Turkey to Publish REACH Law 'within Weeks'

Turkey's long awaited REACH-like law is awaiting final approval from the prime minister and will be ready for publication within weeks, a senior official says.

The KKDIK Regulation was signed off by the environment minister and sent to the prime minister's office a month ago, Yahya Kesimal, head of the chemicals department at the Ministry of Environment and Urbanisation (MoEU), told Chemical Watch.

"Following normal government procedures it will be published within a few weeks," Mr Kesimal said. Once approved by the prime minister, the Regulation will be published in the Official Gazette and become effective within six months, although there will be a phased implementation.

KKDIK will bring various Turkish chemicals legislation under one law. It will replace three existing laws:

> Regulation on the Inventory and Control of Chemicals;

> Regulation on the Preparation and Distribution of Safety Datasheets for Hazardous Materials and Products; and

> Regulation on the Restrictions Relating to the Production, Supply to the Market and Use of Certain Hazardous Materials, Products and Goods.

Although Turkey has been effectively implementing "60-70%" of REACH until now, enforcing KKDIK will mean chemicals are fully regulated "with no unregistered substances on the market", Mr Kesimal said.

It will help prevent illegal use of certain chemicals, such as terrorism. This is a major concern in Turkey due to wars in neighbouring Iraq, and following bomb attacks in major Turkish cities in the past year.

KKDIK is also the last step in Turkey's aim to align chemicals regulations with the EU as part of accession negotiations.

The legislation has been delayed by 18 months amid ministerial reshuffles and a failed coup last year. However, the latest version of KKDIK is broadly unchanged from the previous drafts, Mr Kesimal said. It sets a provisional registration deadline of 31 December 2022 and a pre-registration deadline of end-2019 in order to give businesses ample time to prepare.

Data sharing

Turkish companies have been particularly worried about data obligations under KKDIK, and the prospect of having to pay substantial sums to European consortiums. Echa has urged the latter to share more data in order to ease the registration cost burden.

Mr Kesimal said industry is "well briefed" on this and other implementation issues, while recent steps by Echa to make some substance data available to the public have also mitigated such concerns. "We believe by 2018 or 2019, Echa will share most of the data for free."

Language may be another stumbling block. KKDIK requires submissions to be made in Turkish, but there is a severe shortage of locally trained chemical experts who are able to manage complex data sheets.

Mr Kesimal said up to 80% of Turkish companies are already registering substances under EU REACH and are well equipped to deal with data translation.

Support

Compliance is likely to be a challenge for authorities, because of Turkey's large informal economy. SMEs represent the bulk of the chemical sector, many of which may struggle to meet the additional requirements of the law.

The MoEU plans to reinforce an in-house team dedicated to chemicals regulation to cope with the demands of KKDIK. Staff numbers will be increased from seven to a core group of 10-15 people by 2022, Mr Kesimal said.