Brussels, 05/02/2009 (Agence Europe) - Last Friday, the European Commission presented a draft regulation, the aim of which is to revise current legislation on textile names. The idea developed from the experience built up with regular technical amendments to introduce new fibre names into existing directives. This experience has shown that there is scope for simplifying the existing legal framework with potential positive results for private stakeholders and public administrations. Thus, the revision of this legislation aims to simplify and improve the existing regulatory framework for the development and uptake of novel fibres, with a view to encouraging innovation in the textile and clothing sector and allowing fibre users and consumers to benefit more quickly from innovative products.
The Commission recommends facilitating the legal process to adapt legislation to technical progress, inter alia, by making directive 96/74/EC, which is currently in force, a regulation. EU legislation on textile names and labelling needs to be adapted every time a new fibre name is added to the list of harmonised names. The Commission believes that such changes are merely technical in nature and that a regulation would simplify the procedure, and thus reduce the administrative burden on national authorities. The Commission proposes, too, to repeal the directives on quantification methods (96/73/EC and 73/44/EEC) and turn them into a technical annex to the regulation. These methods are essential for the verification of the information provided in the composition label, which also requires to be updated to take account of new fibre names. Given their detailed technical content, the adaptation of such uniform methods is better addressed through annexes to the main regulation. Therefore, the proposed regulation includes an annex laying down uniform methods used for official tests.
The Commission also intends to shorten the time between the submission of an application and the adoption of a new fibre name. In order to allow fibre manufacturers, fibre users and consumers to benefit faster from novel fibres and innovative products, it says that new fibre names should be adopted in EU legislation more rapidly. In addition to the time gained by changing directive 96/74/EC into the regulation, the time needed for technical examination of requests for new fibre names could be reduced if the requirements of applications submitted by manufacturers were more exact and complete, the Commission says. With regard to the requirements of applications for a new fibre name, the proposed regulation sets out a procedure to be followed by manufacturers requesting the addition of a new fibre name to the technical annexes of the regulation. The manufacturer will have to submit to the Commission an application taking into consideration the minimum requirements set out in Annex II of the regulation. Furthermore, this states that, after five years, the Commission will present a report on the implementation of the regulation. This report will focus on assessing the experience built up from the applications for new fibre names received during that five-year period and will consider whether further gains in time may be achieved from a revision of the proposed procedures.
The draft regulation provides for a raft of further amendments, including: - additional definitions; - setting out general obligations on the marketing of textile products; - stating explicitly that it is the responsibility of economic operators to supply the label and ensure that the information thereon is correct; - special provisions referring to a technical annex which defines detailed rules for certain textile products; - an article on items excluded from the determination of the fibre percentage referring, too, to a technical annex; - arrangements on extraneous fibre and manufacturing tolerances; - the inclusion of melamine within the scope of the regulation, subject to the opinion of the committee on directives on names and labelling of textile products.
The text of the proposal for a regulation can be found online at: http: //eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.co?uri=COM: 2009: 0031: FIN: EN: PDF (O.L./transl.rt)