Overview
On October 12, Darren Abrahams was quoted in a Chemical Watch article titled “Legal Experts Expect Quick Action from Commission on EDC Criteria.” The article explores some of the potential outcomes from the recent vote by the European Parliament, which rejected the European Commission’s (EC) first draft proposal for Endocrine Disrupting Chemicals (EDC) criteria.
Mr. Abrahams provides his predictions on the EC’s reaction to the vote, stating a couple of plausible outcomes with “the most likely route" being that the EC re-submits the draft criteria for adoption through the full comitology procedure. Mr. Abrahams also highlights how the EC could take no further action on proposing EDC criteria for pesticides by stopping work on the Plant Protection Products (PPP) Regulation and focusing solely on the Biocidal Products Regulation (BPR). However, Mr. Abrahams says this is unlikely and explains that “in any event, failure by the commission to take action could lead to litigation by the Parliament before the General Court of the EU. If the two proposals were separated, some of the issues relating to the biocides proposal might get more focused attention from decision makers but this seems a remote possibility. The bottom line is that the genie appears to be out of the bottle. The mindset and general approach of the draft criteria is probably here to stay for biocides, PPPs, and also other chemicals to which these criteria will not formally apply, but I expect will be relied upon in practice."
The full article can be read here at Chemical Watch (Subscription required).
