space Basel Action News, Vol 1, #1

At the close of the Third Conference of Parties, certain countries, most vocally, Australia, claimed that it was their belief that multilateral, bilateral etc. agreements allowed in Article 11 of the Convention for the trade in hazardous wastes between parties and non-parties could also be used to overide the Basel Ban (decision III/1). This statement was seen as bad faith by many of those present because exceptions of this kind were explicitly ruled out in the course of the tense ban decision negotiations.

However, according to the European Commission's legal experts, an interpretation to invoke Article 11 for this purpose is not only a political faux pas, but a legal one as well. In a letter to Basel Convention Secretariat Executive Secretary, Dr. Iwona Rummel-Bulska, dated 8 February 1996, Ludwig Kramer, Head of the Waste Management Policy Unit at the Directorate General of Environment, Nuclear Safety and Civil Protection (DG 11) stated that after legal analysis, "it is clear that bilateral, multilateral, or regional agreements or arrangements between Parties listed in Annex VII and Parties or other States not listed in Annex VII, when allowing for hazardous waste to be exported from the first to the latter, would circumvent the legal requirement of Article 4A in a way which is not forseen by the Convention and are therefore not acceptable from a legal point of view."