The European Chemical Industry Council (CEFIC) issued a statement commenting on the publication on March 5, 2018 of the European Commission’s REACh review (REACh Refit evaluation). The Commission's report comes a few weeks after the European Chemicals Agency (ECHA) has published its annual progress report on evaluation under REACh which includes also a 10-year overview. The CEFIC statement reads as follows:

The Commission’s Evaluation concludes that REACh is addressing today's citizens' concerns about chemical safety and has been successful in setting high standards for the safe management of chemicals to protect people and the environment.  We agree with the Commission’s conclusion that there is no need for any drastic changes to the regulation to achieve its goals.

The Commission’s text highlights several areas where the implementation can be improved to make REACh more effective. None of these recommendations for improvement come as a surprise to the industry and the Commission’s findings are generally consistent with our assessment of the situation. 

• We are particularly pleased to see that one of the Commission’s recommendations is to use a holistic approach to chemicals management and make sure REACh is fully aligned with the EU Industrial Policy Strategy and Circular Economy Action Plan, something that we actively endorse.
• It is encouraging to see that the Commission would like to move forward with simplifying the authorization process to make it more workable, especially for SMEs.
• We also fully support the Commission’s recommendation to expedite the assessment of the need for restrictions on imported articles containing substances subject to authorization in order to ensure a level playing field between EU and foreign manufacturers.

We will continue collaborating with the Commission and ECHA on implementing these recommendations, writes CEFIC concluding the statement.

In a soon-to-be-published interview with CHEManager, Erwin Annys, CEFIC's REACh director, said: "It has always been clear but is now even clearer after the publication of the REACh Review [by the European Commission] that May 2018 is absolutely not the end of the journey. The evaluation of existing dossiers and regulatory risk management will continue as the Commission wants improve the implementation. "