CONSUMER PRODUCTS AND RETAIL E-SSENTIALS

EU: ECHA published enforcement project results on REACH restriction, BPR and CLP

DECEMBER 2021 - ELECTRICAL AND ELECTRONICS, HARDLINES, SOFTLINES, TOYS AND CHILDREN'S PRODUCTS

On 8 December 2021, the European Chemicals Agency (ECHA) published a report for the results of a coordinated enforcement project (REF-8)^1,2 conducted by ECHA’s Enforcement Forum on enforcement of REACH restrictions, Biocidal Products (BPR) regulation and Classification, Labelling and Packaging of Substances and Mixtures (CLP) regulation.

The enforcement project was operated in 2020 and participated by 29 European countries which include 28 European Economic Area (EEA) countries and Switzerland. The focus of this project was to check the compliance of CLP, REACH and BPR duties related to substances, mixtures and articles sold online. The checks were carried out by national enforcement authorities. A total of 5730 products were checked, including 323 (6%) substances, 4631 (81%) mixtures and 776 (13%) articles.

Key findings of this project can be found below.

• Out of 2629 products checked for REACH restrictions, 2042 (78%) did not comply.
  • The non-compliance rate of articles is 25% (164 out of 655). Most of the checked products are jewelleries, followed by the toys and childcare articles and leather articles. Sweden, Denmark and Norway are the countries with the top three number of inspected articles. Table 1 shows the number of articles checked and non-compliant products for each restriction.
  • The non-compliance rate of substances and mixtures is 95% (1876 out of 1974). CMR substances restricted under entries 28-30 of REACH Annex XVII had a very high level of non-compliance (99% (1855 out of 1874)).
• From 1153 products checked against BPR obligations, 891 (77 %) did not comply.
• Out of 2752 products checked for the obligations under CLP, 2065 (75%) did not comply.
• The non-compliance rate of the obligations for providing safety data sheets (SDS) under REACH Article 31 is 5%.
• The non-compliance rate for marketplaces that act as platforms for buy-and-sell is higher than web shops that directly sell products online (95% compared to 65%).

For non-compliance products, enforcement authorities took measures to bring companies into compliance. The most common follow-up actions were “Removing the product offer from the website’’ and “Bringing the information in the advertisement into compliance”. ECHA urges all actors to proactively improve consumer protection for online sales. ECHA also recommended that the national enforcement authorities should continue to perform inspections of products sold online.

Table 1. Products check against the Annex XVII entries on articles and their non-compliance

[1]  Report for the results of REF-8

[2]  ECHA Press Release - Majority of inspected products sold online breach EU chemicals laws