Brussels, 08/02/2013 (Agence Europe) - It would be an understatement to say that the five-year review, which concludes that the regulation on the “Registration, Evaluation, Authorisation and Restriction of Chemicals” (REACH) is a success, leaves the EU's environmental NGOs disappointed (see EUROPE10779). According to the latter, they have every reason to be so. The European Environment Bureau (EEB) deplores the fact that the report published on 5 February by the European Commission, eight months behind schedule, gives only a partial evaluation of the five issues that were to be examined, and that examination of two of those issues was quite simply deferred.
Tatiana Santos, EEB expert on chemical products and nanomaterials, says “It is deeply worrying that the Commission decided to measure [European Chemical Agency] ECHA's effectiveness by the number of papers shuffled, rather than by the number of dangerous carcinogenic substances taken off the EU market”.
The EEB observes that the review contains only a limited evaluation of the way ECHA functions as it bears solely on effectiveness and profitability without taking into account major concerns relating to the part that ECHA has played in the defective implementation of the regulation. The EEB takes the view that it was necessary to examine whether ECHA made progress to reach the main REACH goals and whether it respects the values of transparency and independence that it advocates. These were the main shortcomings identified by the NGOs in their report entitled: “Identifying the bottlenecks in REACH implementation, the role of ECHA in REACH's failing implementation”.
Furthermore, despite the fact that the Commission has itself acknowledged in the review the poor quality of the data submitted by chemical companies under REACH, it has failed to propose any measures for tackling the problem through more demanding registration dossier compliance measures. With this review, the Commission could have increased the requirements for the registration of substances produced in quantities between 1 and 10 tonnes per year by compelling companies to submit a Chemical Safety Report (CSR) to register it. However, the Commission, based on “insufficient information on the impact on innovation and competitiveness”, has decided to postpone the decision until 2015.
The EEB deplores the fact that the EU has failed to promote the substitution of dangerous chemical products by less dangerous products, or the “green” chemical industry as a motor for innovation that might offer a way out of the economic crisis.
NGOs also regret that the Commission is proposing to apply an additional assessment to extremely worrying substances based on the risk of being in breach of REACH provisions, which will slow down still further the process of identifying such highly toxic substances to which citizens are exposed. To date, they say, “there are still just 138 very hazardous substances identified: far too few. In reality there are 1,000 to 1,500 on the market”.
Environmental NGOs deplore the fact that there is still no regulation on nanomaterials, and that the Commission has missed an opportunity to make up for that shortcoming. (AN/transl.jl)