European Green Deal — A New Hope for Safer Chemicals?

The European Green Deal, presented by European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen on December 11, 2019, is meant to be the “boarding pass” for the European Union’s transformative journey towards a sustainable future. It’s designed to set the EU on a long-term voyage towards “reconciling economics with the planet.” It has been introduced as an ambitious roadmap and even pronounced to be “Europe’s man on the moon moment.” 

With quite a few grandiose references to its planetary or even universal scale of ambition, the Green Deal is not shy of beautiful promises and carefully rendered phrases. Among other things, it vows to deliver a more robust approach to managing chemicals, including an EU industrial strategy “to address the twin challenge of the green and the digital transformation,” a circular economy action plan (with a sustainable product policy), a Farm to Fork strategy, a zero-pollution ambition for a toxic-free environment (with a zero-pollution action plan), and a chemicals strategy for sustainability. 

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