REACHing Asia Continued
PARK, DaeYoung
(Young & Global Partners, Brussels, Belgium)
REACHing Asia Continued DaeYoung PARK Young & Global Partners, 101 Avenue Louise, 1050, Brussels, Belgium, dy.park@ynpglobal.com, Telephone: (32) 27620348 In 2008 we raised the question, “Will the EU REACH (Registration, Evaluation, Authorisation and Restriction of Chemical substances) Regulation influence and change the chemical regulatory system of Asia, as EU RoHS has done in China, Japan and Korea?” and forecasted that “the answer is likely YES”. This article analyses how and what European environmental policies and regulations have been interacting with Asian environmental policies and regulations, describes the current chemical regulatory systems of the EU, China, Japan and Korea, and demonstrates how China, Japan and Korea have been filling the regulatory gap they see between REACH and their chemical regulatory systems in 2008 and 2009. By analysing how Asian countries are reacting to the regulatory gap between EU REACH and their chemical regulation systems, this article provides converging trends of international and national environmental regulations, and discusses how businesses have to deal with this continuous trend in Asia and the world.