It has been more than 2 years since Biocidal Products Regulation (BPR, Regulation (EU) 528/2012) applied on 1st September 2013. Transitional period of the Regulation will come to an end as well as compliance deadlines of several articles are approaching. Although the BPR regulation has been issued for 2 years, some manufacturers and importers have paid little attention to compliance due to loose enforcement and supervision.
Indeed, the enforcement of BPR has to deal with high law enforcement difficulty between Member States. However, according to the document issued by European Commission in September 2015, a BPR Enforcement Group (BEG) as a working group of the. Competent Authorities is promoted during the 61th Competent Authorities (CA) meeting. The establishment of this working group would contribute to the co-operation on enforcement of BPR and advocate supervision of biocidal products. The 61th Competent Authorities (CA) meeting also determined that BEG shall meet about 2-4 times per year in Brussels or any determined meeting place. The BEG members will be appointed by the Member States, and stakeholders will be invited to attend regular meetings with the BEG as well. Moreover, the meeting also advised that the first meeting of the BEG shall be prior to be held in the coming years, which fully reflects that the enforcement of BPR is around the corner. So far, there are two important BRP deadlines for manufacturers and importers, the deadline of compliance of Article 95(2) for biocidal products on 1st September 2015, and the deadline of compliance of the Article 94(2) for treated articles on 1st September 2016.
[1]Article 95 of the EU Biocides Regulation 528/2012 (EU BPR): the objective of Article 95 is to ensure that the costs of generating data and supporting active substances are shared fairly.By 1 September 2015, all companies making biocidal products and selling their products to EU maket must be able to demonstrate that their active substance supplier is included in the Article 95 list. This could include written confirmation of the source of the active substance formulated within the product and a link to the source’s entry on ECHA’s Article 95 list.1
[2]Article 94 of EU BPR allows for treated articles to continue to be placed on the market until the approval for the relevant product type of the active substance(s) in the biocidal product the article was treated with or incorporates. If the active substance is not already within the EU BPR review programme for the relevant product type, then an application for the approval of the active substance(s) for the relevant product-type has to be submitted to the European Chemicals Agency (ECHA) at the latest by 1 September 2016.
According to the 62th CA meeting in November 2015, it was suggested that the major task of the BEG would be also the enforcement of the deadlines established in Article 95(2) for biocidal products and Article 94(2) for treated articles as mentioned above. In addition, the BEG is supposed to develop and accomplish BRP enforcement and supervision and the integration within or co-operation with other enforcement platforms, particularly, the ECHA Forum. Since member states all have positive attitude towards integrating biocides enforcement tasks into ECHA’s Forum to utilize the current resource, the BEG meetings should therefore be organised following meetings of the Forum in Helsinki. In 2016, 3 meetings of the ECHA Forums are scheduled, separately on 15-17 March, 14-16 June and 7-11 November. A half-day or a full-day could be used for the BEG meetings.
According to the latest news, The Chair of the BEG meeting will be Dr Pierre Choraine from the European Commission and the first BEG meeting will take place on 15 March 2016. The real enforcement is coming around, manufacturers and importers should really take deadlines seriously.
