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Safer Chemicals podcast. Sound science on harmful chemicals.
- Päivi Jokiniemi, Host - ECHA
Welcome to the European Chemicals Agency's Safer Chemicals podcast. Today we're looking into the results of a recent reach enforcement project. During this EU-wide initiative, inspectors from 29 countries carried out targeted checks on over 2,600 imported products to verify their compliance with the EU's chemical regulation REACH. The results highlight some familiar issues around substances in mixtures and certain consumer products, such as jewellery. In this episode, we'll break down the findings and discuss what they mean for companies, for consumers, and the environment. We'll also look at how customs and enforcement authorities work together to keep us and the European market safe. My name is Päivi Jokiniemi and I am joined by Henrik Hedlund, chair of ECHA's Enforcement Forum and this project's working group and Maciej Baranski, team leader of ECHA's Harmonised Enforcement Team. Welcome both. Thank you for joining me today.
- Maciej Baranski - ECHA
Thank you for having us.
- Päivi Jokiniemi, Host - ECHA
So good to have you here. I was thinking we could start the episode by just having a very brief explanation of the scope and objectives of this enforcement project. And also I'm curious to know why did you choose to focus on imported substances, mixtures and products?
- Henrik Hedlund, Chair - Enforcement Forum
Yeah, it's quite a small project. We focus on the key duties under REACH. So we check the restrictions, registration and authorisation. The objectives for doing this is to strengthen or was to strengthen the enforcement of REACH obligation on imports, to enhance the cooperation between REACH enforcement and customs, find methods on how we work together, and to develop and apply a systematic use of data from these customs declarations.
- Maciej Baranski - ECHA
There were also a couple of other reasons why we're looking into specifically focusing on imports. In the past Forum projects, when the inspectors were checking restrictions, we noted that there is a definitely higher level of non-compliance in imported products compared to those that were originating from Europe. So that was one reason. In addition, the chemical strategy for sustainability highlights that most of the alerts for dangerous products on the market are actually about chemical non-compliance. So that was another aspect. And lastly... The Commission indicated that they plan for their future revision of REACH to strengthen imports control related to REACH. And that's why I wanted to check what the compliance situation is like now to serve as a benchmark for the future.
- Päivi Jokiniemi, Host - ECHA
Before we go into the results, I'd like to highlight that this was something that is called a targeted enforcement project. So it means that inspectors focused on imports where they were expecting to find non-compliance, right? So could you tell us a little bit how the project was designed? And are there things that we should now keep in mind when we start going through the results?
- Henrik Hedlund, Chair - Enforcement Forum
Yes, we did risk-based inspections. That's, I think, what almost all inspectors do all the time, that you have to do this. Because there's a limit to the resource that we have. So we did this, in this case, by carefully targeting shipment and products where non-compliance was expected to be found. This is done to ensure efficient use of enforcement resources and the results of enforcement action that the forum has run. So we base it on previous learnings and the figures we have here should then not be seen as, you know, how it looks as a whole if you just buy a random product.
- Päivi Jokiniemi, Host - ECHA
Yes, very good clarification. So then what were the most significant findings from this project?
- Henrik Hedlund, Chair - Enforcement Forum
So, about one third of the substances imported in mixtures was missing a REACH registration. This is a much higher rate than we have seen in previous enforcement actions. And this highlights that mixtures are a great way for unregistered substances entering the European market.
- Päivi Jokiniemi, Host - ECHA
Something to keep in mind.
- Henrik Hedlund, Chair - Enforcement Forum
Yes.
- Maciej Baranski - ECHA
On the restrictions side, we also saw that the imported jewelry contains quite a lot of hazardous heavy metals, nickel, lead and cadmium. Basically one fifth, well every fifth piece of jewellery that was controlled contains nickel in breach of the conditions of the restriction. What it shows in relation to previous projects is persistent non-compliance with heavy metals in the jewellery. And nickel being a sensitiser and found in imported products for consumers is a cause for concern. And what we see is that compliance has not really improved across the years. So jewellery would continue to be on the radar of enforcement authorities in the future.
- Päivi Jokiniemi, Host - ECHA
You already started talking about the different focus areas there. So you mentioned that the inspectors checked. whether imported substances had a valid REACH registration. They also checked if restricted hazardous substances were present in imported consumer products above the allowed limits. And then as a third area, the inspectors checked if imported substances of very high concern had reach authorisation when it was required. So... Are there certain things that you would like to highlight from these different areas?
- Henrik Hedlund, Chair - Enforcement Forum
Yeah, should I start with registrations maybe? So when we did these controls, we checked the imported substance above one tonne, and if that was registered. We did about 1,200 checks in total, and we found 800 were subject to registrations. So you have to go through quite a lot of controls to find the right ones. Overall, 18% of substances subjected to registrations were not compliant. And in particular what we saw that was that 32% of substance and mixture were missing a registration. So for restrictions the restriction controls were checked if the imported product contained hazardous restricted substance above the allowed threshold. Here we did overall 1 300 products that were checked for these restrictions. Mostly they were done on articles such as jewelry, toys, textiles or footwear. But also some mixtures were checked in this. Overall 16% of all these different type of products taken together contained a hazardous restricted substance, so 16% non-compliance rate. The majority of the products checked were jewellery, and they were checked for the presence of nickel, cadmium and lead. So you often checked all three restrictions at once. For nickel, it was one fifth of all checked jewellery. And this is unknown sensitisers that may cause allergic skin reactions. And where we see lead and cadmium was less frequent, but still be found in 4-5% respectively. For other categories of products checked, the non-compliance rate was lower. For toys, for instance, it was 7%. For textiles and footwear, it was 5%.
- Maciej Baranski - ECHA
For authorisation, it was a smaller component of the project. For authorisations, the controls. that were there targeted imports of substances on their own, which were subject to authorisation and were also passed the sunset date. These are substances of very high concern, which cannot be used or placed on the market unless a special authorisation has been granted by the European Commission. And in the project, 25 controls were done related to authorisation, 21 of which in the end ended up being focused on these substances that were subject to authorisation. And out of those 21, four were found that the authorisation was either missing or expired, so invalid.
- Päivi Jokiniemi, Host - ECHA
Thank you for that summary. Henrik, you mentioned earlier that there is a reason why you actually chose to take a look at imported products. And that was that you've seen in earlier projects that there are issues with these imports. And Maciej, you also already mentioned that there are certain trends that you can see in the inspected products. Are these projects completely comparable? Can you see some trends? Can you see that something has improved or that something is worse than before? What kind of trends can you draw out of these results?
- Maciej Baranski - ECHA
That's a good question. Maybe I'll start with the registration. So on the registration front, there's not improvement, really. We, in fact, observe higher levels of non-compliance compared to the past. However, it's important to note that all the past projects of the Forum targeted both the non-EU imports and also the EU manufacturers. So this was a mix of both imported and non-imported products. And if we look at the historical trends in 2024, in the REF12, we see that 18% of checked imported substances are missing registration. If we go back in time, 2019, REF-7 project on registration, 6.5% of all substances missing a registration. And going back further, 2014, the REF-3, only 3% were missing a registration. For imported substances, the non-compliance with registration is around three times higher than the last non-compliance checked, where there was no distinction made between the substance that was manufactured in the EU or imported. So the difference is quite visible.
- Päivi Jokiniemi, Host - ECHA
Not exactly the trend that you want to see.
- Henrik Hedlund, Chair - Enforcement Forum
No.
- Päivi Jokiniemi, Host - ECHA
No. Henrik, what about the restrictions then?
- Henrik Hedlund, Chair - Enforcement Forum
Yeah, we can see some trends there as well. I think here it's a little bit easier to compare them, especially since we also had a pilot project that year. So the questions were pretty similar. So in this project the non-compliance for all restrictions was 16%. In this pilot project that we ran in 2019 when we focused on checking restrictions in imports it was 17%. So quite comparable and we have the same targeting here. We've made detailed comparisons for restrictions of cadmium lead and nickel in jewelry. And for nickel we see a significant increase of non-compliance between earlier projects in REF 10 2022. We had a non-compliance rate of 8% and this time now we have 20%. For both lead and cadmium, we see a decrease since this project in 2022 from 12% to 5% for cadmium and 11% to 4% for lead. But it might also be due to a little bit on different how you can target things.
- Päivi Jokiniemi, Host - ECHA
So you already mentioned now quite a many product categories there with particularly high levels of non-compliance. Did these differ depending on which requirement you were checking?
- Henrik Hedlund, Chair - Enforcement Forum
Yes, especially for mixtures where we saw that one third of checked imported mixtures contained unregistered substances and also on jewellery where 18% of checked pieces of imported jewellery contain restricted heavy metals, especially nickel.
- Maciej Baranski - ECHA
Maybe worth adding also smaller specific groups of products or types of products that we saw were a bit standouts from the rest. And that's, for example, radio controlled model cars, the imported ones. Whilst there were only 28 controls for these products, one fourth of them contained asbestos, which is a well-known carcinogen. Also, another frequently found type of product that was not compliant was footwear. As inspectors found several different hazardous substances, such as phthalates, chromium-6, lead or formaldehyde.
- Päivi Jokiniemi, Host - ECHA
Well, now that we've covered... the products, I think the next logical question is to ask, where do these products come from? So could the inspector see any patterns there?
- Maciej Baranski - ECHA
So looking at the registration, all the imports were checked, came from 55 different countries. So quite a lot of them. However, the vast majority of them, of all the imports came from five countries. And that's China, United Kingdom, Turkey, United States, and India. So these were the most frequently found countries of origin. And the overall numbers of substances checked per country reflect the volume of imports. So most substances that were checked originated from China, UK and Turkey, because most of them were coming from there. But the key finding of the project was actually how many unregistered substances were found amongst the substances imported from a given country. So from among all the imports from that country, how many were non-compliant. And here... The rates of non-compliance with registration are that actually the highest one was from Turkey. 48% of substances from Turkey was actually found to be non-compliant. Then United Kingdom, 28%. Then India, 19%. And then China, 16%.
- Päivi Jokiniemi, Host - ECHA
And what about the restrictions?
- Henrik Hedlund, Chair - Enforcement Forum
Yeah, when it comes to control of the country, it was quite similar picture, I would say, as registrations. Where most checked was originated from... especially from China, but then also India, Turkey and UK. Here we got a little bit of another picture. So where we got the highest rates of non-compliance, it was detected for projects originating from India with 64% non-compliance. And then here China had 13%. So even if there's a lot of imports coming from China, we didn't find as much per you detect. I like the reason for these rates of non-compliance is the lack of knowledge about REACH registration and restriction requirements by the importing companies, I would say.
- Päivi Jokiniemi, Host - ECHA
So clearly there were big non-compliances like one out of three substances in imported mixtures were missing a reach registration. Issues with some heavy metals in jewellery. What kind of measures did the inspectors take when finding these non-compliances? and Can you see any impact? What do these measures bring?
- Henrik Hedlund, Chair - Enforcement Forum
Yes, and in this case, because we did the inspection a little bit differently, depending on what you checked and what was best suited for your authority. But for the controls that were done before the goods were released for free circulation on the market, customs did not allow the release of non-compliant products for free circulation. Or in some cases they were, but only after they had taken corrective measures. So I think this is a really good example where the effect was that we protected human health and the environment by preventing this non-compliant product from entering the EEA market. Also, this helped to safeguard the European single market from unfair competition and ensure a level playing field for companies.
- Maciej Baranski - ECHA
In addition to the customs taking measures and stopping the shipments, also rich inspectors took enforcement measures for the importers of these non-compliant goods. They mostly issued written advice and administrative orders. And in some cases, they advised customs to destroy those non-compliant goods. Or if the product was already released. and controlled that when it was already on the market, they've ordered withdrawal of the product from the market. So the effect was to raise awareness of the REACH obligations amongst the importers, which should help to improve compliance in the future.
- Päivi Jokiniemi, Host - ECHA
Could you just briefly explain what is the difference between the customs inspectors and the REACH inspectors? What is kind of the difference of their mandate?
- Henrik Hedlund, Chair - Enforcement Forum
It depends a little bit. In some countries, but not that many, the customs are also the REACH authority and can do the checks by themselves. In most countries, it's not. So then we have the market surveillance regulation that governs how we interact with each other and how we deal with this. So customs are the ones that can stop things from entering the EU. And they're the ones who can make sure that it's re-exported or destroyed. But they are not the REACH experts. That's are the NEAs. So they do this with the help of the NEAs. So we offer them advice.
- Päivi Jokiniemi, Host - ECHA
So the National Enforcement Authority is NEAs.
- Henrik Hedlund, Chair - Enforcement Forum
And it can look a little bit different how we do this, but we tell them that if this is a non-compliance or not, it's not the customs that do it. It's the customs that make the decision not to release this for free circulation.
- Päivi Jokiniemi, Host - ECHA
Okay. And this was also one of the project aim to use the customs data. More systematically for reach controls. Right. So how did this work in practice?
- Maciej Baranski - ECHA
Quite well. For registration, in fact, 85% of all the checks were based on registration that was provided by customs to reach inspectors. So it worked really well, this exchange of information, whilst the remaining controls were initiated or done by customs or done together with customs. So when checking the registration, in fact, the most effective method. for enforcement to find non-compliance is for customs to provide the information on shipments to reach inspectors and then they are able to find non-compliance in future controls.
- Henrik Hedlund, Chair - Enforcement Forum
Yeah and for restrictions it's a little bit different picture and most controls were initiated by customs finding shipment through what's called a risk profile. It's this risk analysis that we talked about but controls by inspect reach inspectors based on customs data are the second most frequent. For restrictions, the most effective method finding non-compliance is when customs and reach inspectors make joint checks at the border. It's a bit more time consuming, but we find a lot of non-compliance when we do that.
- Päivi Jokiniemi, Host - ECHA
Okay. And finally, at the end of each forum project, the enforcement forum gives some recommendations. So what kind of recommendations have you given this time based on the findings? Do you have some advice what should companies and authorities do next?
- Henrik Hedlund, Chair - Enforcement Forum
Yes, we have developed some recommendations for companies, enforcement authorities, customs and the commissions. So just to give some maybe examples of this. So for the commission, we have an example to have a recommendation for them to engage in dialogues with third countries. That's indicated in the report. about the type of products with high non-compliance repeatedly observed in enforcement projects over the years, such as jewelry and metal parts of consumer articles. For customs, the key recommendation is to encourage broader use of pre-release checks, which allow for more effective prevention of non-compliant goods entering the market. For the REACH enforcement authority, the key recommendation is to focus on registration control for substances in imported mixtures.
- Päivi Jokiniemi, Host - ECHA
And surely you had also recommendations for companies, right?
- Maciej Baranski - ECHA
Absolutely. Some of the most important ones, of course, and these are particularly for companies importing chemicals, because they are the ones that were found non-compliant. So the first recommendation is for importers of chemicals and articles to become aware of their REACH obligations. And if they are unsure, to best contact the national help desks to get regulatory advice before they actually import these products. And then the second thing is to obtain evidence. before the import to obtain evidence from their suppliers, from non-EU countries, particularly analytical reports or other documents that certify or prove their compliance with REACH. Maybe one more important thing to say is that the project is not yet over. The Forum will be working on a guide for inspectors, summarising the experiences from this project to help inspectors controlling imports in the future. And we'll also organise a workshop for stakeholders. to discuss the findings and recommendations with the representatives of the industry and encourage them to work with their constituent companies in improving the situation. We'll invite all the accredited stakeholder organisations working with ECHA, but the workshop will be publicly broadcasted, and anyone interested is warmly invited to follow.
- Päivi Jokiniemi, Host - ECHA
So to the end, I think it's still good to summarise the main findings. So first of all, inspectors found that one in three substances in imported mixtures lack to reach registration. Second, restricted hazardous substances were present in inspected imported consumer products above the allowed limits, and here in particular, jewellery. And as a result, as Maciej just said, importing companies are once again reminded to check their obligations under REACH, and if in doubt, they should contact the relevant national help desks for advice. And to do this before any imports are taking place. To wrap up this episode, I'd like to thank you, Henrik. And thank you, Maciej, for joining me. It was a pleasure chatting with you about this very, very important topic.
- Henrik Hedlund, Chair - Enforcement Forum
Thank you.
- Maciej Baranski - ECHA
Thank you very much.
- Päivi Jokiniemi, Host - ECHA
And to still remind you, the project is not over yet. So if you are interested in learning more... You can follow the upcoming stakeholder workshop online and you will soon find more information about this on our website. But if you'd rather not wait, you can read our news and find all the details in the full project report that is now available on our website at eka.europa.eu. And that's all for today. Thanks so much and bye bye.
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Sound science on harmful chemicals.
