The right always talks about regulation being a burden on industry, but our health and our environment is being burdened by the use of these toxic chemicals.

Most importantly, the European People's Party, the Christian Democrat Party.

I sometimes call them jokingly the European Pesticide Party.

You're listening to EU Watchdog Radio. Hi, welcome. I'm Joanna Lassin, Combs Officer at CEO or Corporate Europe Observatory.

In today's episode of EU Watchdog Radio, I'm going to talk to my colleagues, Hans von Scheren and Vicky

Khan, about toxic chemicals and the European Commission's response to the pesticide industry.

Hi Joanna.

Hello Joanna.

According to the UN, pesticide use is responsible for 25 million cases of acute poisoning,

resulting in an overwhelming 220,000 people dying every year.

Today I'm going to discuss two important pieces of legislation,

REACH and the expert of banned pesticides.

Let's start by the first one with Vicky.

I'd like to start by asking you

what is exactly the REACH regulation.

Well, the REACH regulation is a really important piece of EU law. It finally was introduced in 2006, so it is quite old now. And REACH stands for the

registration, evaluation, authorization and restrictions of chemicals.

Luckily, we can call it by the acronym REACH.

It's the central piece of legislation that regulates and hopefully restricts toxic chemicals that are in use in the EU today.

And what was the REIT revision?

So back in 2020, when the von der Leyen Commission was coming up with its Green Deal proposal,

one aspect of that was something called the chemical strategy for sustainability.

...