The
Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) is a trade agreement that is presently being negotiated
between the European Union and the United States. It aims at removing trade barriers in a wide range of economic sectors to make it easier to buy and sell goods and services between the EU and the US.
On top of cutting tariffs across all sectors, the EU and the US want to tackle barriers behind the customs border – such as
differences in technical regulations, standards and approval procedures. These often cost unnecessary time and money for companies who want to sell their products on both markets. For example, when a car is approved as safe in the EU, it has to undergo a new approval procedure in the US even though the safety standards are similar.
For the chemical industry TTIP is considered as an
historic opportunity for the transatlantic community
to facilitate jobs, growth and better standards of living. The US is also Europe’s biggest trading partner: in chemicals, for instance, over 20% of European exports go to the US, and leading chemical companies operate on both sides of the Atlantic. TTIP must address a regulatory divide that has deepened in recent decades. Though goals are often similar, duplication of testing, divergent conformity assessment procedures, different standards and – last but not least – differing approaches to chemicals management are currently observed.
The prospect of regulatory cooperation within TTIP attracts a great deal of suspicion.
Consumer and environmental NGOs as well as politicians fear that standards of protection will be lowered or that the freedom of authorities to regulate health and environmental standards will be curtailed, benefiting only big business (
Read the full article). Such doubts are not fully shared by the European Chemical Industry Council (CEFIC), which has submitted, jointly with the American Chemistry Council (ACC), a
proposal to boost regulatory cooperation, maintaining high standards while achieving regulatory efficiencies, in respect of the different regulatory systems. CEFIC and ACC identified areas where EU and US authorities could work better together. For instance, both EU and US systems build on scientific assessments of how safe chemicals are.
Scientists from both sides could meet to reach a common understanding of the science underpinning regulatory decisions. It is believed that in the long run these measures could bring
future chemical legislation closer together.
Both EU and U.S. systems also have
procedures to prioritise which chemicals to assess first. There could be possibilities to
streamline priority setting, for example, if the US and EU give high priority to the same chemicals, they should share the work. This would speed up the process and saves taxpayers money. Finally,
classification and labelling of chemicals is done using the UN Globally Harmonised System (GHS), but applied differently in each market. CEFIC and ACC think
more alignment is needed, which would result in significant savings for companies.
Related Links:
- ACC-CEFIC joint proposal enhancing U.S. EU chemical regulatory cooperation under TTIP
- CEFIC Latest Top Stories "TTIP, a remarkable opportunity"
- ClientEarth-CIEL "Chemical industry influence over secretive US-EU trade negotiations"
- ACC letter to the Committee on Finance of the United States Senate
