Members of the European Parliament’s Committee on the Environment, Public Health and Food Safety (ENVI) were briefed, on Monday 16 May, on the European Commission’s work on revising two key pieces of legislation to implement the EU’s Chemicals Strategy for Sustainability - the CLP Regulation on classification, labelling and packaging of substances and mixtures (EC No 1272/2008) and the REACH Regulation (EC No 1907/2006).
This strategy was adopted in October 2020 as part of the ‘European Green Deal’ to better protect people and the environment from hazardous chemicals and to encourage innovation to develop safe and sustainable alternatives - an ambition that MEPs are keen to see rapidly come to fruition (see EUROPE 12810/13).
First the CLP regulation, then REACH. For the revision of the CLP Regulation, the Commission has “made good progress in its internal discussions on impact assessment. We are on track to present the proposals after the summer break”, said the Commission’s representative for the environment, Patrick Child.
With regard to REACH, the work is more complex. He said that the Commission is fully engaged in the ongoing discussions on impact assessment and hopes that the future proposal will include the extension of a generic risk approach for the most toxic groups of chemicals, including endocrine disrupters, both in consumer products and in certain professional uses.
“We believe that with this generic approach we will be able to provide better protection and also more clarity for the industry, because these toxic substances will not be allowed unless it can be proven that their use is essential for society”.
The Commission’s proposals are expected either at the end of 2022 or early 2023. “Everything will depend on the progress in the internal discussions, but we are determined to move forward as quickly as possible”, he said.
Mr Child welcomed the contributions of the high-level round table of all stakeholders (industry, civil society, academia, international organisations, EU Member States), set up to accompany the Commission’s work, to ensure that all evidence is available and to find out how the proposals are received by society: its report on research and innovation and on the principle of safe products by design will be discussed this week.
He also mentioned a “very useful contribution from Cefic”, namely a preliminary report on cost estimates for the chemicals sector.
Referring to the roadmap for restrictions/bans on the authorisation of the most toxic chemical substances, published in April, pending the revision of REACH (see EUROPE 12948/11, 12938/4), the Commission’s representative for the industry, Christine Schreiber, said it was “crucial to significantly accelerate the replacement of the most toxic substances”.
She said that an interdepartmental consultation had been launched “for the long-awaited restrictions on microplastics”.
Once the Commission has received the opinion of the European Chemicals Agency (ECHA), it will plan broad restrictions on PFAS substances, starting with fire-fighting foams, and the broader restrictions prepared by five Member States, led by Belgium (see EUROPE 12807/9).
According to Ms Schreiber, the revision of the REACH regulation will allow for the reform of the authorisation and restriction procedures to be carried out more efficiently and to match the level of ambition of the ‘Chemicals Strategy for Sustainability’.
“There will need to be broader derogations that apply to all companies for particular uses rather than dealing with authorisations on an applicant by applicant basis”, she said, stressing that there was no longer any place for the ‘micro-management’ of authorisations. (Original version in French by Aminata Niang)