On October 5, 2022, the European Commission (EC) announced the opening of a public consultation within its ongoing revision of rules within the EU on food contact materials (FCMs). The consultation consists of a questionnaire split into two parts with one focused on receiving input from citizen consumers and the other on all other stakeholders with some background knowledge of the regulatory field. It asks for feedback including on the scope of products to be regulated as FCMs, the extent of future regulation, hazards that should be considered, the appropriate point of regulatory intervention, and the tools to be used for risk management. The consultation is open until January 11, 2023. According to the consultation website, the EC’s adoption of the revised FCM regulation is currently scheduled for the second quarter of 2023.
This public consultation is the latest step within the EC’s revision process on FCM legislation formally launched in 2018. It follows a consultation period that ended in January 2021 on an inception impact assessment for the revisions (FPF reported) in which over 300 comments were submitted by various stakeholder groups (FPF reported here and here). This followed a series of earlier stakeholder workshops (FPF reported here and here), the publication of an externally contracted evaluation report (FPF reported), and the publication of EC staff working documents evaluating the current legislation on FCMs and finding that “overall, the efficiency of the FCM legislation appears to be sub-optimal” (FPF reported).
References
EC (October 5, 2022). “Public Consultation: Revision of EU rules on food contact materials.”
EC (2022). “Evaluation of EU Rules: Evaluation of Food Contact Materials (FCMs).”
EC (2020). “Revision of EU rules on food contact materials.”
