Following the judgement of the Court of Justice, ECHA has published a quick update to its Guidance on requirements for substances in articles On 17 December 2015.

Latest Developments 

Following the judgement of the Court of Justice of 10 September 2015 in case C-106/14, ECHA has now updated its guidance on requirements for substances in articles. This quick update corrects the parts of the guidance with references to the 0.1% limit that are no longer consistent with the conclusions of the court's judgement.

The court's judgement clarified the scope of the notification and communication obligations of companies in relation to articles containing substances included in the Candidate List of substances of very high concern in a concentration above 0.1% weight by weight. According to the ruling, the legal obligations also apply to articles that are present in complex products (i.e. products composed of several articles) as long as these articles keep a special shape, surface or design or as long as they do not become waste.

A more comprehensive update of the guidance will follow in 2016. It is foreseen to include a general update and re-structuring of the document, new examples that are aligned with the court's judgement and a review of the current examples against the experience gained and questions received by ECHA since the guidance was first published.

Document History

Further Information

Judgment of the Court of Justice：http://curia.europa.eu/juris/liste.jsf?language=en&td=ALL&num=C-106/14

Guidance on requirements for substances in articles：http://echa.europa.eu/guidance-documents/guidance-on-reach?panel=sia#sia

Obligations related to Candidate List substances in articles：http://echa.europa.eu/regulations/reach/candidate-list-substances-in-articles

CTI Suggestion

Most articles, however, are assembled from some or many other articles. Application of the limit with respect to assembled articles in this Guidance document is based on the “Once an article – always an article” approach. Mostly, it is easy to distinguish articles in product components. For clearly defined components, the 0.1% limit should be applied to the whole components.  But，it is difficult to distinguish between articles and mixture, its determinant standard depends on its production process.

Enterprises need focus on the new trends of this Judgment, suggest that manufacturers and importers assess the SVHC concentrations in each article of a complex product and, in turn, meet the communication, notification and authorization obligations based on this determination.