ECHA

The spring is finally here in Helsinki and we at ECHA warmly welcome you to our seventh Stakeholder's Day to be held on 23 May.

One of the most important aspects of REACH is ensuring the sharing of data between registrants. Companies registering the same substance have a common responsibility to find an agreement on sharing data, keeping in mind the aims of data sharing: minimising costs, avoiding unnecessary animal testing and facilitating the common classification and labelling of substances. Ms Laurence Hoffstadt, a Scientific Officer at ECHA, talks about the challenges and gives her best advice on data shar­ing to those who will register in 2013.

Companies which have to register substances by the next REACH deadline of 31 May 2013, are strongly advised to use the recommendations from the Evaluation report 2011 to ensure that their dossiers are compliant.

ECHA released the first version of the Classification and Labelling Inventory in February. Publication of the inventory is a big step in hazard communication and in implementing the CLP legislation. In the long run, it will help improve the safe use of hazardous substances by consumers, professional users and industrial workers.

The publication of the Community Rolling Action Plan (CoRAP) at the end of February starts up a new process in REACH: substance evaluation. The aim of substance evaluation is to clarify whether the manufacture or uses of a chemical substance pose a risk to human health or the environment.

Substance evaluation is an integral part of the REACH implementation. It is one of the three evaluation processes under REACH, the other two - examination of testing proposals and dossier compliance checks – are also collectively known as dossier evaluation.

In 2011, ECHA started to verify the correctness of the company size declarations made by small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) at the time of dossier submission. The results of this verification show that a high proportion of the examined companies did not qualify for the fee reduction that SMEs are entitled to under the REACH and CLP Regulations. Such companies have to pay the appropriate increased fees and an administrative charge. ECHA encourages all SME registrants to ensure that their company size is correctly declared, and inform ECHA if a mistake needs to be corrected.

ECHA has started to publish information on consumer articles containing Substances of Very High Concern (SVHCs) based on both the notifications that companies have submitted to ECHA as well as the information contained in the registration dossiers. The data, available on the ECHA website, describes some of the types and the uses of articles where substances on the Candidate List may be found.

On 22 March ECHA hosted a seminar on REACH 2013 for more than 30 Finnish industry representatives. The event was organised jointly with the Finnish representative of the Enterprise Europe Network (EEN), the Helsinki Region Chamber of Commerce.

Tomas Öberg started as Chair of ECHA's Committee for Socio-economic Analysis as of 16 February. Tomas is Swedish and comes to Helsinki from the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) where he has worked as Senior Scientific Officer and Deputy Head of Unit managing a team in support of EFSA's Scientific Committee and its working groups.

Tomas also holds a post of Professor of Environmental Science in Linnaeus University, Sweden. He has a Ph.D. in Environmental Science and has written a text book on human health and environ­mental risk analysis. Tomas' areas of expertise include human health and environmental impact assessment, uncertainty analysis using probabilistic methods, non-testing methods in hazard assessment, fate and exposure modelling, environ­mental chemistry of persistent organic pollutants, abatement and control technology.

ECHA's Management Board finalised the prolongation procedure for the mandate of the Executive Director and took important strategic and budgetary decisions. ECHA's Management Board concluded the evaluation procedure related to the prolongation of the mandate of Mr Geert Dancet as the Agency's Executive Director. After the final discussion about the future tasks and challenges of the Agency, the Board unanimously decided that Mr Dancet is capable to lead the Agency towards future objectives, and that pursuant to Article 84(2) of the REACH Regulation, his mandate as Executive Director shall be prolonged for another term in office of five years as of 1 January 2013. The prolongation procedure was initiated in September 2011 and an evaluation of the first mandate of the Executive Director was concluded in December 2011.

Luisa Consolini came to ECHA in 2010 to take over the newly established directorate for information systems. She brought together staff working on IT from different parts of the Agency under one directorate, and had to convince them that she was credible. Today, she certainly has done that.

With nearly one quarter of the production and use of chemicals in Europe, it is hardly surprising that Germany has volunteered to take the largest share of substance evaluation work during the first year of CoRAP: the German Authorities for REACH will evaluate five of the 36 substances in the plan for 2012.

The task is not only big and broad, but also challenging. Germany has selected substances that are potentially persistent, bioaccumulative or toxic for the environment, or the source of concern for safety for consumers or in the work place.

A recent study shows that the general public in Denmark is able to recognise new labelling pictograms more often than in other EU countries. ECHA contracted the study to fulfil its duties under the Classification, Labelling and Packaging (CLP) Regulation and submitted a final report to the European Commission in January 2012. Denmark has invested in awareness raising activities over several years. ECHA Newsletter interviewed Christel Søgaard Kirkeby, Communications Officer in the Danish Ministry of Environment, Environmental Protection Agency, to find out more about the Danish model.

The European Commission's enforcement conference brought together the Commission, ECHA, Member State enforcement authorities and stakeholders to reflect on REACH and CLP enforcement activities. The conference concluded that enforcement plays a critical role in the success of REACH and CLP and that it is important to ensure harmonised enforcement across the European economic area (EEA).