The IA provides a good overview of the problems relating to packaging and packaging waste, and the possible impacts of the various measures proposed to address the problems. In its assessment, which is both qualitative and quantitative, the IA relies on a wealth of data sources and modelling. However, it does not clearly indicate the IA supporting studies and their full references; this would have improved transparency. The IA presents three policy options, which are partially incremental and cannot therefore serve as self-standing alternatives. The IA provides sufficient justification for the preferred option. Broad stakeholder consultations were carried out and the IA presents stakeholders’ views, although on individual measures rather than on the three policy options. The description of the monitoring and evaluation plan is rather limited; for example, the operational objectives and the timeframe for the evaluation are not explained. On a technical point, the IA could have made more use of the material from the extensive annexes, for example, to describe the policy options and the third problem in more detail in the main text.