Prologue: March 4th 2018: the anti-establishment 5 Star Movement (M5S) is the winner of the national elections, with 32% of the vote. The populist Lega comes second, in a Centre-right coalition with Berlusconi’s Forza Italia and the far-right Fratelli d’Italia, who together win 37% of the vote. Because of an electoral law which requires any party or coalition to achieve 40% of the vote to command a majority in Parliament, negotiations to form a government are tricky.
Last week the European Commission published its much-anticipated Plastics Strategy, as part of the Circular Economy Package. It is being hailed as major news. Is it really? Yes and no. No, because it actually does not come with any new legislative initiatives. It announces some, but several were already in the pipeline, others remain to be assessed and others still will be very tough to see through, e.g. Commissioner Oettinger’s plan for an EU plastics tax. At the same time, it is real news, for one main reason: it exposes a fundamental dichotomy in current thinking and promises to shift the debate in a direction that will be challenging for industry.
To quote the great Ferris Bueller, “Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.” (If you don’t know who Ferris Bueller is, that’s a major gap in your general culture that you need to fill right away!)
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