Environment DG Mission Statement: Last summer, while the Americans were focused on the Iraq crisis and on the presidential campaign, the American chemical industry was worried about what occurred in Europe… The European Commission for Environment has put a final touch on the REACH – Registration, Evaluation and Authorization of Chemicals - project, the first attempt for data acquisition on the 30.000 chemicals marketed in the United States and in the world. In 1976, the Congress adopted Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA), the actual problem of the TSCA is that 80 % of the chemical substances today on the market were introduced before 1979. But Europe, at the time, followed the American model, in facts, the TSCA constituted an international reference. In 2004 very high concentrations of toxic substances were found in some tested Americans and Europeans blood: last June at the WHO convention in Budapest, World Wildlife Fund detected 44 dangerous products in the blood of EU staff, including Margot Wallstrom, current vice-president of the communication at the European Commission. In 2005 the American Chemical Council has to find new lobbying methods in a new international context dealing with an institution including twenty-five countries and twenty national languages. “All was new for us: new Parliament, new procedures, new political parties “, recognizes Joe Mayhew, adviser as a chief at American Chemical Council. Update: Lobbying Code of Conduct? The Brussels branches of leading American lobbying companies (Weber Shandwick, Hill & Knowlton, Burson Marsteller and Fleishman Hillard) met in January to form the European Public Affairs Consultancies Association (EPACA). Limited to lobbying firms and excluding the lobbying staff of big multinational corporations, the new association provides for strict disciplinary procedures for members who fail to comply with a code of conduct laid down by the European Commission. |
