THE EUROPEAN CHEMICALS BUREAU Commission communication to the Council and the European Parliament

(93/C 1/02)

Statement

The Commission wishes to inform the Council and the Parliament that it has established, within the Joint Research Centre (JRC), Environment Institute, at Ispra, a special unit dedicated to undertaking certain of the scientific/technical tasks required of the Commission in the context of certain pieces of Community legislation relating to the control of chemicals.

Justification

Community legislation relating to the control of chemicals, often imposes obligations on the Commission with regard either to the day-to-day implementation of the legislation or to the adaptation of the legislation to scientific or technical progress: the work involved in order to fulfil these obligations is, often, of a highly specialized and technical nature. For many of the key pieces of legislation dealing with chemicals the Joint Research Centre at Ispra has provided a scientific and technical support and the Centre therefore has a nucleus of technically competent personnel and an expertise in this domain. In the next few years the projected work load associated with the implementation of the chemicals legislation is expected to increase significantly. It is therefore appropriate that the capacities of the Joint Research Centre in this area are re-inforced in order to respond to this challenge. Furthermore, the importance of the chemicals sector requires that the scientific and technical support activities dedicated to this work within the Commission are commensurate with both the importance of the chemicals industry and the potential impact of that industry upon the environment.

Implementation

On the basis of the considerations outlined above, the Commission has established a European Chemicals Bureau at the Joint Research Centre, Environment Institute, in Ispra.

While the establishment and functioning of the Bureau requires a significant re-allocation of resources within the Joint Research Centre, this will be achieved within existing budgetary provisions on the budget line dedicated to support for other Commission departments.

The Bureau will have the administrative status of a Unit at the JRC Environment Institute and its own Head, i.e. in legal and in financial terms it will further on form part of the JRC. The capacities of the Bureau will be built up over several years with the intention to reach full capacity by 1995/96. In personnel terms, full capacity will represent about 50 staff based on current estimates of the probable workload. By 1995/96 the Bureau will be a substantial centre of excellence capable of undertaking an extensive range of scientific and technical activities.

The activities of the Bureau will initially be confined to those described below. However, it is probable that additional functions related to the implementation of other pieces of chemicals legislation will be transferred to the Bureau at a later date.

Short description of the work to be carried out by the European Chemicals Bureau

Directive 67/548/EEC (as amended for the seventh time by Directive 92/32/EEC) on the classification, packaging and labelling of dangerous substances:

- scientific and technical support activities associated with the adaptation of Annexes I to IX to the Directive to scientific and technical progress,

- scientific and technical support activities associated with the implementation of the new chemicals notification scheme (Articles 17, 18 and 21 of the Directive),

- scientific issues related to the Commission Directive on the risk assessment of new chemicals including the development and updating of scientific guidance documents,

- technical competence for the European inventory of existing commercial chemical substances (EINECS).

Council Regulation on the evaluation and control of existing chemical substances (to be adopted by the Council in March 1993):

- collection of data submitted by industry (Articles 3 and 4),

- to establish and maintain the European chemicals information data-base (Euclid) and to ensure the dissemination of information on existing chemicals within the Commission to the Member States and to the general public (Articles 6 and 17),

- scientific and technical support activities related to the preparation of lists of priority chemicals and the drawing up of agreed risk assessments on these priority chemicals (Articles 8 and 11 of the Regulation).

Council Regulation (EEC) No 2455/92 concerning the export and import of certain dangerous chemicals:

- scientific and technical support activities related to the implementation of the Regulation and in particular the provision of up-to-date scientific and technical information on banned or restricted chemicals.