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CBA Questions ECHA’S New Rules on Pre-Registration - 22/09/2008
CBA QUESTIONS ECHA’S NEW RULES ON PRE-REGISTRATION
The Chemical Business Association (CBA) today questioned new rules for pre-registration outlined by the European Chemicals Agency (ECHA) in its announcement on 19 September 2008.
Commenting on the ECHA announcement, CBA’s Director, Peter Newport, said: "This is a significant shift in ECHA's position.Prior to this statement, the advice from the European Commission and ECHAto companies atnumerous conferences and industry events has always been 'if in doubt, pre-register'. Now ECHA is saying that companies should only pre-register the substances they ultimately intend to register under the REACH provisions. ECHA is changing the rules to suit its own administrative convenience. It has no power under the REACH provisions to make such rulings or to dictate how many substances can or cannot be pre-registered."
"The reason behind ECHA's ruling is that one UK company and one German company have pre-registered thefull EC inventory of chemicals – a total of around 100,000substances. It should be noted that there is nothing in the REACH provisions to prevent these companies pre-registering this number of substances. Prior to REACH coming in to force, ECHA was advised at several public events that some companies may well take a considered view that this number of pre-registrations would benecessary to protect thestrategic interests of their businesses."
"We are now about halfway through the pre-registration period and the fact that throughout the whole of Europe only two companies have so far chosen to adopt this approach should not provoke this knee-jerk response from ECHA. These companies are merely applying the commercial equivalent to the precautionary principle in order to safeguard their futures."
Further information from:
Peter Newport, Director, CBA 01270 258200 www.chemical.org.uk
NOTE TO EDITIORS
Each year CBA members distribute more than 2.5 million tonnes of chemicals with a market value of almost three billion euros. CBA members, the majority of which are SMEs, are the key industry interface with thousands of UK downstream chemical users.
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