Scope:

Cumulative cost assessment of the most relevant EU legislation and policies relevant for the European chemicals industry between 2004 and 2014.

The EU legislation analysed covered 70 pieces of legislation, grouped into seven packages based on their overarching and specific policy objectives (chemicals, energy, emissions & industrial processes, workers' safety, product-specific, customs & trade and transport legislation).

Findings:

Total direct costs borne by the subsectors covered by the study during the period were estimated to represent around 2% of their turnover and 12% of the value added. Relative to Gross Operating Surplus (GOS), which can be used as a proxy for profit, this represents as much as 30% of this value, indicating that legislation cost is among the important factors shaping the profitability of the EU chemical industry. The study shows that the three main drivers of regulatory costs are legislation on emissions and industrial processes (representing 33% of the regulatory costs), chemicals legislation including REACH and CLP (30%) and workers' safety legislation (24%).

The results will be used in future evaluations of the legislation screened by this exercise and will feed into the fitness check on chemicals legislation (excluding REACH).