Perspective on how regulators can keep pace with innovation: Outcomes of a European Regulatory Preparedness Workshop on nanomaterials and nano-enabled products

The rapid pace of nanotechnology innovation has created a gap between the pace of innovation and the pace of developing nano-specific risk governance. In order to identify how to minimize this gap, a Workshop on Regulatory Preparedness for Innovation in Nanotechnology was hosted by the European Commission's Joint Research Centre in 2017 under the European Union (EU) project NanoReg2. It was attended by regulators from the EU and the United States of America (USA), industry representatives and non-governmental organizations. The Regulatory Preparedness concept under development aspires to improve the anticipation capabilities of regulators and risk assessors and to facilitate the development of adaptable (safety) legislation that can keep up with the pace of nanomaterial and nano-enabled product innovation. Based on the outcome of the workshop, a multifaceted framework was proposed to support the development of such adaptable safety legislation. The findings discussed in this perspective are a first step towards an agile system of Regulatory Preparedness that is proactive, vigilant, anticipatory, adaptive, and resilient.JRC.F.2-Consumer Products Safet