Parliament shake-up spills over to REACH

By Karen Carstens

Date: 01/07/04

EXAMINATION by the European Parliament of plans to overhaul chemicals regulation has been thrown into uncertainty as a result of the elections.

The proposal from the European Commission to introduce new procedures to register, evaluate and authorize chemicals (REACH) is one of the most contentious pieces of industry legislation currently before Parliament.

But once again the configuration of committees that will scrutinize the proposal is in doubt. At the end of last year, the centre-right European People's Party (EPP-EDD) group led a challenge to the environment committee's claim to be the lead committee with greatest influence in making amendments to the proposed legislation. As a consequence, the industry and legal affairs committees were promoted to co-lead committees with rights to submit amendments. In addition four other committees, the budget, economic and monetary affairs, employment and social affairs, and women's committees, can also comment.

The arguments were sufficient to ensure that Parliament could not make a first reading of the legislation before the elections.

It is possible that the question of which committee has precedence over others will once again be in question. "It is just too early to say what will happen," said Chris Davies, leader of the UK Liberal Democrats who has a keen interest in the legislation. "We start afresh I think."

Davies speculated that the EPP-ED might want to wrest the role of rapporteur on the lead committee away from the socialists, the assembly's second biggest group That post was held on the environment committee by Italian Socialist Guido Sacconi.

In the last Parliament it was a liberal who held the post of draftsman on the industry committee, Elly Plooij-Van Gorsel from the Netherlands, but she did not seek re-election.

Sacconi said he was coming back to the Parliament specifically to be rapporteur. "Normally, the rapporteur is reconfirmed," he said.

The picture is slightly clouded by the creation of a new internal market and consumer protection committee. The expectation of Thomas Jostmann, an executive director at Cefic, the chemicals industry association, is that this committee will take over as the third 'co-lead' committee from the old legal affairs committee.

But a further complication is that the translated text of the REACH proposal might not be available in time in all the languages of the countries that joined the EU on 1 May. "We might ask the MEPs if they are ready to start considering the text even without the translation," admitted one official. "We have told the Commission that the REACH proposal is a priority."

On Monday, EU environment ministers debated REACH's procedures for authorization and restrictions, the role of substitution and whether extra measures were needed for quality assurance.

In the discussions, both the Commission and various national delegations stressed the importance of ensuring that more dangerous chemicals were taken out of use and substituted by less dangerous substances. Irish Environment Minister Martin Cullen said he hoped that the work done under the Irish presidency could allow succeeding presidencies to end negotiations on REACH by the end of 2005.

The Dutch presidency wants to accelerate discussions on the issue in Council working groups.

http://ec.europa.eu/comm/enterprise/reach/index.htm http://ec.europa.eu/comm/enterprise/reach/index.htm

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