Brussels, 03/10/2005 (Agence Europe) - The European Parliament's Environment Committee (chaired by Karl Heinz Florenz (EPP-ED, Germany)) will give its opinion in first reading on Tuesday on the draft REACH regulation (on the registration, evaluation and authorisation of chemicals). The vote should enable European legislators to detect the end of the tunnel. Guido Sacconi (PES, Italy), the main rapporteur with the mammoth task of working towards compromises (see EUROPE 9028), cannot retire just yet, however.
The Environment Committee is paving the way for a juggernaut of a text with around 1500 amendments. The Committee has responsibility for studying one of the EU's the most complex and voluminous pieces of legislation ever. The Internal Market and Consumer Protection Committee and the Industry and Research Committee have already given their opinion in first reading (see EUROPE 9027). The main issue is to reconcile health and environmental protection concerns without jeopardising the competitiveness of EU industry, and this explains the huge number of EP committees involved in the task (nine in all) and the sheer number of amendments tabled (1100 by the committees consulted for their opinion and 1183 by the leading committee, including 550 identical amendments). Voting will be organised in packets of amendments and will take MEPs all Tuesday. The outcome will pave the way for the vote in first reading by the plenary session in November. Meanwhile, the political groups will have six weeks to strike compromises or table new amendments.
The day before the vote, Guido Sacconi could count on 24 compromise amendments being tabled of one political tendency or another. All political groups agree on the role of the new Chemical Products Agency, the evaluation of chemicals and animal experimentation, but the field is still wide open in terms of how the regulation will be applied, the scope of registration, OSOR (one substance, one regulation), and substance authorisation since the EPP-ED (for which Dutch MEP Ria Oomen-Ruijten is the rapporteur) takes a different line from the group composed of the PES, GUE/NGL, Greens/EFA and IND/DEM. The most controversial area is clearly the registration procedure.
The members of the Green/EFA group describe the vote as a decisive moment for the health of European citizens and their environment since the Environment Committee will be deciding the direction it wants the draft legislation to move in - thinking long-term to protect human health and the environment or short-term to defend the business interests of the chemical industry. They note that it is a choice between responsible industrial development and playing Russian roulette with health and the environment. They add that if the Environment Committee gives ground on data requirements to be provided for low tonnage chemicals, it is essential that strict measures are taken for very hazardous substances, imposing the obligation to use substitutes where alternatives exist.