US embassy cable - 04THEHAGUE791

UNCLAS SECTION 01 OF 02 THE HAGUE 000791 
 
SIPDIS 
 
SENSITIVE 
 
STATE PASS USTR/SANFORD 
 
USDOC FOR 4212/USFCS/MAC/EUR/OWE/DDEFALCO 
 
E.O. 12958 N/A 
TAGS: ETRD, SENV, NL, EUN 
SUBJECT: REACH: Latest Dutch Views 
 
REF: State 57073 
 
1.  (U) Summary: The Dutch are pushing for EU REACH 
proposals so that registration and evaluation requirements 
are targeted to substances posing the most significant 
potential risks.  They are concerned with the potential 
impact of existing proposals on SME's and are interested in 
further information regarding USG views on the consistency 
between REACH proposals and TBT, TRIPS, and OECD provisions. 
The Dutch foresee consideration of REACH to be a long-term 
process likely not completed until at least 2006.  End 
Summary. 
 
General Approach 
---------------- 
2.  (U) The Dutch generally agree with the approach taken by 
the Commission in drafting REACH believing that the 
consolidated legislation will largely be better for business 
and environmental concerns than the current hodgepoge of 
multiple EU directives and member state legislation.  They 
are strong advocates of minimizing unnecessary burdens on 
business by targeting registration and evaluation 
requirements to substances that are likely to pose the most 
significant risks and subjecting other substances and 
articles to a more general duty of care. 
 
 
Timing and Process 
------------------ 
3. (SBU) Dutch officials foresee REACH undergoing a long 
period of consideration and debate with a political 
agreement on major issues possible during the UK presidency 
of the EU (latter half of 2005) and with detailed agreement 
to follow.  Since the end of the public comment period, the 
council's ad hoc REACH working group has been meeting every 
three weeks for a day and a half.  The Dutch send capital- 
based representatives to these meetings but have appointed 
their Brussels mission to head their delegation in order to 
avoid a bureaucratic fight between the Economics and 
Environment ministries as to which ministry is in charge. 
 
4. (SBU) The European Commission has used the meetings so 
far held to go through the proposal's text article by 
article to explain their reasoning and rationale behind the 
chosen options.  Very few member states have used this 
discussion to present written positions or alternative 
options.  Only the Netherlands, United Kingdom, and France 
have submitted position papers (we have e-mailed the Dutch 
paper to Commerce (Naas), USTR (Sanford/Molnar), and USEU 
(Kvien)) and none of them have so far been discussed.  The 
Dutch believe that the Commission is reluctant to change the 
current proposal because they believe the one currently 
presented in well balanced: changing one aspect could cause 
the entire structure to collapse. 
 
5.  (SBU) With the entire text now completed, the Irish 
presidency plans a thematic discussion of major issues 
beginning with registration.  During their upcoming 
presidency, the Dutch plan to continue discussing the issues 
thematically and hope to reach political agreement on any 
issues where there appears to be consensus.  More 
contentious issues would be passed on the presidency 
successors. 
 
Impact Assessments 
------------------- 
6.  (SBU) According to the Dutch, many EU Member States 
have initiated impact assessments or case studies to 
obtain more detailed understanding of the likely impact 
of REACH on their economies and/or business sectors. 
Most of the national studies are expected to be 
finalized this year. This month the European Commission 
has also initiated case studies for exploring certain 
aspects for which the business impact study underlining 
the REACH proposal did not provide a clear picture. 
These topics are the potential impacts of REACH on (a) 
business throughout the supply chain (availability of 
substances), (b) innovation, and (c) accession 
countries becoming full members of the EU at the first 
of May. The results of the Commission studies are not 
expected before the end of this year. All EU Member 
States support, in general, the concept of the REACH 
proposal, but most of the Member States will await for 
the results of these studies before taking a clear 
position on the details. 
Registration 
------------------ 
7.  (SBU) The Dutch believe this is a key issue and one 
of the first scheduled to be discussed thoroughly by 
the ad hoc committee.  Dutch officials believe that 
large chemical companies will have little problem 
complying with proposed registration requirements 
because these companies work with relatively few 
chemicals and have already compiled most of the data 
they would need for registration.  The Netherlands is 
more concerned with the possible burden on small 
companies that may be forced - should REACH be 
implemented in its current form - to actually withdraw 
some chemicals from production.  The Dutch are studying 
proposals from the UK to provide one registration per 
substance with chemical consortia organizing to submit 
single substance applications:  at face value single 
substance registration would be less burdensome but the 
cost to a company of forming and joining consortia has 
not been assessed.  The Dutch also note that 
registration requirements will impact more 
significantly on substances in long-term existence than 
"new" one: a good percentage of "new" substances have 
already had to undergo testing. 
WTO and OECD Issues 
8. (U) The Netherlands wants to hold REACH to strict 
WTO conformity and is anxious to know if we have 
concerns as to its WTO consistency.  They will 
carefully review U.S. comments made as part of the TBT 
submission.  They have some concerns internally that 
registration requirements might infringe on firms' 
intellectual property (if firms must make detailed 
information publicly available in the registration 
process, the substances are vulnerable to copying by 
competitors) and ask whether the U.S. has TRIPS 
concerns as well.  Our Dutch contacts are also 
unfamiliar with the particulars of the OECD High 
Production Volume Chemicals program and asked for more 
information on how that program and REACH might come 
into conflict. 
Sobel