FIRM and European Reman Council

Against the backdrop of Horizon 2020 - the EU’s biggest research and innovation flagship initiative, aimed at securing Europe's global competitiveness - the European Remanufacturing Council (CER) was formed last year to advise the European Commission on reman, including automotive, medical, IT, aerospace and industrial. Going forward, as a member of the CER, FIRM plans to raise the following points with the CER:

• Promote existing automotive reman definition and extend it to non-automotive industries

• Tax reduction for reman products

• Alignment of the so-called ‘core tax’ (add-on flat rate tax for remanufactured products) in the EU or abolition of that tax to help global reman competitiveness

• Establish a job profile of ‘automotive remanufacturer’ or ‘general remanufacturer’

• Support universities to establish degree programmes for remanufacture

• Help market participants, especially SMEs, to get financial support

• Highlight the intellectual property issues relating to remanufacturing that need to be resolved, such as reman items containing the patented components and brand names of OEMs that have been remanufactured by a third party

• Funding

• Reman quotas instead of existing recycling quotas in the framework of the end-of-life-vehicle guideline

• Design4Reman: products should be designed and produced in a way to make them easier to reman at the end of their first life cycle

• Reman products should be regarded as new parts, not used

You will have many more ideas and wishes on your personal priority list – FIRM has the chance to influence the debate, so please do not hesitate to give me your thoughts at communication@firm-org.eu