EU Chemicals Regulation New Governance, Hybridity and REACH

This perceptive book provides an exploratory, explanatory and normative account of the EU Regulation on the Registration, Evaluation, Authorisation and Restriction of Chemicals (REACH), and its regulator, the European Chemicals Agency (ECHA).

With more than one million words of official ECHA guidance to accompany and underpin the 516 pages of REACH, comprehension of these cooperative regimes is often confounded. Through rigorous analysis of REACH and ECHA’s guidance, this book offers a critical insight into hybrid new governance, the situation whereby hard law is conjoined with soft law. Steven Vaughan uses his practical and academic expertise in environmental law to present an accessible and multidimensional account of the core elements of REACH and its associated guidance. The overarching discussion challenges existing assumptions about new governance to establish a basis for academic commentaries on EU chemicals regulation and hybridity in law and governance.

Acute and discerning, this book will act as a useful reference tool for environmental and public law scholars and students interested in EU chemicals regulation, new governance and hybridity. Legal practitioners and policy makers alike will find value in the acumen into REACH for both advisory remarks and areas of potential reform.