MEPs and national governments are on a collision course over whether further investigation is needed into toxic chemicals used in the making of consumer goods such as televisions and mobile phones.

A debate over chemicals used in flame retardants and plastics is proving to be the biggest sticking-point between the European Parliament and the Council of Ministers as they enter the closing stages of negotiations on a law on toxic substances in electrical and electronic goods. The two sides are aiming for a political agreement on the directive on restriction of hazardous substances (RoHS) in electrical and electronic equipment next week, either on Monday (8 November) or, if extra time is needed, by Friday.

The Parliament and the Council remain far apart over whether to extend the scope of the existing RoHS directive to cover more substances. In June the Parliament’s environment committee voted almost unanimously for further study into the safety of 37 substances and mixtures, including the common plastic PVC, the widely used substance bisphenol A and several flame-retardants. If the Parliament’s list is adopted, it would take the RoHS law far beyond the modest tidying-up exercise that the European Commission envisaged when it set about revising the 2002 RoHS directive, which covers just six prohibited substances.

Non-binding status

But a majority of national governments are opposed to adding new chemicals to the existing list – lead, mercury, cadmium, hexavalent chromium, polybrominated biphenyls, and polybrominated diphenyl ethers – and want to stick with the Commission’s proposal. The Council hopes to downgrade the Parliament’s list so that it has no binding legal status.

The chemicals, engineering, paint and plastics industries have all spoken out against the Parliament’s list, arguing that they would face double regulation, because the 37 substances are already subject to the REACH legislation on chemicals.

Géraldine Lissalde-Bonnet, an advocacy manager with PlasticsEurope, said that the industry had been taken by surprise by the inclusion of PVC on the Parliament’s RoHS list. “We don’t see any justification to have PVC listed,” she said, describing its inclusion as “incoherent”. “What we would like to see is a methodology that is coherent with REACH,” she said.

Some environmental campaigners would like to see PVC banned in the EU, along with flame-retardants, which would go beyond the current RoHS proposals. “We would like to see brominated flame-retardants and PVC in the directive,” said Frida Hök at the ChemSec campaign group. “These chemicals are used so extensively in electric and electronic equipment [and] they are awful from an environmental and health point of view.” ChemSec is concerned about poor waste treatment of Europe’s electrical rubbish outside the EU’s borders. “There is a problem because a lot of [waste] is being incinerated in very bad facilities,” said Hök.

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The campaigners are seeking to capitalise on a recent statement by scientists that raised the alarm about flame-retardants. The San Antonio Statement, signed by 145 scientists in 22 countries, was published online last week (28 October) by the US peer-reviewed journal, Environmental Health Perspectives. It describes brominated and chlorinated flame-retardants as “substances of concern”, calls on companies to stop using them and judges their benefits to fire safety to be unproven.

Open scope

National governments and MEPs are much closer on other issues. Both support the Commission’s idea that the RoHS directive should have an “open scope”, meaning that all electrical and electronic equipment is automatically covered, so removing the duty of legislators to define goods that fall under the law. But the two sides are at odds over the transition time needed to move to these new arrangements. National governments would like eight years to adapt, but the Parliament will press for less time.

A Belgian official confirmed that Belgium, which currently holds the rotating presidency of the Council of Ministers, is aiming for a political agreement on Monday (8 November).

If an agreement is reached next week, a final vote by the full Parliament can go ahead later this month (22 November), clearing the way for the directive to become law in 2011.

But a vote scheduled for the same day on a companion law, the waste electrical and electronic equipment (WEEE) directive, will definitely not go ahead. The WEEE directive is unlikely to be agreed until next year at the earliest, because Karl-Heinz Florenz, a German centre-right MEP and the Parliament’s lead on the directive, has decided against reaching a fast-track (first-reading) agreement with the Council, fearing that to do so would dilute the Parliament’s influence.