Plans to revise the European Union’s flagship chemical safety regulation have been shelved after 6 years of delays and opposition, thus putting plans for a tightening of legal requirements on hold indefinitely.
European environment commissioner Jessika Roswall confirmed that the revision has been canceled at a meeting of the European Parliament’s Committee on the Environment, Public Health and Food Safety (Envi) on April 27. Roswall said “now is not the time” to revise the Registration, Evaluation, Authorisation, and Restriction of Chemicals (REACH) law, adding that Europe is “at a point where we need certainty and predictability.”
After months of speculation that the European Commission is stepping back from the revision, the chemical industry showed some relief—and little surprise. The German Chemical Industry Association (VCI), which lobbied heavily against the project, says its message “has finally been received.” In a statement, VCI managing director Wolfgang Große Entrup says that “competitiveness needs room to breathe, not another regulatory onslaught.”
Europe’s chemical industry has suffered from high energy costs and cheap global competition, although profits have spiked recently because of the Iran war. The government of Germany, home of Europe’s largest chemical makers, strongly opposed any revision of REACH in a March 26 report, saying it would have “negative repercussions” on competitiveness in the current economic and geopolitical climate.
First proposed as part of the 2020 chemical strategy for sustainability under the EU’s European Green Deal, the REACH revision envisaged sweeping changes, such as including the currently exempted, 80,000-substance-strong group of polymers under the law’s registration rules.
Instead, lawmakers will now focus on “simplification and modernization” of the law’s existing provisions, Roswall told the Envi meeting. The commission can make minor changes to REACH through comitology, a process that allows the EU executive to change laws without consulting its co-legislators: the European Parliament and Council of the EU.
In an email to C&EN, the VCI says it wants the commission to come up with ways to simplify policy without revising the legal text, such as through official guidance for integrating scientific risk assessment into regulatory decision-making. The commission is also expected to begin tweaking the REACH annexes, which address technical aspects of the legislation, including the detailed information requirements for registration of chemicals.
Nongovernmental organizations criticize the commission for abandoning 6 years of work on the overhaul, but they see an opportunity to focus on strengthening existing provisions without the political back-and-forth that has been distracting lawmakers. Theresa Kjell, head of policy at the International Chemical Secretariat, says shelving the revision “is a good starting point to move ahead with the tools that already exist in REACH.”
“It is the time to get both restrictions and authorizations going as they have been at a standstill for years now,” Kjell says. “The commission can no longer blame the revision process for not acting.”
But members of the European Parliament (MEPs) are already pushing for the revision to be picked up again by the next commission, which will be appointed in 2029.
“The commission is now moving towards a minimal reform of the current framework, and we will be vigilant to ensure that this reform is not just another exercise in deregulation,” Christophe Clergeau, a French MEP from the Socialists and Democrats party, says in a LinkedIn post.
Meanwhile, the NGO CHEM Trust says the decision not to open REACH now is “not unexpected, given the complexity of the discussions and the urgent need for action on” per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances.
At the ENVI meeting, Roswall said the upcoming EU PFAS restriction proposal could arrive by year-end. The European Chemicals Agency’s scientific committees are in the process of finalizing their scientific opinions on the sweeping restriction, which will form the basis for a legislative proposal from the commission.
2026 American Chemical Society
