European Union and UN in a clash about the new GHS hazard classes

Under the Chemical Strategy for Sustainability (CSS) plan (2020) the EU outlined a renewal of the UN Globally Harmonized System (GHS)chemical hazard classes for endocrine disruption and persistence.  

In the CSS strategy, the EU plans for the creation of new hazard classes for both GHS and the EU CLP Regulation. The EU has already started its work on the CLP proposal and it will be announced on the 26th of October. While the GHS formal proposal will come after – in December. There are several issues with this approach, however: 

1. The CLP system is based on GHS, therefore the more logical approach implies starting with a renewal of the GHS system rather than the CLP. 

2. The fact that the EU is working on a GHS proposal ahead of the UN, which is responsible for the GHS, creates confusion and threatens to disarray the international system. 

3. There is some scepticism on whether the new classes are needed since the current ones function well and how new hazard classes will regulate the animal-testing requirements in that case. 

All in all, it seems like the EU has taken the lead on the renewal of GHS for endocrine disruption and persistence classes, but we are yet to see how this will be applied in practice.