Dates of application and transitional provisions for chemical products

PURPOSE: to amend Regulation (EU) 2024/2865 as regards dates of application and transitional provisions for chemical products.

PROPOSED ACT: Regulation of the European Parliament and of the Council.

ROLE OF THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT: the European Parliament decides in accordance with the ordinary legislative procedure and on an equal footing with the Council.

BACKGROUND: Regulation (EC) No 1272/2008 of the European Parliament and of the Council contains certain requirements as regards the classification, labelling, and packaging of hazardous substances and mixtures. That Regulation was amended by Regulation (EU) 2024/2865 of the European Parliament and of the Council, which inter alia introduced specific rules on the formatting of labels, deadlines for relabelling in case of classification changes, information requirements for advertisements and distance sales offers and labelling requirements for fuelling stations. Article 2 of Regulation (EU) 2024/2865 deferred the date of application of those rules.

The 2024 Draghi report highlighted that the number and the complexity of rules risk limiting the room for manoeuvre for Union undertakings and preventing them from remaining competitive. Excessive administrative burden and costs were also associated with requirements introduced by Regulation (EU) 2024/2865. Based on those findings, the Commission has laid down a proposal to simplify certain requirements and procedures for chemical products. That proposal is, inter alia, intended to better balance, on the one hand, the need for label information to be clearly understood by consumers and, on the other hand, the need to reduce market barriers and administrative burden for industry. In light of that proposal, it is necessary to further defer the obligations on label formatting, advertisements, distance sales offers and relabelling that were introduced by Regulation (EU) 2024/2865.

This proposal is part of the sixth simplification omnibus to reduce compliance costs and administrative burden for the chemical industry while ensuring strong protection of human health and the environment.

CONTENT: the proposed regulation therefore aims to amend Regulation (EU) 2024/2865 with a view to:

- setting the dates of entry into force and entry into application of the provisions of that Regulation;

- removing the provisions setting time limits for relabelling, advertising, distance selling and the provisions relating to the labelling of fuel pumps set out in Annex II from the list of provisions which will apply from 1 July 2026 ;

- removing certain provisions from Annex I on mandatory formatting requirements from the list of provisions that will apply as of 1 January 2027;

- laying down a new application date of 1 January 2028 for all abovementioned provisions.

Regulation (EU) 2024/2865 contains transitional provisions that enable undertakings to apply the provisions introduced by that Regulation before the dates of their application on a voluntary basis. To ensure consistency with the longer deferral and to provide legal clarity for economic operators, the proposal amends the dates of application of those transitional provisions on mandatory formatting requirements, relabelling, advertisements, distance offers and labelling of fuelling stations and aligns those dates with the extended deferred applicability dates.

To ensure a high level of protection of human health and the environment, the application dates of other provisions of Regulation (EU) 2024/2865 should remain unchanged.