BLAIR CAVES IN TO GERMAN CHEMICALS INDUSTRY

Greenpeace today reacted with shock to the announcement that Tony Blair has blocked a scheduled vote on legislation to protect the public from harmful chemicals. Mr Blair has used his presidency of the European Union to postpone a vote on the REACH law, designed to phase out chemicals that are proven to harm human health. In doing so he caved into pressure from Germany’s Angela Merkel, who is seeking to protect the interests of Germany’s large chemicals companies.

"It is just a pretext to postpone the decision. Angela Merkel wants to weaken REACH as much as possible in favour of the German chemicals industry", said Nadia Haiama from Greenpeace. Formally, it would have been no problem for the German government to participate in the next Competitiveness Council meeting on 28-29th of November, where the political agreement on REACH should be achieved. Angela Merkel is elected already the week before as chancellor and her cabinet then will be appointed immediately as well.

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