EU officials are tomorrow set to drop bold plans to strengthen health and environmental protections against hazardous chemicals, a leak of the European Commission’s 2023 work programme suggests. The Commission had announced it would strengthen and speed up what are painfully slow chemical controls, saying that its most important law, REACH, is “too slow to sufficiently protect consumers and professional users against risks from the most hazardous substances”. But the work programme will delay by a year the start of REACH reforms, effectively “game over” for the revision, given the limited amount of time left to lawmakers under the current EU term.
Despite the last minute nature of the task for the European Environmental Bureau, it was covered in 25 media outlets around Europe, including a forceful front page story in the Danish daily Information. The EEB chemicals team is, as usual, super well informed and dedicated to the issue.
