Bringing chemicals within reach in Helsinki

Once it is properly up and running, the European Chemicals Agency (ECHA) will face the enormous task of overseeing the registration of every chemical used in the European Union, as foreseen by REACH, the new EU chemicals legislation.

Creating the agency is in itself a sizeable challenge: setting up offices, hiring personnel and assembling an information technology infrastructure capable of handling a flood of electronic registrations. That task falls to Geert Dancet, the interim ECHA director, who was formerly head of the unit responsible for REACH in the European Commission’s directorate-general for enterprise and industry. Now he is overseeing the new ECHA office in Helsinki, though his job is still very much connected to Brussels as officials try to work out their different areas of oversight. He hopes to agree to a "proper handover" of functions from the Commission to the ECHA in September. He anticipates full financial independence from the Commission in November, with the installation of a new budget IT system.

There is also a handover from Ispra in Italy, home of the European Chemicals Bureau, which is part of the Commission’s Joint Research Centre. It has been the centre of the EU’s monitoring programme for dangerous chemicals. The new ECHA must figure out what areas of oversight should be transferred to Helsinki, and also what documents must physically be loaded into trucks and moved from Ispra. There will also be overlap between the ECHA and regulators in the member states, presenting a further challenge, according to Dancet, of data transfer and figuring out "who does what".

The nascent ECHA has done some benchmark comparisons with the European Medicines Agency (EMEA), but the scale of electronic registration required of industry under REACH is of a different scale. The enormous logistical challenge is compounded by IT challenges. In addition to developing and updating software such as Iuclid 5 and REACH-IT, ECHA must develop networks that are both open enough to allow industry to share and submit large amounts of data, and secure enough to protect that data. Even when the networks are ready to accept industry reports, the ECHA cannot be sure what sort of reports industry will generate. Should industry generate sloppy reports, spot-checks of industry analyses might have to become more extensive, greatly increasing the workload on ECHA staff.

Some handling and administrative delays have been "causing some grey hairs now and then", said Dancet - a problem made worse by the onset of summer holidays. People may not be home when employment offers arrive in the mail and many key people are away from their desks. Once the complete workforce is available in September, the organisation will go about assessing priorities to begin ‘pre-registering’ chemicals next June, as scheduled. The ECHA will have to work swiftly to meet that deadline. While the European Chemicals Bureau had ten years to build its conference facilities, the ECHA has less than a year.

Although the ECHA office officially opened only in June, Dancet and other Commission staff were already there in April, working to set up the building’s IT infrastructure. "Even the night before I didn’t believe we would be able to move in on time," said Dancet, explaining the pace of IT work. But the ECHA was able to move in as scheduled and since then Dancet and others have been working to fill the office with qualified staff. Although the Commission has agreed to loan up to 40 Commission officials to help in setting up the office, only five are there on average at any given time. Much of the rest of the current staff are temporary agents recruited according to eight different profiles - including scientists, IT professionals, lawyers and human resources support. Some also come from recruitment waiting lists and from temporary agencies in Finland. The office will eventually employ about 400 people.

Despite the difficulties in building the ECHA, the city of Helsinki has proved to be a welcoming host. The city authorities have provided a full-time relocation officer to help current and future ECHA staff moving to Helsinki with issues such as finding schools for their children. In addition, the city also employs a real-estate consultant to help incoming staff find homes in Helsinki’s tight housing market. Still, Dancet says, language can be a problem. Even though most Finns speak English, few of the staff recruited from outside Finland can speak Finnish.

With all of the temporary workers finding their way to the ECHA, Dancet is one official who hopes that his move to Helsinki is permanent. He has applied for the job of permanent ECHA director, an appointment made by the Agency’s supervisory board, from a shortlist proposed by the Commission. The appointment then has to be approved by the European Parliament. Interviews were held last week.

"I’ve taken the step of moving my family to Finland…I’m ready to invest in this," said Dancet. "I hesitated at first, but once you’ve made the decision you’ve made it," he added.

Once it is properly up and running, the European Chemicals Agency (ECHA) will face the enormous task of overseeing the registration of every chemical used in the European Union, as foreseen by REACH, the new EU chemicals legislation.