The EU Will Force Pharmaceutical Companies to Pay More for Wastewater Pollution

The pharmaceutical companies and the cosmetic sector will have to face new tax obligations related to the microplastics they generate and end up in urban wastewater. This is established in the latest agreement between the Parliament and the Council of the European Union (EU) for better treatment of this type of water .

The EU will impose new taxes so that companies linked to these two activities assume at least 80% of the extraordinary costs of cleaning up pollutants. The remaining 20% ​​will be borne by the public administration to avoid possible extra costs on the products offered by these companies.

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Pharmaceutical companies to pay more for pollution

This new regulation is being studied in the European Parliament, although for now it does not have an exact implementation date.

Yes, the commitments to remove organic matter from urban water before discharging it in towns with more than a thousand inhabitants by 2035 are public . Or the elimination of nitrogen and phosphorus from water plants that provide coverage for more than 10,000 people by 2045.

Spain was already sentenced to pay 11 million euros by the CJEU in 2018 for not guaranteeing water collection systems in 29 urban agglomerations

Among the objectives of the new legislation is also to maintain epidemiological control of wastewater, which during the Covid-19 pandemic already became one of the best tools to predict the spread of this virus. The presence levels of the pathogen usually grow for four or six days in the stools, which would allow possible outbreaks to be anticipated. The European Commission already reported Spain to the Court of Justice of the EU (CJEU) in December 2023 for failing to comply with community regulations on the collection and treatment of urban wastewater.

The European authorities criticized the Spanish government for not guaranteeing that 29 urban agglomerations benefited from the urban water collection system and that there were 255 such areas that still have to build or improve infrastructure. In 2018 the Court already imposed a fine of eleven million euros on Spain for this issue.

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First published in PlantaDoce. A third-party contributor translated and adapted the article from the original. In case of discrepancy, the original will prevail.

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