Commission publishes details of REACH monitoring

A study on how the European Commission plans to monitor the effectiveness of implementing REACHⁱ regulations has been published. The Commission will focus on three main aspects: identifying any reduction in chemical risk; analysing the quality of public data on substances and analysing the data on the registration, evaluation and authorisation of substances. These indicators address several central elements and objectives of REACH, e.g. protection of human health and the environment, improvement of knowledge on properties and safe uses of chemicals, increased transparency and consumer awareness, etc. The study also presents an interesting “snapshot” of the situation in 2007. Additional snapshots will be made at a later stage. The competitiveness issue is not within the scope of this study. Page 9 notes that "the REACH Baseline Study will not address economic and legal aspects". Assessing the last three objectives of Table 1.2 (see study) lies outside the scope of this study.

The study can be found here:

http://epp.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/cache/ITY_OFFPUB/KS-RA-09-003/EN/KS-RA-09-003-EN.PDF