Reach: EU leader invites US chem industry input on plan

22 March 2005 18:28  [Source: ICIS news]

ARLINGTON, Virginia (CNI)--The top European Parliament authority on the controversial “Reach” programme told US chemical industry officials here Tuesday the Reach plan is “far from being done” and invited increased US input on Reach issues.

 

Karl-Heinz Florenz, chairman of the EU Parliament’s environment committee, told some 400 US chemical industry executives attending the annual GlobalChem conference today that “nothing is done on Reach, and you are invited to help us complete the programme.”

 

The EU Parliament’s environment committee is the lead parliamentary body among 12 committees working on the Reach programme. Florenz said his committee’s work on the Reach design is to be completed by September this year.

 

“A lot remains to be done,” he said, “and we in Europe want to motivate you to help us reach this goal of sustainable development” through the Reach plan.

 

He said the EU will welcome further US input on such critical Reach elements as the registration process and confidentiality of business data, the powers of Reach enforcement agencies, pressure by environmental parties for process and substance substitution and the protection of medium and small companies in Europe.

 

On the substitution issue, for example, he said he is opposed to environmentalists’ demands that certain products or processes be banned from Europe even before they are subjected to Reach testing. “We can’t forbid something before it is tested,” he said.

 

He said the EU would welcome US input on other Reach issues, such as Reach-related testing of end product imports to detect environmentally risky substances. “We can’t import substances in articles and products without any testing,” he said, “but work remains to be done on definitions that will guide this testing."

 

He declared prioritisation as “the most important step” in the development of Reach testing criteria, meaning that testing priority must be given to those chemicals in most common usage. “We must prioritise testing for those chemicals that are most in use,” he said, rather than an arbitrary schedule for all 30,000 chemical substances that ultimately will be within the purview of Reach.

 

Florenz invited US chemicals industry officials and trade association leaders to go to the EU headquarters in Brussels to air their concerns about Reach. “Come to Brussels,” he said, “let us hear your views. We want to pick the best ideas from among those that are put forward. There is time yet before our committee’s [September] deadline.”

 

GlobalChem, an annual conference on worldwide chemical regulations, runs through Wednesday. It is co-sponsored by the American Chemistry Council (ACC) of Arlington and the Synthetic Organic Chemical Manufacturers Association (SOCMA), which is based in Washington, DC.

By: Joe Kamalick
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