Chemicals – 'One Substance, One Assessment'

Key points

The EESC:

• welcomes the ‘one substance, one assessment’ (OSOA) package;
• welcomes the one-stop-shop platform bringing together data on chemicals obtained from different sources, which will be under the control of the European Chemicals Agency (ECHA);
• is concerned that the failure to publish the new regulation on reorganising the ECHA means that it is not possible to make a full assessment of the role of the ECHA in the OSOA system. This role is critical for the OSOA approach to functioning successfully;
• has doubts as to whether business operators will be compelled to cooperate in the conducting of scientific studies or whether they will be able to appeal against an ECHA request, when results cannot be obtained through existing legal provisions or processes under EU legislation;
• believes that the confidential provisions in the Common Data Platform must be clearly defined so that industry operators have full confidence in the system. In this regard it is very positive that access to confidential information can be audited. In addition, greater clarity on sharing and reusing chemicals data must be provided;
• has doubts as to how disagreements will be resolved, in the case of commissioned studies, and calls for the precautionary principle to be applied in order to protect public health and the environment;
• believes that the notification of studies will add to the administrative burden on businesses, and calls for this to be carefully monitored;
• has doubts as to whether the ECHA will be able to manage the system in such a way as to achieve maximum synergies and cooperation;
• calls for new proposals to ensure the widest possible access to documents containing chemical data and it is essential that strict rules apply in this regard;
• observes that the package currently falls short on ensuring that the data is reliable and fully exploits the valuable insights from independent research, especially in the early warning and action system, as well in the general context of environmental and health assessments.