Unhappy compromise ends 8-year REACH saga

The eight-year efforts by environmental campaigners to establish the European Union's Registration, Evaluation and Authorization of CHemicals (REACH) regulation appears to have reached its final states with a compromise backed by negotiators for the European Parliament and the European Commission.

The announcement has been met with disappointment by environmental and small-business lobbyists alike, although Europe's chemical industry associations appear to have achieved most of their objectives. A spokesman for the UK's Institute of Directors told the Marketletter that, although the business group "welcomes the watering down of the original REACH proposals," their introduction would "still impose significant costs on UK and European businesses."

Anglo-Swedish drug major AstraZeneca recently announced that two of its suppliers of raw materials for anticancer drugs may no longer supply components because of the compliance costs of the REACH regulations (Marketletter 27 November).