The European Commission has officially launched its plans on how to evaluate whether EU legislation on endocrine disrupting chemicals (EDCs) delivers on its objective to protect human health and the environment by minimizing our overall exposure to these harmful chemicals. This is long overdue since the last EU Strategy on EDCs is from 1999.

EU measures that cover endocrine disruptors have been developed to address only few issues linked to exposure to EDCs. There are huge gaps where EDCs are not regulated at all, for example in cosmetics, toys, or food packaging. With the launch of this fitness check, the European Commission is finally starting to take action to address these gaps. We need to ensure that the process will effectively results in comprehensive measures that truly protect our health and wildlife.

A public consultation on the roadmap for the fitness check on endocrine disruptors, in which the Commission highlights some of the problems within the current legislation it wants to tackle, closed this week. The EDC-Free Europe coalition, in addition to many of our campaign partners, took this opportunity to comment directly and to reiterate  our demands for a comprehensive European strategy for endocrine disruptors.  

EDC-Free Europe continues its call on the EU Commission to speed up their action on endocrine disrupting chemicals, in line with recent calls from European environment ministers and from the EU Parliament. The next installment of the EU Commission can make real steps towards a future free from harmful endocrine disruptors – will they listen?