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Brussels, 26/01/1999
For a full consideration of Consumers' expectations in the future European Policy on chemical products.
Euro Coop calls on the Commission to proceed rapidly on the review of the EU's chemicals policy, according to the decision of the informal Environment Council on 25 April 1998. In this context, Euro Coop welcomes the forthcoming brainstormings on chemical strategy and wishes to get involved, as consumer representative, in that process.
Euro Coop notes that chemical legislation does not only affect environmental protection and workers' health but has a major impact on consumer protection. For this reason, Euro Coop is extremely concerned at the current slow rate of chemical assessment, which is clearly not working well - only a minimal number of the more than 100,000 substances classified as existing chemicals under the 1993 Regulation have been judged to require attention, and agreed action has yet to be made on even one of these assessments. This ineffective control of chemicals does not serve consumers' interests, and has proved to be impossible.
Euro Coop is not only in favour of restructuring and simplifying existing chemical legislation, but also of targeting it to allow it to meet new concerns in the future. For these reasons, Euro Coop calls for an EU chemical strategy, which is based on :
- The Precautionary Principle : everyone who handles chemicals must take the necessary precautions in advance to prevent damage to other persons and/or the environment
- Producer responsibility : the burden of proof should be placed on producers who would have to prove that a substance is not harmful to the environment in its production, use and disposal
- Consumer Protection : chemical controls must take into account the possible impact on consumers
In Euro Coop's opinion a new revised EU chemical strategy should include :
- A risk assessment approach which tackles "generic" groups of chemicals, rather than the current substance-by-substance approach. The current approach costs too much both in time and resources.
- A comprehensive approach to chemicals, focusing on their use, dispersion and disposal throughout product life cycles and not just on impacts during chemical production;
- A development of criteria for persistency, bioaccumulation, and toxicity.
To ensure that consumer protection is respected Euro Coop suggests that the EU consider the following in a new chemical strategy :
- Producers should be obliged to put environment declarations on their products, which specify each product's chemical content. This would allow the consumer to make an informed choice about whether or not to buy a particular product.
- Legislative provisions should provide a general framework for encouraging voluntary co-operation between the EU, the chemicals industry and consumers to ensure that the consumers' voice is heard in all discussions on chemical policy.
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