Invited to talk to MEPs on Thursday 24 April about the action it is taking on PFAS, the European Commission said that several pieces of legislation had already been adopted, such as the Urban Wastewater Treatment Directive (see EUROPE 13551/19) and the Toys Safety Regulation (see EUROPE 13620/4), and others were currently being negotiated, such as the Groundwater Directive (see EUROPE 13568/7).
A long-awaited proposal for a specific regulation on PFASs is scheduled for 2026, and the REACH regulation is due to be revised by the end of 2025.
Rasmus Nordqvist (Greens/EFA, Danish) asked: “Why not ban PFAS and then make exceptions, rather than the opposite as we are doing at the moment?”
Acknowledging the urgency of the situation, Kristin Schreiber of the European Commission’s Directorate-General for the Internal Market and Industry (DG GROW) nevertheless defended a “risk-based approach”, explaining, for example, that “there is no risk” in using the PFAS found in mobile phones. In her view, PFAS pose a problem in terms of “waste treatment and the emissions associated with this treatment”.
The consequences of PFAS on health and the environment are no longer a matter of debate, but the responses to them are. Several MEPs have pointed out the European Commission’s inconsistencies: Jonas Sjöstedt (The Left, Swedish) pointed to “the discrepancy between the urgency recognised by the Commission and the total lack of action”, while Gerben-Jan Gerbrandy (Renew Europe, Dutch) was “struck by the difference” in position between Véronique Manfredi, from the European Commission’s DG Environment, who spoke of urgency, and the representative of DG GROW, who insisted on “competitiveness” and the difficulty of banning everything.
Marie Toussaint (Greens/EFA, French) expressed surprise that the Commission was not talking about “accelerating the banning of eternal pollutants”, even though it had “promised” to do so. For her, it is not enough to “ban PFAS in consumer products”.
There has been a lot of talk about accelerating the process and about the Commission taking too long. According to Thomas Bajada (S&D, Maltese), the EU also runs the risk of being faced with a “patchwork of rules”, as several Member States, such as France, are already introducing national bans. (Original version in French by Florent Servia)