European Chemical Policy and the United States: The Impacts of REACH (original) (raw)

Reach, the New European Chemicals Policy: What For?

NEW SOLUTIONS: A Journal of Environmental and Occupational Health Policy, 2006

In October 2003 the European Commission adopted a proposal for a regulation aimed at radically recasting the Community policy on chemical substances. This proposed reform, known as REACH, sets up an overall system for the registration, evaluation, authorization, and restriction of chemicals. The objectives of REACH are to ensure a high level of protection for human health and the environment while strengthening the competitive position of the European chemical industry. How to strike that delicate balance remains riven with controversy. While intense lobbying by industry has substantially reduced the REACH requirements on the producers of chemicals, big changes in the management of chemical risks in Europe are still in the making. The reform which has yet to be approved by the Council and Parliament in a co-decision procedure represents a real opportunity to reduce the number of chemical-related occupational diseases.

Global REACH?: The Potential International Impact of EU Chemicals Regulation

Regulation is one of the largest and most controversial pieces of legislation that the EU has ever adopted. It introduces a comprehensive and ambitious system for chemicals management, which moves away from a hazard-based approach toward a more risk-based approach. Furthermore, REACH introduces increased responsibilities for private actors and aims at encouraging more innovation. These new EU rules for the management of chemical substances are more comprehensive and more ambitious than current efforts at the international level. Therefore, this paper argues that there could be a mutual supplementation of international chemicals initiatives and REACH. On the one hand, REACH could complement international activities through the diffusion of its ambitious requirements and the data that it will produce. Diffusion could potentially happen faster than the international negotiation procedures and create facts that facilitate consensus finding for ensuing international agreement. Policy diffusion could also potentially reach a very broad scope of countries, including jurisdictions that are not part of current international agreements. On the other hand, international organisations could foster and enhance the diffusion process and institutionalise some of the REACH provisions. Furthermore, international agreements play an important role in taking particular account of the situation of developing countries and in providing a certain 'baseline' degree of safe international chemicals management. This paper first introduces the main features of the REACH Regulation. Then, it describes the international system of chemicals governance before discussing the contribution that REACH could make to this system. In the subsequent section, the different ways in which REACH requirements could diffuse to other jurisdictions and benefit international governance are analysed. These conceptual considerations are then applied to the US and California in a brief discussion of first signs of the potential influence of REACH. Since the REACH Regulation only entered into force on 1 June 2007 and will only be fully implemented by 2016, the full international impact of REACH will only become clear at a future point in time.

U.S. chemical policy under review: how much Europeanisation?

Eastern Journal of European Studies, 2014

The European Union chemical regulation REACH entered into force in 2007. The most ambitious regulations on chemicals in the World will soon become a source of inspiration for other countries to review their own national regulations on chemicals. This is also the case of the USA where the failure of the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) of 1976 to provide a high level of protection for human health and environment contributed to a general consensus for reform. Several reform proposals were considered and discussed in both chambers of Congress, reflecting to various degrees some principles of the European REACH. This article deals with the US chemical policy reform in the context of the European experience with REACH, assessing whether the US chemical policy review is subject to Europeanisation or whether the influence of REACH on the US reform is merely superficial.

Impacts on industry of Europe's emerging chemicals policy REACh

2008

For Europe, a new regime in chemicals regulation is about to start. After the proposal of the European Commission concerning the Registration, Evaluation and Authorization of Chemicals (REACh) passed its readings in the European Parliament and some differences with the European Council of Ministers were resolved, the regulation will come into force in June 2007. This paper is focused on the question how serious the cost burdens for industry induced by REACh will be, and whether the New European Member States (NMS) which joined the European Union in May 2004 will be able to cope with the regulation. This evaluation has been done by assessing the legislative, administrative and economic framework in New Member States and by analysing real business cases in companies. The empirical showcase business impact studies are at the same time of interest for companies of EU-15 states, other European countries who may implement the regulation, and even for exporters of raw materials and chemicals outside Europe, who will also have to comply with REACh if they market in the European Community. The results give no indications that REACh adoption will bring significant drawbacks to companies in the NMS. The emerging regulation will bring challenges for individual companies, especially for small and medium-sized ones, but for the European chemical industry as a whole, there is no question that it will be able to cope with REACh burdens without losing its global competitiveness. r

Globalizing Regulation: Reaching Beyond the Borders of Chemical Safety

Journal of Law and Society, 2009

This article argues that although globalization can benefit both exporters and importers of regulation in absolute terms, it may turn the globalization of regulation into a game with relative winners and losers. Using the EU REACH Regulation of chemicals as a case study, it explores the normative, social, economic, and strategic reasons that push the EU to promote the global adoption of REACH. Notwithstanding its attractions, rules globalization may result in a mismatch between global norms and local priorities, particularly for developing countries. It reduces regulatory diversity, and amplifies the strengths but equally the weaknesses of the dominant regulatory framework. While it can foster international trade through mutual recognition of regulatory decisions and the development of transnational regulatory frameworks, it increases the likelihood of conflict and trade flow desequilibria. The article calls for further careful consideration of rules globalization, so that harmonization does not come at the expense of local interests and values.