Hi ! My name is Julian Lageard and I’ve been working on EU environmental regulation for the past couple of decades. Europe can be proud of what it has achieved by setting the global bar from a competitiveness standpoint on laws such as the RoHS2 Directive (Restriction of Hazardous Substances) which bans the use of lead in electronics. Similar legislation has been or is being introduced in 40 countries outside the EEA, the latest being the Eur Asian Customs Union (Russia, Belarus and Kazakhstan). However, whilst everyone applauds the goals of the relatively young chemicals regime REACH, we need to build more predictability and legal certainty into the system in order to attract significant new investment into Europe and before REACH is fit for purpose to proliferate out of the EU into other jurisdictions.
