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Turkey Still Waits for First REACH Regulation

Turkish REACH has been delayed. A modified version will be released this year.

ChemLinked reported in 2014 that Turkey’s REACH-like regulation was already in its final stages. However, it’s been almost two years now and the situation hasn’t progressed much.

The REACH-like regulation still remains a draft which was released in September 2014 by Turkey’s Ministry of Environment and Urbanization (MoEU). The draft regulation was named KKDIK, which is an acronym for Chemicals Registration, Evaluation, Authorization and Restriction in Turkish. The content of the draft was very similar to EU REACH and the “No Data, No Market” rule is emphasized. A major difference is that there is no late pre-registration in KKDIK so all chemicals, irrespective of tonnage band or substance classification, should be registered during the registration window.

According to the draft, the registration of existing chemical substances should have started from the beginning of this year. However, the process was delayed due to some changes to the ministry’s functions caused by the election in Turkey. Now the government picked up where it left off and expects to carry out an amended version of KKDIK by the end of the year. There’s no doubt that the implementation of the Turkish REACH will encounter a lot of resistance. The new regulation has been greeted with distaste by industry since the draft was released two years ago and is regarded as a heavy burden. Criticism centers on capacity issues with many companies claiming they lack the competent staff to handle compliance work, not to mention data generation, lab testing, etc.

It is more worrying that if the amended version of KKDIK is delayed again before the end of this year, then it will need more amending and require more delay as a knock on effect, because once missed, many dates and deadlines in the previous draft will have to be rescheduled. So the MoEU is striving to persuade the industry to cooperate for the implementation. Seminars were held to help the industry to realize their environmental responsibilities and teach them how to comply with the registration.

Turkey’s official process of implementing EU REACH into local regulations began in 2011. The imitation of EU REACH is not only a measure to regulate chemical substances and protect the environment, but is also designed to facilitate trade. Europe is Turkey’s biggest trade partner and when it aligns its own chemical regulation system with EU REACH and the data could be shared, it’ll be a great boost for Turkey’s chemical industry. What’s more, the implementation of a REACH-like regulation is one of the requirements EU raised during negotiations regarding Turkey’s accession to the EU. With all these incentives, the Turkish government will keep pushing the implementation of KKDIK. 

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