Packaging - Law and practice

Packaging is directly or indirectly affected by a large number of regulations, such as those concerning suitability for food contact, eco-design, design protection and labelling.

Over the past thirty years, packaging regulations have become less and less national and more and more European. Over the last ten years, European rules themselves have become increasingly imperative/directive, as directives have gradually been replaced by European regulations.

Regulations are immediately and directly binding, whereas European directives must be transposed into national law before they can be enforced against companies. These two European legal instruments are also distinguished by the fact that regulations are applicable in their entirety, whereas directives may allow member states some leeway when transposing them.

The increasingly frequent use of regulations by European bodies can be explained in particular by the growing number of member states: 6 in 1957, 15 in 1995 and 27 in 2007. For a harmonized Europe to become a reality, it is no longer possible to wait for 27 national transpositions using, more or less correctly, the leeway allowed. If we really want to harmonize 27 points of view, it would be better to standardize them with a single regulation, identical in all member states (except for translation).

Member States currently have jurisdiction in two areas:

• monitoring national administrations' compliance with European rules;

• the pronouncement of criminal sanctions by the courts.

Penalties for non-compliance with food contact and eco-design regulations are essentially "3rd category" fines. The maximum amount of such a fine is relatively low: e450. However, the judge imposes as many fines as there are packages seized by the fraud administration: 153 non-compliant packages give rise to 153 fines ranging from e1 to e450, depending on the sovereign decision of the criminal judge.