It is possible that the European Commission will present an amended version of its proposals on endocrine disruptors in November. During the national experts’ meeting on Wednesday 21 September, it acknowledged that certain formulas could lead to confusion.
In the middle of June, the Commission presented a series of criteria to help identify and ultimately ban chemical substances that dangerously disrupt the hormonal system (known as "endocrine disruptors") (see EUROPE 11573). It decided to retain three criteria of the definition from the 2002 International Programme on Chemical Safety (IPCS) and the World Health Organisation (WHO): (1) the undesirable effects on human health; (2) the endocrine mode of action; (3) a correlation between the two.
However, these proposals (one on pesticides and the other on biocides) immediately provoked a sharp response from industry representatives and health organisations. Overall, the former criticise the lack of strong criteria (the link between dosage and effect) in the definition – a situation which they believe could lead to a ban on products such as caffeine.
Health organisations and endocrinologists, meanwhile, are highly critical of the absence of categories based on the level of proof (active substances, suspected disruptors and proven disruptors). They also criticise the differences between the IPCS/WHO definition, particularly with regard to replacing the wording "supposed disruptor" with "known disruptor" and focusing on human health, to the disadvantage of the environment. They are also strongly against any alignment of the derogations proposed by the Commission: although an endocrine disruptor can currently continue to be marketed in cases of negligible exposure for phytopharmaceutical products and of negligible risk of exposure for biocides, the Commission has proposed harmonising the two regulations and only retaining the term "negligible exposure" for the two kinds of products. A petition has now been organised by the industry monitoring body SumOfUs, which has already collected 149,000 signatures.
Member states begin to take a position
These divergent positions can also be found in the member states: according to information in EUROPE's possession, the United Kingdom, Ireland and Slovenia support the Commission’s current proposals. By contrast, Sweden, France, Denmark and Belgium are calling for additional guarantees to protect human health and the environment. On 21 September, the EU28 met for a second experts’ meeting on the subject of endocrine disruptors: a standing committee on plants, animals, food and feed looked at the question of pesticides in the morning and an experts' group explored the issue of biocides in the afternoon.
According to information in EUROPE's possession, they discussed the opinion of the European Parliament’s legal service (see EUROPE 11617): a number of countries (around five) asked the Commission to take position in writing on this analysis. The Commission announced that it intended to clarify certain provisions in its proposals over the next 6 to 8 weeks. It also decided to extend the consultation period from 28 July to 30 September, in an effort to enable member states that had not yet done so to submit their comments in writing, or to enbale those wanting to provide precisions (such as Italy) to do so.
The dates of the next member state meetings are not yet known. They are, however, expected to take place in November.
The SumOfUs petition can be found at: https://actions.sumofus.org/a/eu-endocrine-disruptors (Original version in French by Sophie Petitjean)