Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2008-12-03-Speech-3-277"
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"en.20081203.21.3-277"2
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Madam President, ladies and gentlemen, I should like to thank Mr Sacconi and the other authors because their question gives me the opportunity to report to the European Parliament on the indeed astounding results of the pre-registration procedure within the framework of REACH. Pre-registration of the chemical substances available on the EU market is the first procedure within the framework of REACH. It represents the precondition for extended registration periods for companies, which then extend to 2018.
The pre-registration period stipulated in the REACH Regulation began on 1 June 2008 and ended on 1 December 2008, in other words six months later. In adopting the regulation we had assumed that we would have to reckon on the registration of approximately 200 000 chemical substances. In actual fact, by the end of the pre-registration period there had been precisely 2 236 625 registrations. Several thousand collective applications are currently still being processed and may still increase this figure considerably.
The final figure will be made known by the agency in mid-December. Naturally, we too asked how it was possible that the estimates which formed the basis of our legislation had been exceeded tenfold. The simple answer is for precisely the reason that REACH was developed: because we simply did not know – because no one knew precisely – how many substances we had available.
It has emerged that the extent of the task was underestimated by all those concerned. The estimates were made with the aid of all available data from the Member States and industry. Naturally, they initially resulted in problems occurring when it turned out that the working hypothesis had been wrong. That was quite inevitable. According to the REACH Regulation, it was the task of the agency in Helsinki to establish the format for pre-registration and to make it freely available on its website. The REACH IT system and the corresponding format for pre-registration of the substances concerned was available to companies on time on 1 June of this year.
In the course of October and November companies informed the Commission that the REACH IT system operated by the agency was working with reduced performance or at certain times not at all.
The Commission subsequently monitored the agency’s operations very carefully and discussed improvements to the software and even an emergency plan with the agency. Throughout the entire pre-registration period, the agency worked hard to improve the performance and efficiency of the IT system. In view of the rapid increase in pre-registration figures in recent weeks – up to 100 000 pre-registrations on a single day at times – the agency has taken additional technical measures and expanded its capacity.
These changes made it possible to improve the availability and speed of the system. Nonetheless, at peak access times a delayed response could not be completely avoided because of the extremely high number of simultaneous requests. It really is the case – and a few questions can be linked to this – that almost half of all the pre-registration applications were submitted in the last two weeks of the pre-registration period, that is to say, more than one million in the last two weeks.
For this reason the agency recommended performing pre-registration outside peak times in the event of difficulties. In addition, companies were advised to use the format for collective registration, which was the fastest option. In the last phase of pre-registration the agency set up an additional, rapid telephone answering service for help with any problems. Due to this measure, the response time in the REACH IT system constantly improved despite the high number of pre-registration applications.
Finally, the prepared alternative procedure was only used on the very last pre-registration day and only proved necessary to a limited extent as the REACH IT system operated adequately until the last after all. I am assuming that, despite the difficulties which occurred, all the companies concerned were in a position to pre-register their substances and that the first implementation phase of REACH was thus successfully concluded."@en1
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