Overview
Today, the Board of Appeal of the European Chemicals Agency (ECHA) adopted a decision in case A-022-2013. The appeal was lodged against an ECHA decision that found an individual registration, separate from an existing joint registration, to be complete ("the Contested Decision"):
- In consideration of the "one substance, one registration" principle, the Board of Appeal concludes that a subsequent registrant is required to join the existing joint submission for the substance, when there is such a pre-existing joint submission. The Board of Appeal considers that Article 11(3) of the REACH Regulation does not allow a full "opt-out" from the joint submission, only a partial "opt-out" for certain endpoints is allowed (the registrant “still [should] have been obliged to join the joint submission for the Substance.”)
- The Board of Appeal then ruled ECHA should have rejected the separate registration as incomplete under its duty under Article 20(2) of the REACH Regulation to undertake a completeness check.
- The Board of Appeal found that both its conclusions are “consistent” with the recently adopted Data Sharing Implementing Regulation.
This ruling is significant because ECHA now needs to reconsider its existing practice related to separate registration dossiers, be they individual or joint separate submissions.
