Slartibartfas

EU Strikes Landmark Chemical Agreement | Chron.com - Houston Chronicle

The EU achieved a break through on the REACH directive. The "Registration, Evaluation and Authorization of Chemicals" or short simply "REACH" will have a major impact not just on the European chemical industry but also a global one.

Every American enterprise that wants to continue doing trade with the EU will have to comply or retreat from the European market.

Environmentalists complain that the chemical lobby has watered it down too much already. But still I believe its still a large step forward. 30.000 chemical substances will have to face in depth evaluation and authorization. At least a thousand substances will have to be replaced already from what we know now. The whole process will be run by a new EU chemicals agency.

Its expected that the bill will be passed through the full assembly of the European Parliament on Dec 16. and afterwards the Council is expected to approve it 2 days later, which finally will set the law into power.


REACH might be one of the largest legislative acts of the EU in its history and it took years to get so far as we are today, both industrial lobby groups and environmental groups fought fiercll about it, while the former had the better budget sadly enough. Still, its getting definitely better not worse.

FRYandBENDER

That sounds pretty good.
Good job EU.

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Slartibartfas

The bad thing is that it seems it has been watered down by the loobies already too much. Still it seems even the largest lobbies of the world, the European chemical lobby, coulde not prevent it completely. My position is that the REACH that will come into affect most likely now is better than no REACH at all. To gain knowledge about 30.000 untested but commonly used chemicals is a good step forwards.


In case you do not know, environemntal policy is one of the most integrated policy fields in the EU. Environemental regulations are made on European level with the codeccision procedure. (ie the Parliament has as much to say as the council, around 75 of all issues in the EU are decided that way)

A very good concept here is that normally environmental norms are minimum regulations. No member state is allowed to fail to comply to them, but every member state is free and encouraged, to go beyond it demanding even stricter limits our of free will.



And REACH perhaps shows impressively what we need a Union for. Just imagine not Europe but Austria would have decided to make REACH on national level. I really have to be cautious not to throw myself on the floor while being unable to stop laughing, while I am writing this paragraph

Of course the companies would simply laugh about us and either ignore the law, or simply start to boycott the Austrian market. More probably the law would never come into existance from the very start because it would be unexecutable. But with the EU we have enough power to even further our standards to every company that wants to continue doing business in Europe, its contractor and subcontractor will have to comply. And retreating voluntarely from an economic zone as large as the American is of course not more than a wonderful present for the competition that never sleeps.