Ukraine Law on chemical safety and Ukraine REACH and CLP

  • January 25, 2023
  • Olesia Pochapska, Global Accounts Lead and Legal Advisor

On 1 December 2022, the president of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, signed a new law on ensuring chemical safety and management of chemical products. The new legislation affects the production, storage, import, export, circulation, use of chemical products and processing of their waste. The responsible authority is the Ministry of environment protection and natural resources of Ukraine (“MEPR”).

Chemical products are defined as “chemical substances, mixtures, alloys, as well as products, during the use of which there is an intentional release of chemical substances or which are manufactured to carry out explosive works or create a pyrotechnic effect”. All chemical products manufactured or placed on the Ukrainian market will have to comply with this new legislation unless specifically exempted. The Exemptions are active pharmaceutical ingredients, medicinal products, drugs, psychotropic substances, their analogues and precursors, pesticides and agrochemicals, biocides, disinfectants, tobacco products, nicotine-containing and final cosmetic products.

To implement this law, Ukraine will create a chemical inventory with a number of specific lists such as banned, restricted, hazardous, dual-use chemicals and more. More information on the practical steps will likely come from the responsible authorities at a later stage.

The logic of chemical substances’ registration is consistent with the EU REACH Regulation, meaning that chemical substances manufactured, imported or placed on the market in Ukraine in one ton per year or more must be registered. Moreover, when assigning authority fees for state registrations, a fee reduction is foreseen for substances already registered in the European Union. This is also in line with a “simplified state registration” that was one of the registration types of a so-called “Ukraine REACH” draft previously published by the government in December 2020.

The Law also defines requirements for the identification, classification and Safety Data Sheets. The classification is meant to be based on the GHS and assumingly in the form of implementation of the EU CLP Regulation as “Ukraine CLP”.

Ukraine Law on ensuring chemical safety and management of chemical products is not a Ukraine REACH Regulation but sets a framework for implementation of both Ukraine REACH and Ukraine CLP.

The Law will enter into force 18 months following its publication on 2 November 2024. This means that implementation of Ukraine REACH and CLP Regulations as a 2nd tier legislation under this Law has to happen before this Law enters into force.

We at REACHLaw are closely following the progress of Ukraine REACH and CLP implementation and will be informing our Customers and Subscribers as soon as we have any news and updates. For further information, please get in touch with Olesia Pochapska at olesia.pochapska@reachlaw.fi.

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