EU Chemicals Regulation: Extending Its Experimentalist REACH

This chapter focuses on the external dimension of the European Union’s (EU) chemicals legislation ‘REACH’. Although this law does not create a classic experimentalist architecture, it incorporates a number of core experimentalist elements. The REACH Regulation centralises chemicals regulation at the EU level but involves in its processes a variety of state and non-state actors from different levels of governance within and beyond EU borders. It reaches beyond European borders in three different ways: First, the internal EU processes are extended to non-EU actors. Second, the data concerning the intrinsic properties of chemical substances and possible safer alternatives generated through REACH procedures can be used by non-EU regulators in their own domestic policies. Third, the REACH Regulation constitutes a model of advanced and comprehensive chemicals regulation that can exert external effects on non-EU policy-making processes.status: publishe