rather than only on already-regulated ATFs.

In addition to supervision, EGARA believes legal ATFs should be incentivised by regulation. It therefore calls for income from parts reuse to be excluded from Article 20a of the draft ELV Regulation when calculating producer responsibility costs, to maximise incentives for reuse in legal ATFs. Given the high costs of compliance and limited protection from authorities, EGARA also stresses the need for stronger enforcement against illegals and illegal activity.

Technical fixes that matter in the yard

Some EGARA comments are highly technical but crucial in practice. The draft text, for example, assumes that parts are assessed for reuse after removal. EGARA notes that in real operations, the decision is usually made while the car is still complete and can be tested as a system, especially for modern electronic components that need to be reset on the vehicle.

Similarly, requiring airbags to be both neutralised and removed is seen as an unnecessary extra step once they have been correctly neutralised in situ. And suggesting that traction batteries should be removed before an ELV reaches an ATF risks encouraging cherry-picking and illegal dismantling, rather than supporting a structured second-life market.

Getting the details right

For Auto Recyclers, EGARA’s core message will resonate: policy succeeds or fails in the yard, not on the page.

EGARA’s papers suggest a clear set of changes to make the ELV regulation workable for dismantlers: longer storage where needed for reuse, controlled (not banned) used parts sales, real payment for unprofitable work, fair and practical EPR systems, stronger action against illegal operators, and technical rules that match how ATFs actually operate.

As trilogue negotiations continue, legislators face a choice: settle for a law that looks circular in theory, or craft one that actually supports the operators who deliver circularity every day. EGARA is clear on which outcome Europe needs.