EU Commission to drop chemicals law reform as a gift to polluters

The European Commission is tomorrow set to capitulate bold plans against hazardous chemicals and betray its own commitment to protecting health and environment, a leak of the European Commission’s 2023 work programme shows.

The 2023 work programme, finalised in a meeting of heads of cabinets last Friday evening and set to be adopted in the College of Commissioners tomorrow, is set to delay by a year the start of REACH reforms from the last quarter of 2022 to the last quarter of 2023. But this delay is far more significant than “just one year”: with European Parliament elections set for May 2024, the delay is effectively “game over” for REACH reform in this legislature and under this Commission, said the European Environmental Bureau (EEB), which has seen the leaked programme. No complex reform has ever been completed in such a short period of time. Therefore, Ursula von der Leyen Commission is effectively killing the reform in response to German chemical industry pressure, EEB said.

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