While many suppliers of articles are about to integrate the Brexit-related changes into their processes, many individual questions are still unclear. In fact, it remains to be seen how and where exactly the British version of REACH differs from its continental counterpart. 

This concerns, for example, the question of the equivalence of the SCIP database for substances of concern in articles. Other points, however, are quite clear. Albeit in unexpected ways in some cases.

This includes the application of an important judgement from the European Court of Justice relating to Article 33 REACH in the case of so-called complex products (ECJ of 10 September 2015, C 106/14). The ruling is the binding interpretation of the reference level of substances of concern in articles. It stipulates that sub-articles are also articles and therefore are used as a reference value for calculating the content of problematic substances. This interpretation by an EU authority also applies to the British market. This is because the EU REACH Regulation was maintained for the parts to which this court ruling refers to.

The UK was not one of the countries that brought about this ECJ decision in 2015. Moreover, the UK legal system allows adjustments to be made to the REACH regulations by means of statutory instruments. However, the main obligation for suppliers of articles, the duty to communicate information on substances in their products, was directly incorporated into the UK REACH regulation.

However, it should be added that the underlying EU list of substances of concern has only been transferred over as it existed on 31 December 2020. Any changes made since then will not be automatically carried over into UK REACH. This means that any company placing products on the market in both the EU and the UK will still have to continuously monitor different legal systems and fulfil all respective obligations in the future.

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