US Chemical Makers Ask EU to Revise New Chemicals Proposal

30-Sep-2003

The American Chemistry Council (ACC) criticized a new draft of the European Union's chemicals regulation proposal as excessive and highly bureaucratic and urged Commissioners to send the draft back to the Environment and Enterprise Directorates General for major changes. While fully supporting the health and safety goals of the so-called REACH proposal, ACC said the proposal authors made only minor changes from the previous draft, despite broad criticism from EU and non-EU governments and commercial interests. "We had hoped that the proposal authors would listen to and learn from the chorus of concern from inside and outside the EU, but it appears that the much touted "internet consultation" was a charade," said ACC President and CEO Greg Lebedev. "A few perfunctory adjustments just don't cut it. This new REACH proposal may be the dream of some in the Commission, but it's a nightmare for consumer product and chemical companies who do business in the EU and globally. It's beyond me how companies would make their way through the regulatory fog under the REACH proposal." The text of the new draft often is at odds with purported changes outlined in the proposal's introduction. For example, while claiming that "downstream users are not required to submit all safety assessments to authorities because of the administrative burden ... ," the legislation actually would require downstream users to prepare both the chemical safety Reports and the new Chemical Safety Assessments in many cases. In another glaring contradiction, the drafters indicate that "due to strong public pressure to limit animal testing, the number of tests has not been increased." In reality, member state authorities could require additional testing for any specific registration or authorization, so additional animal testing is inevitable in this new proposal. The new draft continues to rely on volume-based thresholds for applying the regulatory requirements, an approach widely discredited for failing to use appropriate risk-based thresholds. The volume-based thresholds create a significant risk that the proposal could run afoul of World Trade Organization (WTO) rules since importers may face qualitatively different testing obligations depending on the volume of trade in a particular chemical.

https://www.chemeurope.com/en/news/29132/us-chemical-makers-ask-eu-to-revise-new-chemicals-proposal.html