Brexit Agreement: Industry Associations Call for Closer Exchange of Information on Substance Data

Industry associations have called on British and EU authorities to exchange chemical data regularly. A data-sharing solution would save companies significant duplicate work, administrative effort, and, therefore, costs.

Goal: shared knowledge pool

Essentially, the industry is concerned with implementing the Chemicals Annex enshrined in the EU-UK Trade and Cooperation Agreement (TCA). Industry representatives expressly requested the addition because they hope it will facilitate trade. The industry specifically wants authorities to exchange information about new risks and substance data. Doing so would create a knowledge pool as a foundation for joint scientific assessment.

Goal: new risk assessment methods

Industry associations are also interested in new animal-free methods that allow more-reliable assessment of substances (Non-Animal New Approach Methodologies: NAMs). They are further interested in how these tools can be used for risk assessment (Next Generation Risk Assessment: NGRA).

The real problems

The aforementioned annex does not describe possible access to the EU REACH database by UK authorities and companies. Access would have to be negotiated anyway. No binding infrastructure for regular and systematic data exchange between the ECHA and the UK HSE currently exists.

Industry-wide consequences

Because of the different regulatory systems, UK companies must register chemicals separately in the UK and the EU. This situation costs money, and the divergence leads to legal uncertainties.

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