Monthly Briefing – November 2011 issue

In this month's briefing:

• Geraint Roberts asks what impact the EU regulatory definition of nanomaterials will have on companies, while Ralph Heinrich Ahrens hears the views of BASF and the European Parliament Greens/EFA group on how REACH should change to accommodate nanomaterials;

• Mamta Patel gives an update on changes to chemicals management laws in Japan, South Korea and China;

• Sean Milmo reports on the challenges facing the European Commission in drawing up a definition and criteria for endocrine disrupters;

• In the first of two articles this month on important court cases, Professor Lucas Bergkamp and Nicholas Herbatschek of Hunton & Williams explain why the European Court's recent rulings on challenges to inclusion of substances on the candidate list make it harder for firms to fight such decisions...

• ...while in the second, Craig Simpson and Dr Anna Gergely of Steptoe & Johnson explain how the Court's annulment of a European Commission Decision not to include a substance in the positive list of food contact additives has set new legal precedents;

• Geraint Roberts says authorisation, classification and nanomaterials will be hot topics at next spring's ChemCon Europe 2012 conference in Madrid;

• In the first of REACHReady's new CLP Clinic columns, Bob Warner warns that CLP is going to bring significant changes...

• ...and in the first of ReachCentrum's articles as our new Dr REACH, Jyrki Tiihonen says companies should ensure their change management processes for REACH are working well;

• this month's NGO Platform sees Susanne Smolka of PAN Germany and Anne Stauffer of the Health and Environment Alliance (HEAL) set out the changes they want to the proposed EU biocides Regulation