We present the call to action sent to national associations by Director General of the European Chemical Industry Council, Marco Mensink regarding the compliance verification of REACH registration dossiers
“Dear Member
We need your support and need to ask for your attention to something important. It is not a lot of work, but important to be done asap!
Being very aware this is a regulatory issue; we do approach you as CEO’s of our member companies and heads of Associations to really give priority.
What is the issue: We have understood that a recent compliance screening exercise conducted by the European Chemicals Agency (ECHA) has indicated that a number of the REACH dossiers still need to be updated in line with the legal requirements under EU REACH, more particular Changes to the substance’s harmonised classification and labelling status.
This is not a data quality issue. It is a compliance issue (!) According to Art. 22 of REACH and Commission Implementing Regulation (EU) 2020/1435 in case of change in the classification and labelling of the registered substance the dossiers shall be updated and submitted to the Agency by no later than the date as of which that change is to apply. If a pre-determined harmonised classification is set in CLP, it overrides self-classification.
When ECHA staff tried to contact people indicated in dossiers, in many cases the problems were solved right away.
However, in some cases they ECHA received bounce backs or responses that those people no longer work for the company in question. This was not in a small number of cases, not only for only representatives or smaller or foreign companies, but across the sector.
ECHA cannot share with Cefic which companies are concerned. But when mails bounce back you will not know if the file is updated or not until you will be listed as non-compliant. Hence this general call.
It could very well be that you do no longer produce these products. The simplest way to solve this is to indicate whether the substance in question manufactured or imported above 1 tonne per year has been discontinued. Art. 22 of REACH puts an obligation on registrants to notify ECHA within 3 months about the cessation of manufacture or import.
Cefic has a Memorandum of Understanding with ECHA in place to cooperate on the effective implementation of REACH. Practical support on how to update your dossier is available here. In case of questions, you can also contact our product stewardship team – Steven vdBroek sva@cefic.be).
We kindly ask you to have your teams check if the contact people in the dossiers are correct, if you have stopped selling or importing and most importantly, if the harmonised classification update is made. As you understand, with the upcoming REACH revision, it is crucial that we solve these issues asap. We have 4-6 weeks before we believe dossiers and registrants will be called out in public.
Longer term, we advise you to put processes in place to systematically screen and update REACH dossiers:
o Company contact details, name and address, changes in legal entity => update within 3 months
o New Adaptation to Technical Progress (ATP) to CLP => update before the deadline indicated in the ATP
o Cease of manufacture => update within 3 months
Can we count on your cooperation?
Yours sincerely,
Marco Mensink”