MOSCOW (MRC) -- The UK is no longer seeking associate membership of the European Chemicals Agency (ECHA) after it departs the EU customs union umbrella next year, meaning that the country will have its own regulatory framework post-Brexit, according to a UK Member of Parliament, said Hydrocarbonprocessing.
Rebecca Pow, Parliamentary Under Secretary of State at the UK’s Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra), confirmed in a letter to the chair of the state watchdog the Environmental Audit Committee (EAC) that Brexit negotiators are not seeking to broker associate membership of ECHA.
“We are not seeking associate membership of the European Chemicals Agency (ECHA) and participation in EU REACH,” she said, in a letter dated 22 May and disseminated by the UK Lubricants Association (UKLA) to its members on Thursday. “While the transition to UK REACH will take some adjustment, we believe that the benefits of having control of our own laws outweigh the costs,” she added.
No country currently holds associate membership status with ECHA but the UK’s regulatory overlap with the EU and its unusual position of shifting from an EU member state to a third country fuelled hopes that a new arrangement could be brokered.
The UK’s Confederation of British Industry (CBI) has stated that the chemicals sector is among the industries with the least to gain from any deviation from EU norms, as the sector is so tightly regulated and the UK is so dependent on the EU as a market. 60% of the UK’s chemicals exports flow to the bloc.
Lobbyists and industry have pushed for continued tight regulatory harmony with the EU post-Brexit, with former Prime Minister Theresa May singling out Reach in speeches as one of the regulatory frameworks the UK hoped to remain tied to. Chemicals has been mentioned in government updates alongside aerospace and pharmaceuticals as the sectors where it was hoped special arrangements could be agreed as recently as the end of 2019.
UK distributor trade body the Chemical Business Association confirmed that it had received notification of the plan last week and has been asked by the EAC to provide feedback, which is expected to be complete in the next few days.
The UK Chemical Industries Association (CIA) stated that, while the best outcome for the sector would have been remaining within EU Reach, the specific mention of special arrangements for the chemicals sector in the UK’s free trade agreement proposals for the EU could provide some benefit.
As MRC informed earlier, Russia's output of products from polymers grew in April 2020 by 11.2% year on year due to quarantine restrictions. However, this figure increased by 3.4% year on year in the first four months of 2020. According to the Russian Federal State Statistics Service, April production of unreinforced and non-combined films decreased to 107,000 tonnes from 110,400 tonnes a month earlier. Output of films products grew in the first four months of 2020 by 12.5% year on year to 402,800 tonnes.
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