Chemicals agency in race against time

Date: 18/05/06

Helsinki is readying itself to host an EU agency with the huge task of registering around 140,000 chemicals for use on European markets.

The Finnish capital was chosen last December as the location of the European Chemicals Agency, which is required to oversee the implementation of the EU's revamped chemicals legislation REACH, when it is finally adopted.

The agency will be responsible for registering thousands of chemicals, starting with those produced in the largest quantities, over an 11-year period. Evaluation and authorisation of the chemicals will take place more gradually, again with help from the agency.

Setting up the agency poses a succession of staffing, timing and budget challenges.

The 2003 REACH proposal is widely expected to come into force in 2007. Helsinki now faces the challenge of dealing with complex laws on a very tight schedule.

Aimo Kastinen of the Finnish Chemicals Industry Federation welcomed the decision to base the agency in Finland, but warned that the "timetable will be tight, especially at the start".

The pre-registration of all chemicals is supposed to be completed 18 months after the law comes into force, but since the first year of this period has also been allocated to getting the agency up and running, dossiers will in effect have to be dealt with in just six months.

Kastinen said there were grounds to wonder if this would be possible.

The company director said that REACH was a "huge and complex piece of legislation" but that industry and the nascent agency were working hard to meet the challenge.

Hosting the agency could boost Finland's own industry sector, with chemicals currently accounting for 13% of exports from Finland. "Having the agency will be very important to our presidency and also very important to our chemicals industry," said Kastinen.

The country hosts 11 chemicals companies, which provide more jobs than any industrial sector apart from electronics and machinery (about 40,000).

Kastinen said he would "put money on it that we will have a strong chemicals industry in the future".

Finland will publish a report this summer on the business and innovation opportunities offered by REACH, particularly for small- and medium-sized companies.

But the first challenge will be finding 500 expert members of staff by 2010.

Jukka Malm, working on the agency for the Finnish Environment Institute, said that already there had been a lot of interest from scientists and that "things are going smoothly...At the moment we see no big problems or risks, but the very rapid recruitment will be a challenge".

More money would also be needed to pay agency workers, he said. The original REACH proposal set aside 30 million euro to pay 200 members of staff and the budget has not yet been extended to allow for the increase in employees agreed by the European Parliament and Council of Ministers.

Malm added that "without this agency the legislation cannot be a success".

Finland itself however may see the first tangible benefits of REACH. "Having the agency will be good for Helsinki," said the environment institute official. "It will bring jobs and international meetings...it will be in the centre of the city so it will be attractive to foreign experts".

Helsinki lost a bid for the European Food Safety Agency (EFSA) to Parma in 2003, amid mutterings that Italian premier Silvio Berlusconi had not played fair.

But Finland might have the last laugh. "This will be one of the biggest EU agencies [500 workers compared to EFSA's 300 target]," said Malm.

Article takes a look at the task that was awaiting the newly set up European Chemicals Agency, which was required to oversee the implementation of the EU's revamped chemicals legislation REACH, when finally adopted. ECHA was to be responsible for the registration of thousands of chemicals produced in the European Union.

European Commission: PreLex: COM (2003) 644-1, 'Proposal for a Regulation [...] concerning the Registration, Evaluation, Authorisation and Restriction of Chemicals (Reach) [...] http://ec.europa.eu/prelex/detail_dossier.cfm?CL=en&ReqId=0&DocType=COM&DocYear=2003&DocNum=0644

---