DG Growth to Perform a 'Fitness Check' on EU Chemicals Rules

Comment by May 26 on an upcoming DG Growth project to assess many of the EU's chemicals regulations. The agency has an online questionnaire for doing so. It also plans a related workshop in April on what it is calling a "fitness check." The General Product Safety Directive (GPSD) and Toy Safety Directive (TSD) are among the many targets.

Although much of REACH is excluded because a similar review will occur in 2017, REACH Annex XIII will be part. That section deals with the criteria for identifying persistent, bioaccumulative, and toxic (PBT) and very persistent and very bioaccumulative (vPvB) substances.

Other regulations on hazard identification include those on classification, labeling, and packaging (CLP); plant protection; biocidal products, inland transportation; chemical agents, asbestos, and workplace carcinogens and mutagen.

The review also will target seven regulations on worker and transportation safety, 11 on environmental protection, six on chemicals controls, six on product controls (including the GPSD and TSD); and three supporting regulations on test methods, laboratory practices, and animal protections.

The check would cover five areas:

• Effectiveness: Ability to meet objectives, unintended consequences, factors positively or negatively affecting functioning, and success of implementation.

 

• Efficiency: Cost and benefits as well as efficiency strengths and weaknesses.

 

• Coherence: Consistency across regulations; justifications for difference; and contradictions, duplications, overlaps, lapses, and similar problems.

 

• Relevance: Ability to meet current needs; consideration of health, environmental and socioeconomic consequences; and transparency and robustness.

 

• EU Added Value: Effects beyond the national level.

Access to the questionnaire as well as other information on the project is at bit.ly/1R2UtQj.