Chemicals Coffee Time Newsflash: EU CLP Label Formatting Timescales Update, 14th May 2024

Dear Friend,

Ambiguity over label formatting implementation dates

Ali writes: It’s Throwback Thursday Tuesday – not particularly far back. Just a couple of weeks to when we politely described the transition dates for the CLP Legislative Act as ‘an absolute mess’! A description that I think is still proving apt.

It will come as no surprise that there appears to be a mistake in the current English language version of this Act. As you may recall, this is still open for amendments in case of translation errors (as the Act was originally written in French).

Credit for this error-finding spot goes to Kathryn Tearle of BCF who managed to find a typo in the Adopted Text of the CLP Legislative Act.

Essentially, the legislators removed a subheading within the label formatting section of the text. But then still refer to that subheading when assigning the implementation dates. The removal of the subheader appears deliberate. So they will need to amend the implementation date section in the ‘Legal-Linguistic Finalised Text.

We at TT Environmental think that there are two possible options for the ‘fixed’ text:

Option 1:

• Label font sizes, label formatting (text colour, font, spacing and background colour) and fold out label changes all get a 24 month transition period.

Option 2

• Fold out label changes get an 18 month transition
• Label font sizes & label formatting get a 24 month transition period

Annoyingly, we’re can’t get it corrected or clarified before the ‘Legal-Linguistic Finalised Text’ is issued. Which as we know, is the EC department with a significant backlog at the moment!

Many thanks to Kathryn and the team at BCF for highlighting this information, which we are sharing via newsflash to ensure that anyone who is pencilling in timelines/project deadlines can have the information as soon as possible.

A couple of notes from Janet:

• Kathryn’s personal interpretation is that Option 2 is more likely, and I suspect she may be proved right when the Act is eventually finalised. In the meantime, as this is the set of timelines which is shortest, it is probably the best information to use when planning label format changes as a “worst case”.
• The timeline for the publication of the final version of CLP, with any changes made and (hopefully) errors corrected, is even later than we realised, as apparently the “Legal/ Linguistic” versions need to be voted on in the European Parliament. Unfortunately, the elections mean that the European Parliament won’t sit until September. So, given the publication timescales, we are looking at the “final final” English language version of CLP Legislative Act being out in November at the earliest, or even as late as January 2025. (Thanks again to Kathryn for her insider knowledge on the arcane workings of the EU legislative process!). The only good thing about this delay in official publication is that the timescales clock doesn’t start ticking until that point, as far as I am aware.

Another error in the text?

Kathryn also notes that there were other changes to the text which also were not reflected in the Article assigning the implementation dates: a new Annex was added which includes the changes to Annex VIII (Poison Centre Notification), but this is not referred to in the text assigning the 18-month or 24-month implementation dates, which would bring these changes in 20 days after publication.

This is likely another typo in the text, as other changes to Poison Centre Notifications are given a 24-month implementation period. Again, we will need to wait for this to be clarified when the final text is published.

Many thanks again to Kathryn for spotting this and allowing us to circulate it to you, our lovely readers.

This whole saga of the EU-CLP Legislative Act has demonstrated just how complex the processes are for drafting new EU legislation, and how difficult it can be to work out exactly what’s going on.

We really do rely on you, our lovely readers, to help spot things we may have missed, and thank you very much to everyone who contributes in this way, as it helps us all learn together.

Kind regards,

Janet

Janet Greenwood

TT Environmental Ltd

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