By Nicholas Hodac, Director General, UNESDA Soft Drinks Europe
Time is almost up for the EU Packaging and Packaging Waste Regulation to take effect on 12 August 2026. Yet, businesses still face many uncertainties over key compliance requirements. The European institutions must now take their responsibility and offer practical solutions that provide the industry with a way forward.
The European soft drinks sector remains committed to accelerating the transition to a circular economy for beverage packaging in Europe. Our sector has been proactively taking action for many years to achieve this goal. Our efforts include using fully recyclable packaging, supporting effective collection and waste management systems across the Continent to ensure high-quality recycling, increasing the use of recycled content in our packaging, and providing reusable beverage systems. The results speak for themselves:
- UNESDA corporate members have either already achieved the objective of 100% recyclability or are close to achieving it.
- currently, there are already 16 EU countries with a Deposit Return System (DRS) in place and more to come in the coming years thanks to the investments of our members.
- 51.7% of the PET used in our plastic bottles was recycled PET in 2024, meaning our sector has already exceeded its 2025 target of 50% recycled PET and the mandatory EU SUPD targets for 2025 and 2030.
Our sector has supported the EU’s ambition to advance packaging circularity and has actively contributed to making the EU Packaging and Packaging Waste Regulation (PPWR) as practical and realistic as possible. We have since remained closely involved in its implementation phase, helping to shape clear and timely secondary legislation and guidelines for proper compliance. We have proposed workable solutions, together with other stakeholders, to address the many implementation challenges. After all this, where do we stand right now?
We have run out of time: It is now an operational issue
The countdown is on with just five months to go before the PPWR takes effect. Yet, businesses remain in the dark regarding several key compliance requirements. But businesses cannot afford to wait any longer. Businesses cannot afford halting operations. Businesses need legal clarity and certainty to be able to plan investments, prepare for compliance and keep their operations and their supply chain running effectively. Their competitiveness is already being undermined.
We appreciate that the PPWR Legal Notice will certainly help bring some much-needed clarity, but let’s be realistic: it is not the silver bullet, and it will not resolve all uncertainties. Many questions are likely to remain unaddressed or even not fully resolved.
Time to act: EU institutions must now move faster
Clearly, there is no time to lose. The European institutions must accelerate their actions and offer practical solutions that provide the industry with a way forward. It is critical that harmonised, technically sound, and ready‑to‑implement guidance is adopted without further delay. It is also crucial to provide clear and timely secondary legislation based on practical solutions to simplify unclear, or overly complex requirements. EU action is urgently needed on these provisions in particular:
- PFAS ban
It is much welcomed that the forthcoming Commission Legal Notice is expected to propose a pragmatic approach for compliance with PPWR PFAS requirements. However, there is still no harmonised methodology for detecting and quantifying PFAS in food contact packaging at EU level and Member States can still decide not to follow the Commission approach, undermining Single Market harmonisation and jeopardising the free movement of goods. That’s why it is crucial to ensure formal support and approval from all Member States towards this approach. This is the only way to ensure a consistent Single Market.
- Plastic grouped packaging
Guidance on single-use plastic grouped packaging is not expected before 2027. Without this guidance, our sector simply cannot make the necessary adjustments to the packaging we currently use ahead of the 2030 PPWR deadline. In fact, we already know that there will be serious supply bottlenecks, and the cost for transitioning to different solutions will be substantial (well above €2bn just for the soft drinks sector, according to recent estimates). That’s why clarity is crucial: businesses need to know which specific types of packaging will be permitted or banned to plan properly and still aim for full compliance with the PPWR. Timely guidance in the coming months is critical to giving companies the predictability they need.
- Reuse
Our sector continues to recognise that reusable models play an important role in helping reduce packaging and packaging waste, as a complementary solution to existing high-performing recycling systems. The co-legislators have rightly acknowledged the need to provide guidance for national context-based exemptions where they make sense from an environmental or economic perspective. Yet, the current PPWR exemption framework does not sufficiently recognise the significant progress already made by some Member States to improve beverage packaging circularity through well-designed collection and recycling systems. With the 2030 target fast approaching, it is urgent that clear guidelines are provided. Businesses need clarity to make the right investment decisions and that means that any exemption requests must be decided in time.
The clock is worryingly ticking. This is not the responsibility of just one EU institution. It is for all EU institutions to realise the urgency of the situation and take their responsibility in providing regulatory clarity to address the pressing operational issue that our businesses are facing.
