EUROPEAN UNION REGULATIONS AND STANDARDS OF WASTE MANAGEMENT AND ITS IMPLEMENTATION IN FYR MACEDONIA

Waste generation is one of the biggest environmental problems. Contemporary waste management faces with a number of challenges. Waste generation in FYR Macedonia has been increasing permanently. It is not followed with the improvement of satisfactory quality of waste management. The most of all generated waste is disposed on the landfills. In Macedonia there are 55 landfills, but only one meets some European Union standards. Recycling is still on low level. The EU as community with a high level of environmental and waste management standards has been acting permanently to improve its regulation. This is a good example for the candidate states. FYR Macedonia, as a state with the candidate status, since 2005 has been making efforts to transpose the EU regulation into the national waste management regulation. It gives some positive results, but there are numerous problems with a practical implementation. In the future FYR Macedonia has to make more intensive efforts to improve the waste management regulations and standards. The aim of this paper is to analyse the Union regulation and its implementation in FYR Macedonia and to give some recommendations for the future activities.