PFAS Restrictions: EU Commission Explores Options for Sectors Not Yet Covered

Public consultation on the SEAC draft ended on May 25, but the opinion did not include eight sectors. The European Commission is now exploring options to provide the affected companies with legal certainty. Among other possibilities, it is considering a mandate for the ECHA to assess these sectors retroactively.

On August 27, 2025, the ECHA published an update on the PFAS restriction process and added the following sectors that use PFAS:

Pressure applications
Sealing applications
Machinery applications
Other medical applications, such as primary packaging and excipients for pharmaceuticals
Military applications
Explosives
Technical textiles
Broader industrial applications, such as solvents and catalysts

The public consultation on the SEAC draft concluded at the end of May. Based on the information they received, SEAC members hope to complete their work on final draft by the end of the year. Although the draft includes the eight added sectors as part of the overall assessment, it did not address them individually. The draft did not include separate RAC and SEAC chapters and, therefore, no detailed cost-benefit analysis per sector. This omission has prompted action by the affected companies and associations because they fear blanket bans without critical analysis.

CEFIC Calls for Exemptions

The regulations are intended to apply to the use of PFAS in industry as cited in a second study on the use of PFAS in industrial and chemical plants. In an initial study published in February 2026, CEFIC emphasized the urgency of targeted exemptions. None of the PFAS alternatives would match the performance of PFAS, meaning that any substitution would require a case-by-case assessment.

What the German Government Says

The German government commented on the topic of PFAS in a response to a parliamentary question dated March 19. According to the comment, “PFAS are to be replaced in the future wherever this is already possible today or will be possible in the foreseeable future. The Federal Government will also advocate for appropriate transition periods and exemptions that allow PFAS to continue to be used in the long term – and, if necessary, indefinitely – where suitable PFAS-free alternatives or alternative technologies are not yet available.”

EU Plans

The ball is now in the EU Commission’s court: It must decide how to proceed with assessment of the sectors. However, it will not do so until the final SEAC draft becomes available at the end of 2026. If the EU Commission requests additional information after reviewing the draft, it could issue a new mandate to ECHA to collect further data on these sectors. The SEAC committee itself has already expressed views in this regard. Page 16 of the draft from March of this year states that the committee recommends assessing all uses investigated by the dossier submitter in these specific sectors as soon as possible.

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