01/12/2006
Delegations from the European Parliament and the Council hammered out a deal on REACH, the draft regulation on chemical products, at their sixth set of informal negotiations, which ended at around 11pm on Thursday. The compromise will be put to the vote by the full Parliament at the plenary session in December – if approved, the proposal would become law at this, second reading, stage.

Parliament’s rapporteur, Guido Sacconi (PES, IT) confirmed at a press conference on Friday that agreement had been reached with the Finnish Presidency on the whole of the REACH package.
 
“I call on all the Parliament’s political groups to support me at the plenary,” he said, accompanied by Environment Committee Chair Karl-Heinz Florenz (EPP-ED) and the shadow rapporteurs Ria Oomen-Ruijten (EPP-ED, NL) and Chris Davies (ALDE, UK).
 
The main points of the package agreed are as follows:
   * Agency : Parliament will appoint two members of the Helsinki-based European Chemicals Agency and the Executive Director will take part in a hearing with MEPs before his/her appointment is confirmed:
    * Authorisation: for dangerous substances, there will be an obligation to submit a substitution plan to replace them with safer alternatives. Where no alternative exists, producers will have to present a research and development plan.
    * Endocrine disrupters: a clause was agreed, to review after six years, on the basis of the latest scientific data, the inclusion of substances with endocrine disrupter properties among those which can only be authorised if the socio-economic benefits of their use is higher than the risk to human health or the environment, and if no safer alternative exists;
    * Intellectual property provisions have been strengthened with data protection extended from 3 to 6 years;
    * Duty of Care: this principle is enshrined in the regulation in a recital which recalls that the manufacturing, importing or placing on the market of substances should, under reasonable foreseeable circumstances, not adversely affect human health or the environment:
    * Animal welfare: changes have been agreed with the aim of avoiding duplication of animal testing and at promoting alternative test methods.

 Last night's agreement has now to be confirmed by the Member States’ representatives and by the full Parliament during the next plenary session in Strasbourg. The vote is scheduled for Wednesday 13 December.

Source: European Parliament