The balance of forces at the Council on the question of endocrine disruptors is becoming clearer. According to the latest news, a total of five member states are said to support the amended Commission proposals.
As indicated in EUROPE 11672, the experts’ meeting on 18 November focused on the recent changes proposed by the European Commission on the criteria that help identify and ultimately prohibit chemical substances that have a dangerous impact on the human hormonal system. It should be pointed out that the Commission is, overall, proposing to take into account: 1) the appearance of undesirable side-effects; 2) endocrine mode of action (this helps explain the effects at cellular and molecular levels); 3) the correlation between the two previous criteria. (see EUROPE 11573).
The meeting allowed for the Commission to explain the reasons for its recent changes and for member states that so wished, to respond. According to the information we have received, five member states have said that they would support the amended proposals, five are opposed to them, four have abstained, eight did not express an opinion and six member states left the room during the discussions. According to our interpretation, which has not been contradicted by our sources, the countries abandoning the talks at this moment appear to have done so to illustrate their dissatisfaction. The main stumbling block appears to involve the legality of the proposed amendments to the exemption system: similarly to the Parliament’s legal service, “a significant number of member states” believe that the Commission does not have the scope to amend basic legislation (regulation 1107/2009) through implementing acts that replace an analysis based on dangers with a risk analysis. It should be recalled that the Commission is proposing that substances that present “negligible risk” (and no longer “negligible exposure”, as was previously the case) are authorised to remain on the market.
Given this lack of support, the Commission did not proceed to vote. On the other hand, it did call on the experts from the Standing Committee on Plants, Animals, Food and Feed, the committee on pesticides and the group on biocides to submit their written comments before 30 January. It did not, however, announce another experts’ meeting. (Original version in French by Sophie Petitjean)