Is REACH too harsh on industry or the environment?

Date: 07/04/05

Two MEPs give differing views as to where the weaknesses in the REACH proposal lie

The Commission has backed down after industry lobbying and produced a weaker REACH proposal, says Jonas Sjöstedt

An effective chemicals policy, made reality by REACH, has enormous positive potential. It is a tool to prevent serious pollution of the environment and to diminish major health problems like cancer, allergies and infertility. The benefits of this, in economic terms, by far outweigh the costs of implementing the system. REACH will also help industry to avoid costly future mistakes. Especially for downstream users of chemicals, there are big economic benefits. How much may be saved by avoiding future mistakes, remembering old ones such as asbestos and DDT?

To be able to achieve this we need a strong REACH. The present proposal has to be improved. It has been seriously weakened during its drafting in the European Commission.

A comparison of the Commission's initial white paper with its eventual proposal shows that it backed down in the face of strong lobbying from industry and weakened its position over both the substitution principle and the requirements for registration for lower tonnage chemicals.

Chemicals made in lower volumes need thorough control. The really dangerous substances must be replaced using a clear obligation for substitution. There have to be clearer rules about chemicals in imported articles. There has to be a strong control of dangerous chemicals in their intermediate forms, which are often transported long distances.

Information must be made public as much as possible. The responsibility for producers must be clear. The protection of the environment, not only the internal market, should be the legal basis for the proposal. Without improvements we risk missing major benefits for the health and the environment.

The regulation must be made as practical and workable as possible for producers with one registration per substance and sharing of information. This would also reduce the need for animal testing. But making the proposal as effective as possible should not mean lower protection for the environment. The main problem is that we still know too little about most chemicals, so cannot make exemptions from the registration that would give us that knowledge.

There has been a lot of discussion about the costs for producers and importers caused by the proposal. These arguments have to be taken seriously and the system must be made as effective and workable as possible. But there have clearly also been a lot of exaggerated arguments. I think the scare tactics from parts of the industry have been counterproductive, meaning that they have lost a lot of credibility with their costly and aggressive lobbying against the proposal.

Not only that, but by concentrating only on the costs to industry we risk looking at only one side of the picture. There have been a great many studies about costs and only a few about benefits to health and the environment. But all the serious investigations on the matter suggest that the benefits to society far outweigh the costs to industry, even if we disregard the benefits that REACH would bring to industry in terms of modernisation.

In the end, the ideas contained in REACH are founded on common sense. Producers and importers should know, and have to tell, what they are putting on the market. The most hazardous substances should be replaced, or at least their use should be restricted when there is no replacement.

The present EU regulations about chemicals are not working. They do not give us enough information, nor protect health and the environment as they should. They hamper innovation instead of promoting it. We therefore need REACH. We now have the chance of making a reality of such beautiful words as precautionary principle and substitution. If we do not use this opportunity to make modern and strong environmental legislation we will miss out on many years of opportunities. We need a strong REACH system.

• Swedish MEP Jonas Sjöstedt is a co-ordinator for the group of the European United Left/Nordic Green Left on the Parliament's environment, public health and food safety committee.

Industry is concerned that the proposal will burden business and hamper innovation, argues Hartmut Nassauer

THERE is today a wide agreement that we need and want a new REACH regulation. The safe handling of chemicals, from their manufacture or import, via their use in processes and products, to their disposal, is a significant aspect of political and economic accountability which I absolutely support.

But there is a catch: the crucial weakness of the European Commission's proposal is the chosen approach for implementing the registration process. The Commission voted for a basically volume-based approach (as laid down in Article 11) which requires data without any reference to actual risk. With the increase of production there is a massive increase in the data required - especially if enterprises exceed a production volume of ten tonnes per year of a substance - without this necessarily being justified by increased risk to humans and the environment. The production/import volume by itself does not enable any conclusions to be drawn as to whether, and to what extent, a substance endangers humans and the environment. Consequently, if there is no unambiguous correlation between the greater production volume and greater risk, volume is an unsuitable basis for establishing data requirements and, above all, is an inappropriate criterion for guaranteeing greater safety.

I am not alone in the opinion that the volume-based approach is implausible and disproportionate from the legal point of view: there is no reasonable relationship between the effort required and the environmental or social benefit.

The volume-based approach has further undesirable effects. In its proposed form, the REACH model will place a substantial cost burden on business. In particular, where smaller production volumes are concerned, registration costs will in many cases be higher than the turnover. As a consequence it is feared that more than 20% of products will be withdrawn from the market because of the commercial unsustainability of registering substances, probably followed by the relocation of production, the closing down of plants and job losses within the European Union. This false incentive for substance selection, which is based on registration costs, and not on substance risk, needs to be corrected.

Preparing the data required for registration will also take a substantial amount of time. Small and medium-sized firms feel that the costly compilation of data is beyond them. Apart from the time factor, the requisite outlay on staff would be an extremely heavy financial burden. Many small firms lack the technical staff capable of carrying out the complicated REACH procedures properly.

In the long run, the capacity of the EU economy to innovate will be damaged. It will be difficult to carry out innovative ideas, because the proposed rules will lead to a reduction in the substances available. Furthermore, enterprises have to face bureaucratic obstacles. The EU would become less attractive as a location and investment would decline. This would be extremely counterproductive to the aim of the Lisbon Strategy of making the EU the most competitive region in the world.

Bearing these weaknesses in mind, more work needs to be done to improve the Commission's draft. Should it be the risk-based approach with exposure categories and pre-registration worked out by industry, the OSOR approach of Great Britain and Hungary, the Slovene-Maltese approach for lower volume substances or an IT-tool developed by the European textile industry which would permit small- and medium-sized enterprises to do their registration in an easy way? All the proposals are worthy of further discussion. All promise the same level of protection for health and environment as foreseen, but in a more targeted, less costly and less bureaucratic way. I say 'yes' to a high level of protection for the public, but in the most efficient and economical way as possible. What keeps us from aiming for this win-win situation?

• German centre-right (EPP-ED) MEP Hartmut Nassauer is rapporteur on the internal market committee for the REACH proposal.

Two MEPs give differing views as to where the weaknesses in the REACH proposal lie.