26/03/2007
In an article published in the Journal of Environmental Management German and Austrian researchers have stated that the adoption of the Reach regulations would not cause major problems to enterprises based in new member states. They believe the European industry will cope with the workload generated by REACH but new member states which have been part of the Union since 2004 will encounter administrative problems when implementing European regulations.

“In some countries, the greatest problem is the reduced number of staff responsible for implementing legislation. This is the case for Poland where the National Bureau for chemical products has 20 salaried staff. Twice this number would be required to cope with Reach and with other community legislation. Slovenia is in the same situation; only 25 people are employed in this department”.

Both researchers have also pointed out that the lack of coordination between various Ministries - Economy, Environment, Health and Labour - could seriously hamper the implementation of Reach which is supposed to take place over an eleven year period. The total expected turnover is 5.800 billion EUR; profits will amount to 170 billion EUR. The total cost of Reach, according to the figures issued by the European Commission, will be around 7.5 billion EUR for the chemical industry and other sectors involved.

Three case studies (Czech Republic, Poland, and Estonia) have shown that out of the three countries, Estonia would be most affected by European legislation because over 80% of its specialised chemical products are exported outside the Twenty-Seven country market.

To evaluate the impact of regulations in countries of Central and Oriental Europe (PECO), specialised chemistry was focused on because researchers believe the greatest negative impact of REACH would be felt by this sector.