Advancing REACH: Strengthening control of emerging risk

In October 2020, the European Commission launched the Chemicals Strategy for Sustainability that calls to counter emerging risk with preventive action. This report aims to place this strategy in the context of the debate on the precautionary principle in the EU and to derive policy options to advance REACH in order to strengthen the control of emerging risk. The report assesses the general coverage of emerging risk under REACH. It assesses in how far the regulation operationalises the concept of emerging risk with legal instruments and, if relevant, evaluates the practical implementation of such instruments, and identifies possible deficits in the provisions. Based on the findings, this report develops policy options to address the identified shortcomings.