According to Art. 2.12 of the packaging Law, importers or intracommunity acquirers are also considered packagers. As such, these companies have the legal responsibility to declare and contribute for the packages of the products they put on the national market.

The packages put on the market resulting from imports or acquired in other member states of the European Union must be declared applying the same criterion as the rest of the packages.

Exception: voluntary agreements with foreign providers

As an exception, ECOEMBES allows foreign providers to join the SIG and voluntarily take responsibility for the declaration and Green Dot contribution instead of their clients, with the only aim of preventing their products, which are often distributed by medium and small importers, from being sold in Spain without complying with packaging regulations.

In these cases, ECOEMBES reserves the right to request whatever information from foreign corporations may be necessary in order to be able to confirm the veracity of the information with the importers.

Nevertheless, when the brand through which these imported products are sold belongs to a Spanish company (which is the case with store brands), the rationale for allowing the foreign business to contribute to the Green Dot disappears. In this case, said responsibility must fall on the Spanish brand owner, regardless of whether or not the foreign provider is identified on the package.

To avoid confusion, it is recommended that the policy to be followed be very clearly established with each of the foreign providers as regards the packaging declaration and the corresponding contribution. This will prevent a package from not contributing to the SIG, as well as situations of double contribution.

+ information about the membership of foreign companies