| Submit your comments on this article |
| Europe |
| Report Predicts High Costs for EU Chemical Assessment Rules |
| 2004-04-14 |
| Severely EFL From the French MERCER Report: ... Nevertheless, the impact [of proposed EU regulations on chemicals] remains very strong on the whole industry and economy. Gee, y’a think? The detailed analysis carried out on 14 pilot segments of the chemical and downstream industries shows that the regulation will generate increases in costs, production losses or relocation of certain productions outside Europe... The cost impact which penalizes more the smaller volume productions will entail the withdrawal of many substances (from 10 to 30% in certain sectors, which will make it necessary to reconsider a great number of downstream formulations (cosmetics, [Oy! Paris will freak!] paints
) With the domino effect, the whole of the French industry and economy will be impacted... Really? Who’da thunk it? These different case studies show that the disappearance of chemical substances due to REACH will cause great problems to find substitutes, to change formulations, which, with the increase in costs, will favor the relocation of production and will slow down the innovation in new products. Each time, the competitiveness and the innovation capacity of companies will be weakened faced with a global competition with no such restrictions. Welcome to Economics 101, Jacques. (Read the boring rest if you care, or if you need a cure for insomnia.) Typical EU crap. Put out a bunch of regulations without taking into account (or caring) what will happen if they’re implemented. The economy? Unimportant! What really matters is that companies have to prove through testing that chemicals that haven’t caused any harm for a hundred years are "safe". And guess who’s paying for it? Hint: Not Brussels. Unfortunately, we’ve got politicians like that here, too, and they want back into power in the worst way. |
| Posted by:Barbara Skolaut bskolaut@hotmail.com |
| #5 --The continentals seem to have a horror of self-governance, perferring to be ruled by absolute authority.-- I call it "mutated monarchy." They've never gotten thru/over it. |
| Posted by: Anonymous2U 2004-04-14 9:09:50 PM |
| #4 Corzine wants to regulate chlorine or ban it, I can't remember. Until that rich liberal cleans his own bathrooms w/o it and Congress also goes w/o, keep your hands off my Clorox. |
| Posted by: Anonymous2U 2004-04-14 9:08:37 PM |
| #3 I once installed some Japanese packaging equipment in the U.S. Based on that favorable experience, I was asked to to the same "across the pond." It was totally unacceptable over there. I was actually asked: "But what if someone sticks their fingers in the heat sealer?" In Japan and the U.S. the answer is: "They're idiots and they'll burn their fingers." Across the pond the answer was to install even more guards, interlocks, keyswitches, etc. The system was almost inoperable and the operating instructions doubled in length. Had to do it -- regulatory requirements. |
| Posted by: Tom 2004-04-14 7:23:59 PM |
| #2 I think you've hit the nail on the head, Dave D. We threw off that yoke called "royalty"; the Euros never did. Even the French, who killed their royalty in their Revolution, still long to be ruled by their "betters." It's like they stay children all their lives. It's pathetic. |
| Posted by: Barbara Skolaut 2004-04-14 6:51:46 PM |
| #1 Back in the early 90's I did some technical work for one of the IEC (International Electrotechnical Commission) working groups that was drafting an industrial standard for networked sensors (for the non-technically inclined, this was a scheme for allowing pressure and temperature sensors and such stuff to be connected by a sort of "baby Ethernet" to control computers in an industrial plant). The work involved a lot of contact with European engineers and technocrats, and it left me with one overwhelming impression: Europeans, especially the French, absolutely worship rules and regulations. I didn't have very much to do with the standards drafting itself, only technical support of the effort; but I saw enough to convince me that there was something either deeply cultural or psychological going on with them: they seemed to want to cast everything possible in concrete, even technical aspects that weren't relevant to the work at hand. It was almost as if they were trying to eliminate anything which could possibly give rise to competition or innovation. Overall, I found it very disturbing. And in light of that experience, I was not at all surprised by the encyclopedic nature of the European Constitution that was proposed a few months back. The continentals seem to have a horror of self-governance, perferring to be ruled by absolute authority. |
| Posted by: Dave D. 2004-04-14 5:19:42 PM |