The Ombudsman has found the European Commission’s persistent failure to meet the legal deadlines for preparing authorisation decisions concerning dangerous chemical substances to be maladministration.

It takes the Commission on average 14.5 months to prepare draft decisions although the deadline for doing so is three months. In certain cases, it takes several years.

These delays represent a threat to human health and the environment as companies are able to continue using the chemical substances, which may be carcinogenic, mutagenic, toxic for reproduction, or have endocrine disrupting properties, during the authorisation process. Additional conditions and monitoring arrangements that the Commission may define in its decision to limit the substances’ harm are also not applicable during this process.

Under the EU Regulation on the Registration, Evaluation, Authorisation and Restriction of Chemicals (REACH), companies wishing to use chemical substances that have been deemed as ‘of very high concern’ and included in the list of substances subject to prior authorisation must apply for authorisation from the Commission. The Commission then presents a draft decision to the REACH Committee, composed of Member State representatives, who vote on authorisation.

Stressing that the purpose of REACH is to urgently phase out or control the use of particularly dangerous chemical substances, the Ombudsman has asked the Commission to review its internal procedures for preparing authorisation decisions.

As a significant cause of these delays may be the lack of sufficient information in many companies’ applications, the Ombudsman called on the Commission to ensure companies submit applications that contain all the necessary information and prioritise the rejection of applications that do not. Companies that have their applications rejected would no longer be able to use the dangerous substances in the EU.

Transparency of authorisation process

The Ombudsman also found maladministration in the Commission’s failure to ensure the decision-making process for authorisation was sufficiently transparent.

In particular, she criticised the lack of information it published concerning the REACH Committee’s deliberations, with summary records of its meetings not fully capturing the state of play of individual files or the reasons for delays, such as disagreements among the Member States.

She asked the Commission to publish timely and more substantial summaries of Committee meetings, noting that this would help the public scrutinise the cause of excessive delays and keep decision makers accountable.