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exempted about thirty individual companies from the deposit obligation. But, on December 2nd, that court decision was revoked by the High Administrative Court in Münster.
The beverage and retail industries lost both in th e courts and in the voting booth. They had hoped the Social Democrats would lose in the general election on September 22nd, but Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder's Social Democrats, and his junior partner the Greens, won a narrow majority. Now industry is rushing to comply with the law.
An Executive Committee consisting of eight members (four from retail and four from the beverage industry) has been established to develop plans for implementation of the law. That Committee has installed two working groups, the Clearinghouse for Organization led by Metro (a large multi-national retail chain) and the System Security, led by Coke. Retailers are pushing the DSD (Green Dot System) as the future Clearinghouse for
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Organization, but the Federal Cartel Office remains undecided on that proposal.
Beverage manufacturers and retailers say complying with the law will cost them 1.4 billion EUR. Government officials and environmentalists say the law is necessary to recycle the increasing number of one-way cans and bottles and remove hundreds of millions of littered containers from Germany's streets.
Beverage distributors and retailers hoping to avoid the regulation either through the courts or through a change in the government, failed to prepare for implementation of the regulation. There is general agreement that industry will not be prepared for implementation on January 1st, and some experts estimate that startup of the deposit system is not feasible before July 1, 2003. If industry fails to comply with the regulations, NGOs and civil servants in some states have already announced that they will prosecute those who are not in compliance as of January 1st, 2003.
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