We also asked EU policymakers for the evidence. Most did not answer.

The European Commission was not the only institution Reuse News approached after its investigation challenged claims about textile waste exports. Eight MEP offices received questions about the evidence. Five did not respond. The exchanges with those that did left the central question unresolved: what establishes that large quantities of unusable clothing are being exported as reusable goods?

In our preceding article, Shouldn’t policymakers check the facts before making policy? , we reported how months of correspondence with the European Commission failed to produce robust evidence establishing the scale of that problem.

Alongside those exchanges, Reuse News contacted members of the European Parliament, officials and researchers. We wanted to test our findings against the evidence available to those working within the policy process.

The questions followed a year-long investigation. Reuse News had examined studies, traced widely repeated figures and visited locations presented as evidence of a textile waste crisis. That work had not substantiated the scale of waste exports commonly described in public debate. Several findings pointed towards a materially different picture.

We therefore asked policymakers to identify evidence we might have missed.

Eight offices, three replies

On 8 June, Reuse News sent requests for comment to the offices of eight MEPs: Jutta Paulus, Anna Zalewska, Karin Karlsbro, Mohammed Chahim, Pascal Canfin, Sirpa Pietikäinen, Anna Cavazzini and Alice Bah Kuhnke.

We asked whether they considered the available data reliable and sufficiently robust, which studies they regarded as most important, and how they responded to the findings of our investigation.

In August, follow-up questions sharpened the distinction at the centre of the reporting: evidence of large textile export volumes is not the same as evidence that a substantial share of those exports is already unusable waste.

The offices of Paulus, Chahim and Cavazzini replied.

No replies were found from the other five offices by the time this article was prepared, despite August reminders to four of them.

The responses differed. Some offered assistance or directed us elsewhere. Some supplied material for examination. They did not resolve the question of how much clothing exported for reuse was already unsellable or unusable when imported.

Paulus’s office explained that she had not worked on these particular issues, suggested contacting Cavazzini and subsequently supplied a parliamentary briefing on textile trade.

Chahim’s office said its team had not worked on the specific topic and could not provide an answer or the underlying data. It forwarded the request to another team.

These were replies, and should be counted as such. They also illustrate the difficulty of locating an answer within the institutions considering the policy.

Separate questions sent on 7 August to François Wakenhut at the Commission’s Directorate-General for Environment and Lars Mortensen at the European Environment Agency produced no substantive replies that Reuse News could identify.

When the question became more specific

A separate exchange with the office of MEP Delara Burkhardt provides a fuller account of how the evidence question was handled. In May, Burkhardt supplied written answers about the ban on destroying unsold textiles and the role of exports. She recognised that second-hand exports could be legitimate, while stressing the need to prevent European waste being transferred elsewhere.

Asked what evidence informed concerns about exported textiles being destroyed abroad, she referred to European Environment Agency reports and journalistic investigations.

After examining that material, Reuse News followed up in August. Did her office rely on any additional study showing that a significant share of second-hand clothing exported to markets such as Ghana was unsellable when imported?

The reply, received on 14 September, supplied no additional study establishing that proportion.

Instead, the office emphasised that its concern extended beyond clothing quality at import to the volume of discarded textiles, the consequences of fast fashion and pollution in destination countries. It also referred to contacts with stakeholders whose observations differed from Reuse News’s findings.

On 18 September, we asked for those contacts or any published data, reports or documentation underlying their observations.

We have found no subsequent reply.

The exchange exposed an important distinction. Concerns about overproduction, export volumes and waste management can all be relevant to textile policy. They do not establish what proportion of clothing exported for reuse is already unusable when it arrives.

A current problem — or a future risk?

An answer from Sweden’s Environmental Protection Agency offered another explanation for tighter controls.

In a written response on 25 June, the agency described measures to reduce the risk of textile waste exports as preventive, pointing to the larger quantities expected to enter collection systems as European textile collection expands.

That is a different basis for intervention from evidence that large quantities of unusable clothing are already being exported through second-hand channels.

Reuse News asked the agency to clarify the distinction: which actors or export flows constituted the current problem, and was Sweden’s approach primarily a response to documented exports or a precaution against future risks? The immediate follow-up explained the rules for sorting and waste classification. It did not identify the requested flows or quantify their scale.

Preventing a future problem can be a policy objective. But readers need to know when that is the argument being made — and when claims about an existing problem are supported by measurements of its actual extent.

Across these contacts, Reuse News received explanations, references and broader environmental arguments. What remained missing was robust evidence establishing that a substantial share of clothing exported for reuse was already unsellable or unusable waste.

Unanswered emails do not prove that such evidence does not exist. But after an investigation questioned a central claim in the policy debate, the opportunity to substantiate it produced no clear answer.

The Commission’s response was part of a wider pattern. The problem’s scale remained unestablished in the material presented to Reuse News, while the policy process continued.

Reporting note: The eight-office count covers requests sent on 8 June. Replies from parliamentary staff are counted as replies from their offices; automatic acknowledgements are not. Separate contacts with Burkhardt’s office and other institutions are described separately. Material explicitly supplied off the record is not reproduced.