REPORT FROM THE COMMISSION TO THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT AND THE COUNCIL on statistics compiled pursuant to Regulation (EC) No 2150/2002 on waste statistics and their quality
Date: 2022-12-15
Institutions: European Commission, Eurostat
Subjects: EU Member State, EU statistics, data collection, environmental statistics, statistical method, waste, waste management

EN 

  EN 

   EUROPEAN COMMISSION  Brussels, 15.12.2022  COM(2022) 719 final  REPORT FROM THE COMMISSION TO THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT AND THE COUNCIL on statistics compiled pursuant to Regulation (EC) No 2150/2002 on waste statistics and their quality  
 
 
REPORT FROM THE COMMISSION TO THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT AND 
THE COUNCIL 

on statistics compiled pursuant to Regulation (EC) No 2150/2002 on waste statistics and 
their quality 

1. 

INTRODUCTION 

Regulation  (EC)  No 2150/2002  of  the  European  Parliament  and  of  the  Council  of 
25 November 2002  on  waste  statistics1  (‘the  Regulation’)  establishes  a  framework  for 
producing statistics on waste in the European Union. Article 8(1) of the Regulation requires 
that the Commission submits every three  years a report to the European Parliament and the 
Council on the implementation of the Regulation (except for the first report, which was to be 
submitted within  five  years of the entry into force of the Regulation). The  previous reports 
were published in 20082, 20113, 20144, 20165 and 20206.  

This  report  refers  to  the  quality  of  the  data  on  the  waste  produced  and  treated  in  2018,  for 
which the data collection took place in 2020. At the time of writing, the results of the 2022 
data  collection  exercise  are  not  yet  available.  According  to  the  Regulation,  data  must  be 
collected every other year, in even years, on: 

  waste generation,  

  waste treatment, and  

  waste treatment plants disaggregated to NUTS 2 level. 

2. 

WASTE 

STATISTICS 

REGULATION 

The Regulation sets out the statistical data the Member States have to submit and the quality 
required for these data. Definitions are set out in Directive 2008/98/EC on waste (the Waste 
Framework Directive)7. Member States can decide on the specific method to use for drawing 
up waste statistics. They can therefore use existing data collection systems, which minimises 
the  administrative  burden  of  complying  with  the  Regulation.  The  Regulation  provides 
primary  statistics,  i.e.  data  collected  directly  or  via  administrative  sources,  but  not  derived 
from other statistics. 

1 
2 
3 
4 
5 
6 
7 

OJ L 332, 9.12.2002, p. 1. 
COM(2008) 355 final, 13.6.2008. 
COM(2011) 131 final, 17.3.2011. 
COM(2014) 79 final, 14.2.2014. 
COM(2016) 701 final, 3.11.2016. 
COM(2020) 54 final, 14.2.2020. 
OJ L 312, 22.11.2008, p. 3. 

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The  Regulation  (Annex  I,  Section  7)  requires  that  Member  States  submit  a  quality  report 
along with the data. In these reports, Member States must refer to quality elements commonly 
used  in  the  European  Statistical  System8  and  set  out  in  Commission  Regulation  (EC) 
No 1445/2005 on the quality of waste statistics9. 

Since  its  adoption,  the  Regulation  has  been  amended  several  times.  In  September  2010  it 
received  a  technical  update  by  Commission  Regulation  (EU)  No 849/201010,  mainly  to 
introduce  a  change  in  the  classification  of  waste  streams  (EWC-Stat)  and  to  delimit  the 
recovery operations ‘recycling’ and ‘backfilling’. 

In 2018, Directive (EU)  2018/851  of the European Parliament and of the  Council  amended 
the Waste Framework Directive, and set a deadline of 5 July 2020 for transposing its contents 
into national legislation. This amendment does not have an impact on the waste statistics data 
collection covered by this report.  

Statistics on policy topics, such as the circular economy, use data gathered in accordance with 
the  Regulation  as  input.  In  March  2020,  the  Commission  adopted  its  Circular  Economy 
Action  Plan11  which  includes  measures  to  monitor  the  EU’s  progress  towards  a  circular 
economy.  To  that  end,  the  Commission  has  developed  a  monitoring  framework  with  10 
indicators, which provides policy makers and the public with easy access to the relevant data. 
The  Commission  (Eurostat)  publishes  and  maintains  this  monitoring  framework12.  The 
framework’s indicators  waste generation, food waste, recycling rate,  specific waste streams 
and  circular  material  use  rate  are  fully  or  partially  based  on  data  collected  under  the 
Regulation. 

Data  based  on  the  Regulation  are  also  used  to  monitor  the  EU’s  progress  towards  the 
Sustainable Development Goals. The Commission (Eurostat) issues a report accompanied by 
an  online  information  package13  every  year.  The  indicators  circular  material  use  rate  and 
generation  of  waste  excluding  major  mineral  wastes  in  SDG  goal  12  are  used  for  this 
reporting.  

3. 

TIMELINESS AND PUNCTUALITY 

Data reception 

8 
9 
10 
11 
12 
13 

Eurostat webpage on quality reporting: https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/quality/overview. 
OJ L 229, 6.9.2005, p. 6. 
OJ L 253, 28.9.2010, p. 2. 
https://ec.europa.eu/environment/circular-economy/index_en.htm 
https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/circular-economy/indicators 
https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/sdi 

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Data  and quality reports are to  be submitted to  the Commission  (Eurostat)  every  two  years 
within 18 months of the end of the reference year14.  

Compliance  with  the  reporting  deadline  for  the  data  collection  exercise  of  reference  year 
2018 has not changed compared to previous years. In total, 22 Member States and one EFTA 
country  reported  complete  datasets  and  quality  reports  on  time.  Three  Member  States 
submitted some of their data less than one month after the deadline. Two Member States and 
two EFTA countries submitted both data and quality reports more than  one month after the 
deadline. One EFTA country submitted datasets more than six months after the deadline. 

Six  Western  Balkan  countries  also  submitted  data,  on  a  voluntary  basis.  Two  of  them 
submitted the full datasets  and quality  reports  on time, and  one submitted  waste generation 
and waste treatment data on time. The other three countries submitted waste generation data 
only and more than two months after the deadline. 

The Commission (Eurostat) is taking steps to urge  Member States to review their statistical 
production  processes  and  deliver  good-quality  data  within  the  set  deadlines.  The  relevant 
Member  States  were  asked  to  explain  why  the  data  was  reported  late.  For  2020  (reference 
data  2018),  it  appears  that  the  exceptional  late  reporting  was  mainly  due  to  a  serious 
disruption of statistical activities caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.  

Publication 

The Commission (Eurostat) validated the waste generation and waste treatment data reported 
by  the  Member  States  and  published  the  results  for  the  reference  year  2018  on 
14 September 2020  in  Eurostat’s  online  database15.  Data  on  waste  treatment  facilities  by 
regions  were  published  two  days  later,  on  16 September  2020.  The  datasets  were 
accompanied by online ‘Statistics Explained’ articles and other dissemination products. 

4. 

COMPLETENESS 

The number of non-reported values in the questionnaires as well as  the number of Member 
States and EFTA countries with such partial non-response in waste generation data decreased 
considerably  between  reference  years  2010  and  2018.  For  reference  year  2010,  eight 
countries  reported  missing  values,  but  this  dropped  to  only  one  country  for  reference  year 
2018. The total number of missing values fell from 1 668 in reference year 2010 to only one 
in reference year 2018.  

A  similar  improvement  is  seen  for  waste  treatment  data.  Only  six  missing  waste  treatment 
values were reported for reference  year 2018 compared to 263 missing values  for reference 
year 2010. 

14 
15 

Regulation (EC) 2150/2002, Section 7(2) of Annexes I and II. 
https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/data/database  

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Some  countries  report  confidential  data,  which  must  not  be  published  by  the  Commission 
(Eurostat).  This  triggers  additional  secondary  confidentiality  treatment,  i.e.  further  data  are 
not published to avoid that any user could derive or deduce the confidential national data. To 
reduce  the  share  of  data  that  cannot  be  published  due  to  secondary  confidentiality,  the 
Commission  (Eurostat)  discontinued  the  publication  of  a  number  of  statistical  aggregates 
such as on animal and vegetal waste. 

5. 

DATA VALIDATION BY THE COMMISSION (EUROSTAT) 

The Commission (Eurostat) continues to improve and refine the data quality control system 
and  to  update  the  methodological  guidance  documents  for  Member  States.  The  latter  are 
available on Eurostat’s website. 

Since the first data collection under the Regulation in 2004, the Commission (Eurostat) set up 
an  efficient  two-step  quality  control  system  to  check  the  data  received  from  the  Member 
States. 

In a first step, the Commission (Eurostat) performs in two months a quick evaluation of the 
submitted data and quality reports. In this step, data validation focuses mainly on the internal 
coherence  of  new  data  and  developments  over  time.  The  analysis  is  performed  at  a  highly 
aggregated level and aims to detect major breaks in series and to confirm that the data are fit 
for publication. The Commission (Eurostat) then sends back individual evaluation reports to 
the Member States. These evaluation reports may request explanations and/or data revisions, 
as necessary. The Commission (Eurostat) publishes the data validated. 

The second step is an in-depth validation. This involves analysing the data at a more detailed 
level  (e.g.  by  economic  sector  and  by  waste  category)  and  comparing  patterns  and 
developments across countries. The purpose of this in-depth validation is not only to detect 
inconsistencies,  but  also  to  improve  the  quality  of  the  data  in  the  long  run.  The  validation 
checks include: 

 

 

 

 

intra-country  comparisons  of  waste  generation  for  each  economic  activity  with 
values from previous years; 

comparisons of the data for each economic activity across countries; 

an  intra-country  comparison  of  waste  generated  and  waste  treated  for  each  waste 
category; 

cross-checks  with  waste  data  from  other  reporting  obligations,  such  as  compliance 
monitoring under other waste-related legislation. 

The results are checked against: (i) the countries’ quality reports; (ii) the feedback from the 
first  evaluation  step;  and  (iii)  any  other  available  documents,  e.g.  reporting  documentation 
from previous years. The results are then discussed with the reporting Member State.  

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6. 

COVERAGE 

Data coverage 

Member States must compile statistics on waste generation for all economic sectors and for 
households.  These  statistics  must  include  waste  arising  from  recovery  and  disposal 
operations, also known as secondary waste. It must also cover waste from small businesses 
(fewer  than  10  employees),  although  based  on  Article 3(2)  of  the  Regulation  such  small 
businesses  should  be  exempt  from  surveys  wherever  possible,  unless  they  contribute 
significantly to  the generation of waste.  In case  small  businesses  are not  surveyed, data are 
either gathered from administrative sources or are covered by estimations. 

Statistics on waste treatment  and waste facilities must be compiled for all treatment facility 
operators. Some big enterprises run own waste treatment plants and have to report as well. 

Two  important  findings  of  the  validation  of  the  statistics  from  reference  year  2018  are  the 
following: 

 

 

Some  Member  States  are  not  yet  able  to  report  on  the  treatment  category 
‘backfilling’16  and  report  ‘missing’.  Some  use  the  backfilling  category  to  report 
landfilling,  and,  thus,  pretend  less  landfill  and  more  recovery.  This  problem  was 
detected  during  validation.  The  Commission  (Eurostat)  urged  the  Member  States 
concerned to improve this situation in order to report fully correct data sets. 

For  the  waste  category  ‘healthcare  and  biological  waste’  the  distinction  between 
hazardous  and  non-hazardous  waste  depends  on  national  legislation.  For  example 
human remains or medicines are treated differently and these differences cannot be 
estimated  properly  which  creates  comparability  issues  between  Member  States  for 
this waste category. 

Breakdown by economic sector 

Validation results show that the identification of the economic sector generating the waste is 
considered  sufficiently  accurate.  Implausible  allocation  cases  are  infrequent.  They  are 
generally detected during validation and thus would be explained or corrected. An exception 
is  the  generation  of  discarded  vehicles.  Households  and  small  enterprises  often  do  not 
deregister their discarded vehicles themselves, rather they are deregistered by  a garage or a 
car  dealer  and  thus  registered  under  a  category  of  economic  activity  (NACE  Rev.  2  class) 
different  from  that  of  the  car  holder.  This  issue  is  improving  very  slowly  as  most  Member 
States rely on administrative data for discarded vehicles. 

Categories of waste 

16 

According to Article 3(17a) of Directive 2008/98/EC backfilling ‘means any recovery operation where 
suitable non-hazardous waste is used for purposes of reclamation in excavated areas or for engineering 
purposes in landscaping’. 

5 

 
 
 
                                                           
The Regulation sets out the categories of waste for reporting to the  Commission (Eurostat). 
The  categories  follow  the  European  Waste  Classification  for  Statistics17  (EWC-Stat).  The 
Regulation does not stipulate that a specific classification be used for national data collection. 

Most  Member  States  collect  their  data  according  to  the  European  list  of  waste18,  which 
comprises 839 waste types. Commission Regulation (EU)  849/201019 includes a  conversion 
table between the codes of the European list of waste and the classification EWC-Stat. The 
widespread use of these two classifications ensures a high level of comparability, at least at 
the aggregated level that is requested in the Regulation. The Commission (Eurostat) considers 
the  overall  data  accuracy  impact  of  classification  errors  to  be  small.  If  classification  errors 
resulted in major impacts, they would be detected during the first validation and immediately 
corrected. One such error occurred in 2014. In 2016 and 2018 no such errors were observed. 

Waste generation in the EU exceeds waste treatment 

The total amounts of waste generated and waste treated differ between Member States. 

The  difference  between  the  amount  of  waste  generated  in  the  EU  and  the  amount  of  waste 
treated has stood at around 200 million tonnes since 2008. This corresponds to approximately 
10% of all waste generated. The gap has been stable since 2008: more waste is generated than 
treated in the EU. Among categories of waste, the difference is highest for sludge and liquid 
waste from waste treatment (approximately 70%) and lowest (nearly 0%) for soil. 

There are several reasons for the difference: 

 

 

 

17 

18 

19 

Not all waste is treated in the country where it is generated. Imports and exports of 
waste are not collected under the Regulation, so differences arising from imports and 
exports  cannot  be  quantified  based  on  the  Regulation  data.  Estimates  based  on 
external trade data show that this effect explains about one fifth of the difference for 
the whole EU. For individual countries this effect may be higher. 

The water content of waste also plays a role. All waste categories except sludges are 
reported  in  normal  wet  weight.  During  the  pre-treatment  process,  such  as  the 
preparatory treatment operations for disposal (treatment of liquid waste, e.g. leachate 
or emulsion of oil/water), water weight is lost and waste enters final treatment with a 
significant weight reduction. 

Some operations are excluded from the scope of Annex II of the Regulation, such as 
co-incineration plants that use only particular biomass waste as fuel. 

Current version EWC-Stat Rev. 4, which has 51 categories, laid down by Commission Regulation (EU) 
849/2010. 
Laid  down  by  Commission  Decision  2000/532/EC,  last  amended  by  Commission  Decision 
2014/955/EU.  The  European  Waste  Classification  for  Statistics  (EWC-Stat)  is  purely  classified  by 
waste material. The European list of waste is much more disaggregated than the EWC-Stat and is based 
on material, use of the material, and origin of waste. 
OJ L 253, 28.9.2010, p. 2. 

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 

 

 

Not  all  waste  is  generated  and  treated  in  the  same  year.  Waste  generated  in  year  t 
may  be  treated  in  year  t+1.  There  are  calendar  effects  in  December/January  and 
some waste is temporarily stored.  

Waste treatment may create new types of waste and thus add to the waste generated, 
e.g.  ash  from  waste  incineration  may  also  be  waste.  To  make  a  quantitative 
assessment  of  this  effect,  the  Commission  (Eurostat)  estimates  ‘secondary  waste’, 
which aggregates waste that is produced by waste treatment. 

Discarded  vehicles  or  equipment  are  reported  as  such  only  under  waste  generation 
statistics. A vehicle is composed of different materials, e.g. metal and plastic. These 
materials  are  reported  finally  under  waste  treatment  statistics.  Waste  treatment  is 
measured at the end of the treatment chain, i.e. after discarding and sorting. Hence, 
vehicles and similar equipment are only reported under waste treatment statistics in 
exceptional cases. 

In conclusion, the difference between waste generation and waste treatment is not the result 
of  the  statistics  for  these  two  categories  being  of  different  quality.  Instead,  it  reflects 
differences in the purpose of – and in the concepts used for – these two categories. However, 
depending on the waste class, the difference should be within certain limits. If these limits are 
exceeded, the Commission (Eurostat) will ask the relevant Member State for an explanation. 

Since  the  2022  data  collection  exercise,  Eurostat  has  extended  the  questionnaire  to  include 
voluntary categories for Member States, with the purpose of reconciling waste generation and 
treatment with data on waste imports/exports, water losses of waste, etc. Eurostat intends to 
update its guidance to ask Member States to report this information. The additional categories 
will increase the quality of the estimates and also provide relevant information in the context 
of the circular economy. 

7. 

COMPARABILITY 

Comparability over time 

Quality  reports  submitted  by  Member  States  are  a  useful  tool  to  monitor  methodological 
changes  and  their  impact  on  data  comparability.  These  quality  reports  show  that  nearly  all 
Member States have made considerable improvements to their approaches to national waste 
statistics since 2004. Most Member States continue to improve: (i) data quality through their 
data  collection  (e.g.  closing  data  gaps  and  improving  coverage);  and  (ii)  the  efficiency  of 
their methods. 

Improved data collection over the years has created breaks in the time series. Member States 
revise the datasets for previous years to limit these breaks, and users are informed about these 
revisions.  The  Commission  (Eurostat)  flags  the  discontinuity  of  the  time  series  in  the 
disseminated datasets. 

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Comparability across countries 

The comparability of data across countries  is  high  for most sectors and waste types, due to 
common definitions and classifications. However, as mentioned in Section 6, some problems 
in  comparing  hazardous  waste  data  in  the  waste  category  ‘healthcare  and  biological  waste’ 
across  countries still arise  as  ‘hazardousness’  is  defined in  national  legislation. The biggest 
waste  category  in  terms  of  weight  is  mineral  waste,  since  it  accounts  on  average  for  two 
thirds of the total waste. This makes it difficult to compare the total waste generated between 
countries.  To  increase  comparability,  Eurostat  publishes  data  for  the  indicator  ‘Waste 
excluding major mineral waste’. 

8. 

IMPROVEMENT MEASURES 

In 2022, the Manual on waste statistics was revised, the previous version dating from 201320. 
The 2022 version21 was made available to Member States for the data collection exercise that 
took place in summer 2022. In 2023, the manual will receive an update on how to reconcile 
waste  treatment  and  waste  generation.  Once  this  is  finished,  the  revised  manual  will  be 
published. The most important revisions until March 2022 concerned: 

  Likely and unlikely treatment operations of waste streams. The validation sometimes 
reveals unlikely treatments such as backfilling of discarded vehicles or incineration of 
metals  which  need  to  be  corrected.  The  revision  will  speed  up  the  validation  and 
publication of data as it will reduce the number of corrections needed. 

  Allocation of discarded vehicles to economic activities and households. 

  Calculation of dry and wet matter. 

  For glass, iron, steel, aluminium scrap and copper scrap, specific end-of-waste criteria 

were adopted and had to be integrated into the manual. 

  A more precise delimitation of backfilling, landfilling and permanent storage. 

  Legal revisions since the last version (2010) were integrated. 

Most of the revisions were already implemented by the Member States. They were drafted as 
guidance  documents  and  then  discussed  by  the  Eurostat  expert  group  on  waste  statistics. 
These guidance documents were integrated into the revised manual, making all methodology 
available in a single document. 

20 
21 

https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/products-manuals-and-guidelines/-/KS-RA-13-015 
https://circabc.europa.eu/ui/group/b01d2930-990e-44fb-9121-a9a6b00a1283/library/7fbe72b2-edfe-
471a-bdd1-303bf1b2eb7f/details 

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9. 

COST 

AND 

BURDEN 

Member States show in their quality reports a commitment to keep the reporting burden on 
businesses  as  low  as  possible.  This  is  reflected  in  the  increasing  number  of  countries  that 
collect  information  on  the  reporting  burden.  The  information  is  collected  from  respondents 
via questionnaires or determined by specific studies. Around half of the Member States use 
administrative  data  as  their  main  source  for  waste  statistics,  and  thus  avoid  burdening  data 
providers  with  additional  questionnaires.  Other  countries  use  administrative  data  as  one 
among many data sources. Small companies are exempt from surveys in different ways22. 

A growing number of Member States have implemented – or plan to implement – electronic 
reporting  systems.  In  such  systems,  the  data  required  under  the  waste  legislation  are 
forwarded automatically from waste treatment facilities to the national statistical authorities. 

10. 

ACHIEVEMENTS AND OUTLOOK 

The completeness of Member States data submissions has steadily improved over the years. 
Waste  statistics  have  reached  a  high  degree  of  comparability  across  countries  for  waste 
categories and sectors. For Member States and EFTA countries, full data coverage has been 
achieved. Overall, the data are of good quality for all Member States and the EFTA countries. 
Two Western Balkan countries provide data in appropriate quality, the others are catching up. 

The  legislation  on  waste23  revised  under  the  Circular  Economy  Action  Plan  includes  more 
precise rules on the measurement of waste treatment operations and more precise definitions. 
The 2018 amendment of the Waste Framework Directive is expected to have a limited impact 
on the waste statistics data collection exercise currently under way for reference year 2020: 

The  calculation  point  for  final  waste  treatment  is  defined  more  precisely.  However, 
• 
the improvement to data quality is expected to be low since most Member States have already 
implemented this concept. 

For  2018,  seven  countries  reported  backfilling  of  hazardous  waste.  From  July  2020 
• 
onwards  hazardous  waste  cannot  be  used  in  backfilling  operations.  As  the  change  does  not 

22 

23 

The  exemption  of  small  companies  from  surveys  is  handled  in  different  ways.  Some  countries  cover 
small companies by sample surveys and extrapolate the results. However, most countries exclude small 
companies  completely  in  accordance  with  Article 3(2)  of  the  Regulation  which  allows  to  exclude 
enterprises  of  less  than  10  employees  from  surveys,  unless  they  contribute  significantly  to  the 
generation of waste. Alternatively, the figures may be extrapolated by factor-based estimation models. 
Countries have set different exclusion thresholds, determined mostly by the number of employees or by 
the  amount  of  waste  generated  per  year.  Some  countries  combine  the  two  criteria  to  make  sure  that 
even small companies are covered by data collection  when they exceed the defined  waste generation 
threshold. 
https://ec.europa.eu/environment/waste/target_review.htm 

9 

 
 
 
 
 
                                                           
apply  from the beginning  of the  year,  for the  reporting  year 2020 it will not  be possible to 
quantify the impact of the changed definition in terms of weight.  

The Commission  (Eurostat) updated the Manual  on waste statistics in  order to  reflect  these 
more precise rules and to integrate guidance on several waste streams. These guidance points 
have already been implemented by the Member States, so the purpose of the manual update is 
to centralise the rules in one place. The Commission continues to work with Member States 
also with other measures, for example seminars and exchanges of best practices. 

The Commission (Eurostat) cooperates with several Member States  to map the waste flows 
between  waste  generation  and  final  waste  treatment,  with  the  aim  of  making  pre-treatment 
operations visible, as described in Section 6. 

Data on waste generation and treatment are now available for eight reference years, i.e. every 
second year from 2004 to 2018. As time series become longer, the data become more useful, 
providing  input  for  circular  economy-related  indicators,  for  example,  or  for  climate-related 
analyses. 

10