Enforcement authorities to focus on evaluation decisions

Helsinki, 26 March 2019 – Since 1 January 2019, when checking the compliance of registration dossiers for substances ECHA has been addressing its evaluation decisions to all registrants with non-compliant dossiers. This was a change from the previous practice of mainly addressing lead registrants. Inspectors have effectively enforced ECHA’s decisions since 2013. ECHA has now invited the enforcement authorities to prioritise the evaluation decisions in their enforcement activities.

The Forum also agreed to start a pilot to voluntarily report annual national enforcement activities to the Agency. This will support the planning and prioritisation of the Forum’s activities. This annual reporting would be done in addition to the mandatory reports, which the Member States submit to the Commission every five years. A template will be prepared and sent to national enforcement authorities. After the pilot phase, the Forum will decide whether the practice of annual reporting of enforcement related activities will continue.

Finally, the Forum’s Biocidal Products Regulation (BPR) subgroup agreed to work together with the Biocidal Products Committee (BPC) to test whether national enforcement authorities can provide advice on the enforceability of risk mitigation measures that are proposed by the BPC for applications for approval of active substances and Union authorisations of biocidal products.

The Forum for exchange of information on enforcement and its BPR subgroup met in Helsinki on 19-22 March 2019.