BLAIR CAVES IN TO GERMAN CHEMICALS INDUSTRY

Greenpeace today reacted with shock to the announcement that TonyBlair has blocked a scheduled vote on legislation to protect the publicfrom harmful chemicals. Mr Blair has used his presidency of theEuropean Union to postpone a vote on the REACH law, designed to phaseout chemicals that are proven to harm human health. In doing so hecaved into pressure from Germany's Angela Merkel, who is seeking toprotect the interests of Germany's large chemicals companies.

"It is just a pretext to postpone the decision. Angela Merkel wantsto weaken REACH as much as possible in favour of the German chemicalsindustry", said Nadia Haiama from Greenpeace. Formally, it would havebeen no problem for the German government to participate in the nextCompetitiveness Council meeting on 28-29th of November, where thepolitical agreement on REACH should be achieved. Angela Merkel iselected already the week before as chancellor and her cabinet then willbe appointed immediately as well.

Large German chemicals companies are lobbying hard to lower safetystandards so that they may continue to produce hazardous chemicals withimpunity. They also aim to restrict access to chemicals safety data,which would favour small and medium sized enterprises.

VVPR info: Nadia Haima, Greenpeace EU Policy Director on Chemicals on +32 2 274 1913Katharine Mill, Greenpeace European Unit Communications on +32 496 156 229