Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2008-09-03-Speech-3-014"
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"en.20080903.3.3-014"2
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".
We talk a great deal about taking the initiative on climate change but, if we really had a holistic approach to the environment, we would have directly copied UN legislation here too. Now we are removing acute toxicity category five. Why are we doing this? Well, for the bizarre reason that otherwise there would be an increase in the number of substances which would have to be classified and labelled. Thus the reason has nothing to do with any kind of environmental logic or health logic. No, we do not want to copy category five because it would mean increasing the number of substances, despite the fact that the point of the whole thing is to have a common global standard which would make things easier for trade and, in this case, also for the environment and information to consumers. I fought for reintroducing acute toxicity category five, but unfortunately I did not succeed.
Another thing which we were behind and actually succeeded in getting through together with the Council was preventing the proposal for a reduced classification threshold of 10 kg. I would like to thank the Council for standing their ground. The Commission also had a positive input. If the proposal had gone through, REACH would have been undermined. REACH was about evaluating chemicals, finding out whether they are dangerous and registering them. However, REACH evaluates and registers only the 30 000 most commonly used chemicals, those with the highest volume. The other 70 000 chemicals we use would be dealt with under this legislation. For this reason it is very good that we retained it and that no lower limit was imposed for when chemicals are to be classified. If the proposal had gone through, REACH would not have had a complement in the GHS. I am very glad that this was not the case and therefore I can support this.
I am also pleased that we succeeded in preventing an unnecessary division into categories for animal testing, e.g. eye irritation tests.
With these two victories under our belt, I can vote in favour of this report. However, I would really like to emphasise that, although we have not succeeded in including the very hazardous PBT chemicals or a priority list for evaluation here and now, at least we have gained a text that says we will promote this at UN level and that it will be included in the UN system. Now I would really like to see the Commission working hard to achieve this aim, because it is very important. Otherwise our chemicals policy will have failed completely. It is very important that these substances are now quickly incorporated in the UN system, as we did not manage to take the first step here.
So what happens for consumers? They won’t be as well informed as they could have been about the danger of chemicals, and that is disappointing. But they will at least get a decent standard and basic protection to protect themselves from hazardous chemicals. So in the end it was a compromise which no one is satisfied with, and maybe that is what usually happens."@en1
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