Integrating life cycle thinking into EU law on end‐of‐life vehicles

Abstract The European Union (EU) framework for end‐of‐life vehicles (ELVs) has progressed beyond waste disposal to formally cover vehicle design, producer responsibility and material recovery. However, it is less clear whether these provisions effectively connect across the relevant stages of the product life cycle. This article examines the coherence of EU ELV law in light of life cycle thinking, with particular attention to whether legally binding obligations connect the design stage to end‐of‐life outcomes, including through producer responsibility mechanisms. It adopts doctrinal analysis, transposition analysis and a comparative study of Denmark and Sweden, in order to assess whether EU ELV law translates life cycle thinking into binding legal connections across the vehicle life cycle. The analysis shows that the EU End‐of‐Life Vehicles (ELV) Directive's obligation still focuses on the end‐of‐life stage. The EU's proposed ELV Regulation, which will replace the ELV Directive, strengthens certain upstream–downstream linkages but does not fully resolve the problem of regulatory coherence across the vehicle life cycle. Thus, the proposed law will only partly address identified problems.