ECHA revises its Guidance Consultation Procedure

News Alert

ECHA/NA/11/15
Media enquiries: ECHA Press

The revised Guidance Consultation Procedure is largely based on ECHA's original procedure and takes due account of the lessons learnt from the first years of experience regarding updating guidance documents.

Helsinki, 05 April 2011 - Key elements of the revision are:

• a physical meeting of the Partner Expert Groups as a standard element of the consultation procedure;
• the involvement of the Committees and/or Forum on a more ad-hoc basis allowing for an accelerated procedure;
• a simplified process for nominating experts for the Partner Expert Groups and further clarification of their role;
• a further clarification of ECHA's practice regarding translation of guidance documents;
• the removal of the potential final step of seeking the advice of the Management Board in case of dissenting views expressed through the oral or written consultation of Member States or the Commission;
• the removal of the option of including footnotes referring to Member States' dissenting positions on certain passages in the guidance;
• introduction of a note to the reader signed by the Executive Director when publishing guidance documents which did not receive support from all EU/EEA Member States, simultaneously warning that companies may face diverging enforcement practices.

Guidance updates or new guidance documents that have not yet been initiated will be established according to this new procedure. The new procedure will be gradually implemented for those updates that have already been started. The main advantage of the new procedure is that ECHA will be able to accelerate the process of guidance development or updating so as to be able to process the updates linked to registration in good time ahead of the next registration deadline.