EU MINISTERS VOTE ON REACH - LIZ LYNNE

12.00.00am GMT Tue 13th Dec 2005

Commenting on the agreement reached by EU Ministers on the REACH proposal Liz Lynne, Lib Dem MEP for the West Midlands, said:

"There's a lot that is good in these proposals, but having run a straight course, balancing the concerns of industry with the need to protect human health, the British presidency has fallen at the final fence.

"By rejecting MEPs demands that chemicals of very high concern should be replaced by safer alternatives, whenever possible, Ministers have torn the guts out of Parliament's plans to protect consumers.

"The suspicion is that Britain has backed down in the face of German pressure, and that Blair has tried to buy votes for his budget by caving in on chemicals."

ENDS

Notes

REACH is designed to remove potentially toxic substances from circulation by getting industry to provide information on chemicals used in everyday products.

The discussion on REACH centres on three issues:

1) The burden of proof. The essence of REACH is that it will require manufacturers to prove that their chemicals are safe if they are to stay on the market. This has emerged as the majority position. Industry lobbyists have been trying to stop this by making it the responsibility of the new European Chemicals Agency to assess each chemical on the basis of limited information supplied by manufacturers, calling for further tests only if necessary - a massive bureaucratic task that would have crippled the Agency.

2) Registration - What tests manufacturers have to carry out in order to provide the proof of safety. The compromise package adopted reduces the number and type of tests that have to be carried out, although the Agency can order more if these arouse any concern. This deal cuts the costs to industry and should ensure that 99% of problem chemicals get identified.

3) Substitution/Authorisation - A strict criteria has been adopted, which was the number one objective of environmental groups and where a safer alternative is available then the dangerous chemical will be banned down strict criteria, while industry lobbyists are doing their best to resist such attempts.