The European Chemicals Agency will start its operations in the centre of Helsinki when the REACH Regulation comes into force. For Finland the agency will be a tangible and politically important consequence of the new chemicals Regulation, and it will also create new business for the country.

” Finland will be aiming to bring the processing of the Regulation to a conclusion during its EU Presidency i.e. by the end of 2006. So the Agency could be starting in the spring of 2007,” says Jukka Malm, the Export Services Director at the Finnish Environment Institute and project manager who has been preparing the establishment of the agency in Helsinki .

The decision to locate the Agency in Helsinki was decided at a European Head of State or Government meeting in December 2003. Now the European Commission is preparing for the start-up of the Agency’s operations, and discussions about arrangements are actively taking place with the Finnish authorities.

No Regulation without the agency

The European Chemicals Agency is an organization specializing in the assessment and control of chemical risks. Its primary task will be to give scientific and technical support in the implementation of REACH. The Agency will also have a central role to play in putting the Regulation into practice. Without the Agency, the Regulation will not work.

“The Agency will have concrete tasks associated with the implementation of the system and an important role in implementing the Regulation uniformly in the whole of the EU region,” Malm says.

The Chemicals Agency will administer the widest section of REACH as far as industry is concerned, a registration procedure concerning some 30,000 substances. It will receive registration dossiers, check them and handle industry’s proposals for further tests on the substances.

The Agency will assist industry with the pre-registration stage and maintain a wide data system based on the dossiers and other procedures in the Regulation. A considerable amount of the data will be openly available on the Agency’s website.

“The registration dossiers will be used as the basis for recognizing substances that could cause a risk to health or the environment. In evaluating the substances, the Agency’s task will be to draw up an EU-wide assessment programme and coordinate the assessment work done by the Member States.”

One of the EU’s biggest

The Chemicals Agency will be one of the EU’s biggest. Its personnel requirement has been put at between 400 and 500. It should grow to this size during the first few years of operation.

“In the preparatory stages the Commission will be responsible for the recruitment of personnel and later on it will be the Agency itself. The Agency will be headed by a Director-General who will be chosen as soon as REACH comes into effect,” Malm says.

Planning the services will also include ensuring that Finland and Helsinki will be seen as an attractive place to work. The aim is to obtain personnel from as wide an area as possible in the Member States.

“We will be looking into the situation with international education in the Helsinki Metropolitan Area, and we will be preparing to answer questions concerning immigration and settling in here, such as finding somewhere to live, possible work for spouses, children’s education and day care, and banking and insurance services in Finland,” Malm says.

Creating new business

The Agency will need to be surrounded by a wide network of expertise and specialist organizations to handle the laboratory work, assessment and consultation.

“In order to be able to exploit the opportunities created by the Agency and to generate a new concentration of chemicals expertise in Finland , new corporate activity will be needed. The expertise and high-level research that are already in the country will be best exploited in this way,” says Hannu Vornamo, Director General of the Chemical Industry Federation of Finland.

“The Agency will make it possible to create business that is based on chemicals expertise, which will bring in its wake plenty of success potential.

What is the REACH Regulation?

REACH is the registration, evaluation and authorisation of chemicals. It is a broad-based comprehensive reform of the EU’s chemicals legislation and one of the EU’s biggest legislative reforms.

According to the proposal, the REACH system will oblige companies that produce and import chemicals to assess the risks caused by the use of the substances and ensure that the chemicals can be used safely. The responsibility for authenticating the safety of chemicals will be transferred from the authorities to industry.

The aim of the Regulation is improve the protection of health and the environment and to maintain the EU’s competitiveness in the chemical industry.

Chemicals producers and importers are obliged to register all substances of more than 1 tonne produced or imported annually. The dangerous properties of substances must be identified for registration and the precautionary and protective measures required for their safe usage must be assessed. The registration procedure applies to some 30,000 substances.

“Transport connections from the centre of Helsinki to the airport are good, and there are plenty of hotels to meet the needs of big EU meetings,” says Jukka Malm about the location of the Agency. Photo: Larkas & Laine Oy, Architects .