Based on information shared by the Turkish Ministry of Trade Directorate General for International Agreements and European Union, it has been announced that the European Commission has updated the Candidate List under the REACH Regulation and that the authorisation decisions regarding the placing on the market and use of substances listed in Annex XIV of the said regulation have been published in the Official Journal of the European Union.
The European Chemicals Agency (ECHA) announced in a bulletin published on 4 February 2026 that a new substance has been added to the Candidate List under substances of very high concern (SVHC). Accordingly, the addition of n-hexane and 4,4′-[2,2,2-trifluoro-1-(trifluoromethyl)ethylidene]diphenol and their salts to the list has been approved. These substances are used, for example, in formulations, polymer processing, coatings, cleaning agents, and as process regulators and cross-linkers, respectively. In this context, while there are currently 253 substances on the ECHA Candidate List, the total number of chemicals affected is higher as some are chemical groups; substances on the Candidate List may subsequently be transferred to the Authorisation List; It is well known that substances on the Authorisation List can only be used after companies have applied for authorisation and received approval from the European Commission.
In this context, under the REACH Regulation, when a substance is included in the Candidate List, if an article contains more than 0.1% by weight of a Candidate List substance, the relevant company/suppliers are obliged to provide customers and consumers with information on the safe use of this substance; Companies manufacturing or importing an article containing a substance included in the Candidate List must notify the ECHA within six months of the substance being included in the list; EU and EEA suppliers placing the substances concerned on the market, either on their own or in mixtures, are obliged to update the safety data sheets they provide to their customers; Under the Waste Framework Directive, companies are required to notify ECHA if SVHC substances are present in their products at a concentration exceeding 0.1%, and these notifications are published in the ECHA hazardous substances database; finally, it was shared that products containing SVHC cannot obtain eco-labelling under the EU Eco-Labelling Regulation.
The aforementioned statement and the list of relevant articles can be accessed via the following link:
https://echa.europa.eu/fr/-/echa-adds-two-hazardous-chemicals-to-the-candidate-list-1