Dialogue with European Chemicals Agency (ECHA) on EU-China Chemical Cooperation

2017-06-28 | Beijing, Shanghai

During this meeting, the Petrochemicals, Chemicals and Refining WG has had a dialogue with Mr Geert Dancet, Executive Director of the European Chemicals Agency (ECHA). Likewise, the working group will introduce its activities and publications, including the Position Paper 2017/2018 currently under preparation to Mr Dancet.

The working group has held a discussion on ECHA and EU’s chemicals legislations and ECHA’s enhanced dissemination of information on chemicals. Additionally, Mr Dancet has debriefed our members on ECHA visit to China.

Mr Dancet introduced ECHA to the audience. Since its foundation, in 2007, ECHA aspires to become the
world's leading regulatory authority on the safety of chemicals. The previous visit of ECHA to China was in
2012. His presentation was centered in the following aspects:

- Main Activities of ECHA.
- ECHA’s strategic aims for 2014-2018.
- The EU Chemicals Management.
- Aims of REACH, CLP and BPR.
- Principles of the legislation.
- REACH and CLP’s benefits.
- REACH and innovation.
- Challenges: data quality.
- Challenges: focus on substances that matter.
- Challenges: supply chain communication.
- Challenges: authorisations and restrictions to stimulate substitution.
- Challenges: missing information about hazardous chemicals in products.
- Challenges: classification and labelling.
- Challenges: biocides.
- REACH Review 2017.
- ECHA and China.
- China and ECHA website.

Finally, Mr. Dancet remarked that a necessary condition to seek future collaboration with China is that this
country should be interested in developing its own capacity.

During the Q&A session, the PCR WG asked Mr. Dancet about their evaluation of the Chinese authorities approach to chemicals management, the targets that the MEP is pursuing with the new regulations on chemicals, future meetings between European and Chinese agencies, implementation and enforcement of chemicals regulations in China, smart chemical companies and green chemistry, optimisation of the data requests to companies and the current state of the discussions regarding the classification of the titanium dioxide (TiO2) as a carcinogenic.

Visit of ECHA to China

The European Chemicals Agency (ECHA) is responsible for the implementation of the EU chemicals legislation, REACH, CLP , BPR and PIC . The visit is carried out in the frame of the 2018 REACH registration deadline and awareness raising on the REACH requirements for substances in articles. In addition, visit of ECHA will also raise attention to ECHA’s improved dissemination portal that was launched in 2016. As a recent improvement, the Agency has made selected information in the database available for download with the aim of improving the safe use of chemicals world-wide. As ECHA is an independent EU body the visit is technical in nature focusing on the implementation of the chemical legislation, lessons learned in the process, how things can be done better in the future and also to facilitate information flow on chemical management - especially on regulatory requirements - between the EU and China.