Regulatory anticipation

What is regulatory anticipation?

As the REACH and CLP regulations are no longer “recent”, the focus for regulatory experts within companies has shifted to many other regulations with the aim of anticipating, more and more and as early as possible, on potential regulatory developments that may impact products that will be placed on the market or are currently on the market.

As a matter of fact, compliance at a given time is no longer sufficient since the regulatory “market” has been constantly changing at an increasing frequency in recent years. A product that complies with REACH in 2015 may not do so in 2019 and may be even less compliant in the coming years. The objective is to predict what regulatory changes will prevent a product from being placed on the market and what changes can be made to ensure its durability. To do so, certain regulatory “lists” established by ECHA are available and provide an overview of substances for which the status is not yet set. These include the RAC opinion list as well as the SVHC Candidate List, which is the first regulatory anticipation.

Going further, the combination of controlled substances on the basis of their composition should also be seriously anticipated. Some current regulatory lists establish families of controlled substances without listing the substances that are considered to belong to that family. The competent person must then decide whether or not an unregulated substance belongs to a regulated family. The most advanced regulatory anticipations are based on the very structure of a family and proceed by similarity of structure to establish potential future regulations.