Impact Assessment Study on the simplification of the labelling requirements for chemicals and the use of digital labelling :Executive summary

This report presents the findings of the “Impact Assessment Study on the simplification of the labelling requirements for chemicals and the use of digital labelling”. It provides input for the Impact Assessments on the targeted revisions of the CLP and the Detergents regulations. On one hand, the CLP Regulation is the horizontal legislation that identifies hazardous chemicals, and sets rules on informing users through product labels, about hazards and precautionary measures which could be taken when using chemicals. On the other hand, the Detergents Regulation is a product-specific legislation which sets out specific labelling requirements for the products governed by this regulation. The purpose of the study was to identify suitable policy options and to provide a set of reasoned and ready-to-use recommendations on how to simplify and streamline the existing labelling requirements in the CLP and the Detergents regulations, and to make optimal use of digital tools to communicate hazard and safety information as well as use instructions to users. In this context, the study looks into how the labelling requirements of each of these pieces of legislation can better fulfil their objective of communicating essential information to users. In a second step, opportunities for simplifying labels via the use of digital tools are explored.