Enforcement is also crucial for the competitiveness of EU businesses: no product (article, substance, or mixture) should enter the market if it does not comply with EU rules. This is why we fully endorse enforcement as the main topic for the second High Level Round Table on the Chemicals Strategy for Sustainability. In particular, we ask the European Commission and EU Member States to prioritise action on:

1. Tightening controls of imports of both, chemicals and goods, including online marketplaces.

• There is sufficient evidence that the vast majority of goods containing banned or restricted chemicals come from outside of the EU. This is a matter of consumer safety as many of these products are purchased online by individuals. The cases of non-compliance reported through the EU’s ‘Safety Gate’ are only the tip of the iceberg and many more cases often go unnoticed. Non-compliant products also reduce the competitiveness of EU domestic producers and distributors, who invested millions into compliance with the EU chemicals law.

In addition, as long as banned chemicals continue to enter the Internal Market through non-compliant imports and then enter the European recycling streams, ambitious EU circular economy objectives may not be achieved.

2. Ensuring new restrictions are 100% enforceable.

This means enforcement authorities need to have harmonised and standardised control test methods, the lab capacity, the budget and resources to check whether representative samples contain restricted chemicals or not. Such harmonised and standardised analytical methods need to be available before a restriction is adopted, otherwise market surveillance authorities and value chain cannot perform control checks. The chemical industry stands ready to contribute to the development of such analytical methods.

Moreover, an increasing number of restrictions have such a broad scope that it is difficult, if not impossible, to enforce them. For example, the upcoming restriction on skin sensitisers may impose checks on imported clothes against up to a thousand different skin sensitisers, whilst it is known that the market surveillance authorities do not have the resources and capacity to do that.  With the move to generic approaches to risk management announced in the Chemicals Strategy for Sustainability, future restrictions are likely to cover hundreds of substances in many different uses. It means that we urgently need new solutions to check compliance. With the move to generic approaches to risk management announced in the Chemicals Strategy for Sustainability, future restrictions are likely to cover hundreds of substances in many different uses. It means that we urgently need new solutions to check compliance.