Most importantly, of the 37 Annex VII countries to which the Basel Ban Amendment applies, a full 30 of them have either ratified or implemented it. These include the countries indicated in orange above plus Iceland Ireland, Greece, Malta and Italy.

It can be noted that in fact 67 countries in total have actually implemented or ratified the ban (all of the above plus Iceland, Ireland, Greece, Italy, Malta). The difference lies in the fact that the EEC is one of the ratifiers. The European Economic Community (EEC) is known to have competence over all EU member states with respect to international treaties dealing with trade. That is why the EU countries have passed EEC 259/93 and its amendments (the law implementing the Basel Ban) as a regulation (immediately binding on all member states).

This regulation is applicable to not only to all of the 25 member states of the European Union but to their trading partners in the European Free Trade Association (EFTA) as well (with the exception of Switzerland), under the European Economic Agreement (EEA). The fact that the Basel Convention Secretariat has not noted each individual EU member state, nor their EFTA partners (which comprises Norway, Liechtenstein, and Iceland), is reflective of the fact that they have no authority to do so. It is not reflective of the fact that for all intents and purposes, the EU and EFTA countries have now all fully implemented the Basel Ban Amendment regardless of when each individual state takes the somewhat redundant step of ratifying individually.

Thus for the purpose of determining Basel Ban implementation we can count a total of 67. For entry into force however we must count only the official deposits equaling 63 of the 62 needed (representing 3/4ths of the 82 Parties present at COP3).

NOTE: Currently there is a controversy over when the Ban Amendment should enter into force. For an explanation of this problem and BAN's proposed solution, please read A Call for an Interpretation of Article 17 by the Parties for Rapid Entry into Force of the Basel Ban Amendment (pdf).

For a country by country status report, see Country Status table.