ECHA

Greetings from a snowy and cold Helsinki! At the beginning of February we welcomed around 100 participants to our first lead registrant workshop here in Helsinki. Our guests were a mixture of experienced and new lead registrants from all over Europe, coming together to share experiences and prepare for the 2013 deadline. The event was organised together with a number of our Accredited Stakeholder Organisations who represent industry and their input was invaluable in helping to make the event useful and full of practical case studies from the side of industry. 

The Lead Registrant Workshop, which took place in Helsinki from 2 to 3 February 2012, welcomed around 100 participants representing both experienced and new lead registrants. In addition, around 800 people were following the workshop online. Available tools and lessons learnt from the 2010 registration deadline were among the issues discussed during the workshop.

During the Lead Registrant Workshop, ECHA Newsletter interviewed two representatives of companies that act as lead registrants for the 2013 deadline. These companies have different experience with the REACH Regulation as well as a different operational environment to run their business. What are their thoughts on REACH, expectations for ECHA and how are they going about their preparations for 2013?

Joint submission of data is an obligation under REACH, where companies are required to communicate with each other and share available data. Additionally, they need to decide whether the chemical safety report will be submitted jointly or separately to ECHA.

Efficient communication on uses and conditions of (safe) use in the supply chain needs complementary actions by both manufacturers/importers and downstream users. Some lessons have been learnt during the previous registration deadline, and a top-down approach is recommended by both manufacturers' and downstream users' associations.

The Chesar software tool helps registrants to carry out the exposure and risk related parts of their Chemical Safety Assessments (CSA) to generate their Chemical Safety Report (CSRs) and to extract the exposure scenarios for communication in the supply chain. Chesar has been developed by the European Chemical Agency (ECHA) and is available as a free plug in to IUCLID 5 on the Agency's website.

Nearly 30 QSAR Toolbox industry users participated at the first QSAR Toolbox workshop held at ECHA on 24 November 2011. ECHA Newsletter asked four industry users who attended the workshop to share their experiences and express their needs for further development of the tool. They all agreed on the wide application of the Toolbox and its increasing importance for the next registration deadlines.

ECHA has analysed the extent to which companies included information about nanomaterials in their REACH registration dossiers and classification and labelling notifications. A report of the analysis has been sent to the Commission, which will use it in reply to the European Parliament.

Evaluation – the ‘e' in REACH - is one of the main areas of cooperation between ECHA and the Member States. As the process evolves, decisions on the dossiers form a larger proportion of the agenda of the Member States Committee (MSC), while substance evaluation will be carried out by the national Competent Authorities and coordinated by ECHA on the basis of the forthcoming Community Rolling Action Plan (CoRAP).

The quality of registration dossiers, preparations for the 2013 deadline and the challenges for SMEs were the key discussion topics during the visit of the Ministers for Environment of Finland and Sweden to ECHA. The visit, which took place in January, was part of the first official visit of the new Swedish Minister Lena Ek to Finland. Ms Ek and her Finnish counterpart, Ville Niinistö, were briefed on the Agency's work and shown around the ECHA premises.

Clemencia Widlund from Sweden started at ECHA in December 2011 as the new Head of Unit for Corporate Services. She comes to Helsinki from the European Centre of Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) in Stockholm where she worked as Head of Section for Missions and Meetings.

Prior to her EU career, Ms Widlund was with the International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme at the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, spent many years in development projects under the US Assistance for International Development (USAID) and enjoyed a teaching career in economics as a part time job in the Philippines. Ms Widlund has a Master's Degree in management. In her spare time, she enjoys bowling, playing the piano, reading and cooking.

Contributing to scientific discussions, participating in technical consultations and carrying out joint communication initiatives are examples of the many ways ECHA works together with its Accredited Stakeholder Organisations. A new strategy paper has been published to give a framework for this cooperation.

Guido Sacconi, former Italian MEP, has resigned from the ECHA Management Board. ECHA Newsletter talks to him about his experience as the Parliament's lead Rapporteur on the REACH proposal.

I would agree with Martin Schultz, the newly-appointed President of the EU parliament when he says that Guido Sacconi "has a great sense of humour, determination and a deep respect for the European institutions". On the verge of his resignation as an ECHA Management Board member, he talks humorously about his work on REACH as the "great adventure of his political life and a titanic effort." He explains that he is resigning because he is "fed up of being an icon as the REACH rapporteur" and then starts laughing in the interview at his own words.

While implementing the REACH Regulation, Slovenian authorities realised that they did not have enough competence to tackle all the requirements that REACH had placed on them. A solution to this issue was the development of a unique cooperation between Slovenia and Germany. Through this connection, Slovenia nominated a German expert as its representative in the ECHA Committee for Risk Assessment.

ECHA Newsletter interviewed the Director of the Chemical Office of the Republic of Slovenia, Alojz Grabner to learn more about the cooperation and the implementation of REACH in Slovenia.

Since the late 1970s, the Italian central administration has been devolving the enforcement activities concerning chemical substances and mixtures under Directives 67/548/CE and then the 99/45/CE to the Prevention Departments of the Regional Public Health and to the Environment Protection Agencies Services. However 30 years later, the entry into force of the new REACH Regulation requested a more complex approach to enforcement and its management; a redefinition of the roles and competencies between the central and the local administrations took place in late November 2007 [1]. "To coordinate and harmonise the REACH enforcement in Italy", says Mariano Alessi from the Italian Ministry of Health, "we created a new governing body: the REACH technical committee.

Denmark took over the EU presidency on 1 January 2012. Promoting green and sustainable growth is among the Danish key priorities and closely linked to chemicals policies. To achieve better regulation of chemicals, specific areas of concern will be addressed, such as nanomaterials, combination effects of chemicals and endocrine disruptors.