Free-riders and notification function
At the bottom of our website, you can find a notification function, where you can report companies that cannot be searched out in the producer register despite selling in-scope products. Companies importing or producing electronics, batteries, packaging, single-use plastics or vehicles for sale in Denmark without being registered are called free-riders.
What is a free-rider?
Free-riding can take many forms. Common to them all is that the company does not comply with the legislation. Therefore, DPA as administrators and the Danish Environmental Protection Agency (DEPA) as the supervisory authority must manage notifications about free-rider companies.
You can say that a free-rider is a person or a company that gets an advantage at the expense of others without deserving it or paying for it
Cooperation between Environmental Protection Agency and DPA
The management of notifications of free-rider companies follows an established procedure about our cooperation with the environmental authority.
This illustration shows the handling of a free-rider notification. The example shows a situation in which the company does not react or register despite being assessed as being subject to producer responsibility.
Only the producer or the Danish Environmental Protection Agency can ask DPA to make a concrete decision about whether a company is subject to producer responsibility. In cases where the company disagrees with our decision it can submit a complaint to the Danish Environmental Protection Agency. The complaint must be submitted in writing to the Danish Environmental Protection Agency within four weeks.
Complaints against DPA decision
After this deadline the Danish Environmental Protection Agency will take further penalty steps in pursuance of the law.
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Around 100
companies reported annually -
Around 60 %
subsequently register -
2226
companies approved in the register