WTO members continued to discuss chemical regulations intensively among a wide range of new and previously-raised trade concerns when the Technical Barriers to Trade Committee met on 9 November 2007.
This followed two days of discussions on various aspects of transparency and information exchange, which are vital for a WTO agreement that tries to ensure regulations, standards, testing and certification procedures only restrict trade when they are really needed.
Members also conducted China's “transitional review”, required annually for the first eight years under China's membership agreement, and once more after about 10 years. And they looked ahead to a workshop on “Good Regulatory Practice” in March 2008.
EU's REACH: The longest discussion continued to be on the EU's Regulation on the Registration, Evaluation and Authorization of Chemicals (REACH), covering the production and use of chemical substances, which took effect on 1 June 2007 after seven years of preparation and final approval in December 2006.
It is being phased in over 11 years. REACH gives greater responsibility to industry to manage the risks from chemicals and to provide safety information on the substances (see box, and EU Commission website.
Argentina joined a lengthening list of countries raising the issue. Among its concerns are: uncertainty about how the regulation works; its complexity and use of ambiguous terms; the possibility that the regulation will notbe applied uniformly in all EU member states; the numerous bureaucratic steps required; the costs that have to be borne by exporters, producers and users even if they are not in the EU because of the onus shifted to industry; the requirement that only registered products can be sold. In particular, the regulation causes problems for small and medium-sized industries, Argentina said.
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