Chemicals Strategy for sustainability

The European Commission is currently drafting the Chemicals Strategy for Sustainability, which should be published in autumn. It is a unique opportunity to put in place a truly strategic policy that harnesses the enormous potential of Europe’s chemical industry towards delivering European Green Deal objectives. This holistic strategic approach would also help maintain a high level of protection for people and environment and support the industry’s investments into developing safer and more sustainable substances on European soil.

The upcoming strategy should be based on three pillars – improvement, innovation and enforcement.  Further improving the implementation of REACH, already one of the most sophisticated regulatory framework on chemicals in the world providing one of the highest level of protection, will bring more consistency in the implementation of already more than 40 pieces of legislation.  Moving towards the principle of ‘one substance-one assessment’ for substances should result in greater predictability for industry and improve people’s trust in regulatory opinions issued by various EU agencies. Developing a new EU ‘Safe-and-Sustainable-by-Design’ standard and increasing funding for new predictive toxicology tools would accelerate development of innovative and safer alternatives to hazardous substances. Finally, stricter enforcement of all EU chemical and environmental laws for imports would ensure no chemicals enter Europe that do not comply with its rules.

Please find HERE the submission of Cefic to the public consultation to the Roadmap of the Chemicals Strategy for Sustainability.

Source: the text above is based on the reactive statement of Cefic for media enquiries