Development of REACH - review of evidence on the benefits & costs of REACH : final report

This report is provided in the scope of the project “Advancing REACH”, funded by the research plan of the German Ministry of the Environment. The project aims to develop options to improve the (implementation of) the REACH regulation by analysing various REACH processes and related issues, including substitution, sustainable chemistry, precautionary principle, articles, cost-benefit analyses, socio-economic analyses and financing ECHA. The objective of this work package was to review the existing literature to determine the current level of knowledge of the benefits and costs associated with REACH. The primary focus was on the identification of the gaps in the assessment of benefits, as multiple studies have already concentrated on the costs caused by the implementation of the REACH Regulation. Sections 2 and 3 summarise the assessment framework and the reports reviewed in this study. In Sections 4 and 5, the current state of knowledge and any gaps in the benefit and cost data/information are broken down by each single component of REACH regulation, namely Registration, Information in the Supply Chain, Evaluation, Authorisation, Restriction, Guidance, Inspection and Enforcement.Section 6 presents the conclusions of this report.