8 September 2026 – Brussels wants to make things easy for itself. Instead of an export tariff on aluminium scrap, which would have required a majority, it now wants to take the easier route through a delegated act and is counting on nobody objecting. The intended victim is the recycling market, which is dominated by SMEs and which Brussels apparently considers expendable.
Scrap Export Ban: Brussels Is Becoming Ever More Brazen
On 4 September, Stéphane Séjourné’s cabinet withdrew the proposal for a trade measure targeting aluminium scrap. According to Reuters, the reason was that the instrument would have covered only around half of scrap exports. Instead, Brussels now intends to use a delegated act under the Waste Shipment Regulation to prohibit exports to non OECD countries. There is no legal text yet. The source is a statement from the Commissioner’s cabinet.
An export tariff requires a majority in favour. A delegated act enters into force if nobody objects. This is not environmental policy changing its instrument. This is desperate Brussels style communism starting to lash out in an attempt to force its agenda through.
The Council Is Discussing a Corpse
Council document CM 4058/26, dated the same 4 September, invites trade attachés to a meeting on 15 September. Item 4 on the agenda: “Proposal for an EU measure for aluminium scrap“. Next week, the Member States will discuss a proposal that the Commissioner’s cabinet had already buried the previous Friday.
One Criterion Is Replaced With Another
Regulation 2024/1157 requires proof of environmentally sound treatment. By February 2025, 24 countries had submitted applications, and the country list is due by 21 November 2026. Séjourné is announcing the outcome in advance and replacing the environmental criterion with “EU accession candidate”. This is no longer environmental law. It is industrial policy in disguise and the deliberate killing of Europe’s recycling market, which is dominated by small and medium sized enterprises.
Türkiye Is an OECD Member
In 2025, the EU exported around 16.6 million tonnes of steel scrap, of which 10.78 million tonnes went to Türkiye. The largest outflow remains untouched. The rest would be prohibited.
The result is not more scrap remaining in Europe. The result is a buyer in Iskenderun whose competition has effectively been removed by regulation.
In any case, what is exported is often material nobody here wants. Old scrap containing copper. Zorba scrap from engines that are no longer manufactured in the EU. A ban does not turn this into better material. It turns it into a disposal cost.
South Africa Has Already Run This Experiment
Price Preference System. A 30 per cent discount for domestic mills. Formal collection fell from 1.8 million tonnes to 150,000 tonnes. Employment fell from 15,000 to 9,600. Primary steel imports in July were 36 per cent higher than a year earlier. Scrap stayed cheap. The steel still came from abroad.
A Question for Those Calling for Protection
Šefčovič stated in writing on 1 September that SMEs could not be spared because there were too many of them. Now 5,500 recycling businesses with around 300,000 jobs are in the firing line. In South Africa, more than 30 per cent of jobs in this sector were lost. What that could mean for the EU is not difficult to anticipate.
French Industry Commissioner Séjourné apparently does not care. As long as his corporate cronies are sitting high and dry and looking on him with favour!
First CBAM. Then tariffs. Then quotas. Then Melt and Pour. Now the export ban. Every measure is an act of desperation because, since the first von der Leyen Commission took office in 2019, Brussels has failed to produce even a single clean piece of regulation. Its incompetence is hidden behind ever more bureaucracy and legislation. That is a planned economy in slow motion.
One question for everyone calling for even more protection: are you actually selling more because of it? In the long run, it will be your downfall. Overregulation is nothing other than socialism.
Perhaps you should all have paid more attention at school. Or were there already too many left wing teachers back then as well?
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