Brussels, 05/10/2006 (Agence Europe) - REACH, the planned regulation on the registration, evaluation and authorisation of chemicals in the EU, is on the home straight. The European Parliament's Committee on the Environment and Public Health, chaired by Karl-Heinz Florenz (EPP-ED, Germany) will give its opinion at second reading, on 10 October, on this dossier, which is the most complex and controversial ever put to the European decision-making process. Political effervescence on the eve of this deadline in preparation for the plenary session vote (mid-October) is equal to the importance of what is at stake. It is a matter of submitting no fewer than 30,000 chemical substances currently on the market but for which little is known at present regarding the dangers for public and environmental health, to the obligation of registration and evaluation, after which a very stringent authorisation procedure, limited in time, will be imposed on the most worrying of these substances, around 1,500 in number.
The result of a compromise obtained at the last minute during an extraordinary session of the Competitiveness Council, the Council's common position of 27 June, which takes on board 180 of the EP's 430 first reading amendments (EUROPE 9088) is, as everyone believes, a good basis for negotiation for reaching a final agreement by the end of the Finnish Presidency, which wishes to find practical solutions. But all are also aware that the chapter on the authorisation and substitution of the most dangerous substances by alternative and less harmful solutions will be the main real difficulty.
Guido Sacconi (PES, Italian), principal rapporteur for the environment committee and the leader on this dossier, considers that the Council's position is “balanced”, which does not prevent it from representing some fifty amendments at first reading, not taken on board by the Council and concerning, for the most part, this difficult chapter. The authorisation and the substitution of the most dangerous substances by less dangerous substances, the duty of vigilance on the part of producers and importers, and the ban on animal testing are priorities, and although he is willing to show he is conciliatory, he will be intransigent with regard to essential requirements, which are a guarantee of public health and environmental protection. This Mr Sacconi had the opportunity to repeat during the informal Council/Parliament/Commission trilogue meeting on 26 September, and to recall on 5 October before the environment committee which discussed 359 amendments put forward for vote on 10 October. “It is possible to accept the common position as a basis for negotiation while making the necessary corrections” to strengthen it, Guido Sacconi said, stressing however that “the will to reach an agreement is there”. In his view, the Parliament's position (vote in first reading in November 2005) and that of the Council are not so far apart as both institutions agree on a principle: - the most worrying substances should be replaced as soon as there are alternatives that are economically and technically viable. The different opinions concern the arrangements for implementing this principle, that is, the conditions for granting authorisations by the future chemical products agency. When it comes to vigilance, Mr Sacconi awaits the opinion of the Parliament's legal service, asked to specify the definition and the content of this notion. For the other chapters that are not priorities, such as the scope of the regulation, registration, public information, the rapportuer can live with the Council's common position. Speaking on behalf of the EPP-ED, Ms Oomen-Ruijten (of Holland) stressed how important it was to reach an agreement by the vote in environment committee, failing which the plenary session end October could vote another way. The Finnish Presidency, for its part, has stated that at this stage it is not in a position to start negotiations with the EP, despite the exploratory discussions held in recent weeks. Member States await the outcome of Parliament's committee vote next week before deciding on a negotiating mandate for the Presidency.
Speaking to a small group of journalists on 5 October, Harmut Nassauer (EPP-ED, Germany), Rapporteur for the Internal Market Committee, said the EPP-ED Group wants a compromise before the vote in environment committee. If this is not possible, he continued, one cannot rule out EP/Council conciliation procedure and the risk that all these questions will be reopened. Very keen on the choice made by the Council to foresee the authorisation of certain very worrying substances, as soon as they are the subject of adequate control, he reproaches Guido Sacconi with purely and simply wanting to ban the very worrying substances, although some of them are essential in certain industrial processes (such as fireproofing substances for the production of aircraft seats or flame retardant), that adequate control of their use allows dangers to be overcome and that depriving oneself of the use of them would present more disadvantages than advantages for human lives that they aim to safeguard. This requirement of Mr Sacconi is, he believes, “unacceptable”, as would be a return to the limited 5-year authorisation initially recommended by the Parliament (the Council foresees authorisation, albeit limited, but whose duration would be decided on a case by case basis). (an)