Green campaigners call for chemicals policy overhaul

Date: 04/05/2000

By Gareth Harding

EUROPE'S largest consumer and environmental groups have joined forces to call for a complete overhaul of the EU's much-criticised chemicals policy when new guidelines are drawn up later this year.

The European Environmental Bureau (EEB) and the European consumers' organisation BEUC claim that Union legislation on chemicals is "marred by a large number of serious backlogs and inadequacies" and that, as a result, there are "worrying signs" of increased risks to both human health and the environment.

The groups say current chemicals policy ignores several core principles enshrined in the EU treaty, such as the precautionary principle and the public's right to information. The snail's pace at which chemicals are currently tested also means there are tens of thousands of potentially hazardous substances on the market which have never been assessed.

"Most people assume that if something is on the market it must be safe, but this is exactly not the case for chemicals," said BEUC head Jim Murray.

The Brussels-based organisations are calling for the EU's chemicals policy to be based firmly on the precautionary principle, which enables policy-makers to ban potentially hazardous substances, and on the substitution principle, which seeks to gradually replace dangerous chemicals with safer alternatives.

They say the testing of chemicals should also be speeded up by lumping substances together rather than assessing them one by one. In addition, the 'burden of proof' should be reversed so that companies have to prove a product is safe rather than waiting for consumers to experience harmful side-effects. The EEB and BEUC also argue that hazardous chemicals should be phased out completely and that all substances which have not been properly tested by 2005 should be removed from the market.

Many of the ideas contained in the groups' paper are likely to find favour with Environment Commissioner Margot Wallström, who has taken a tough stance on the issue since taking office. She said recently that the EU's system of assessing the risks of chemicals had "no credibility", adding: "There are 20,000 chemicals out there and we are looking at four - that is absurd."

The Commission's policy paper, which is due to be unveiled in the autumn, is expected to support calls for some chemicals to be phased out, testing procedures to be speeded up and the burden of proof to be shifted from consumers to producers.

The EEB also published a stinging critique of the way the Commission's advisory committees operate last week. The green group claimed industry was dominating work on standardisation and chemicals policy and that public authorities were "weak players" in the process. The EEB added that the way recent air quality legislation was drawn up should act as a model for other technical committees, which do much of the Commission's legislative spadework.

Europe's largest consumer and environmental groups have joined forces to call for a complete overhaul of the EU'S much-criticised chemicals policy when new guidelines are drawn up later in 2000.