09/11/2005 - Brussels, Belgium — A removal team has arrived at the European Commission to move two senior commissioners into new jobs with their best friends in dirty industry. Given the determined efforts of EU Commission President José Manuel Barroso and Industry Commissioner Günter Verheugen to put polluting industry before public interests we think they would be better employed elsewhere.
Greenpeace activists dressed as a removal team, complete with European Commission Clean Up Co. overalls arrived to move Barroso and Verheugen out of the Commission building and across town to their favourite lobbying locations. Moving office leaflets where distributed to EU staff to explain that Mr Barroso would be moving to take up a job with the CEFIC - the European chemicals industry association that has spent millions on lobbying against stronger chemical law. Mr Verheugen will be moving to German chemical giant BASF, the leading company bankrolling the back room trashing of proposals for stronger chemical law. Both politicians have traded public interest in their attempts to water down the proposed EU chemicals policy (REACH).

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Why exactly should they move?

One of our removal team - Nadia Haiama of the Greenpeace European Unit explains: "Children are being born with a cocktail of hazardous chemicals in their bloodstream and Mr Barroso and Mr Verheugen are supporting companies that want to go on producing these substances. It is not surprising that the chemicals industry fights for the right to pollute with impunity, but when the European Commission defends that position, something is wrong. If Mr Barroso and Mr Verheugen intend to put chemicals industry profits before the public interest, they should move. We've come to help them relocate to where their heart seems to be."

Fix required - but trashing in progress

Current chemicals legislation is failing to protect our health. Humans and the environment are exposed to a wide range of potentially harmful manmade chemicals. Hazardous chemicals have been repeatedly found in the environment and in human bodies, including foetuses, and represent a threat for all sections of society, from workers to children. For most chemicals on the market there exists no or insufficient information to assess their effects on human health or the environment.

In Europe there is an attempt to fix this with the new REACH law but almost from the moment it was suggested it has been under fire from vested interests who profit from pollution. The toxic twins, Barroso and Verheugen, are attempting to drive the final nail in the coffin of the already weakened EU chemicals reform, being cheered on by their dirty industry friends. Instead of defending the public interest, their actions are becoming a threat to our health and environment.

If successful, the industry-led sabotage of REACH supported by Messrs Barroso and Verheugen would:
• Allow 20,000 chemicals onto the market without basic health and safety data;
• Let health and safety information on chemicals fall below internationally recognised minimum requirements;
• Deprive chemical users and retailers of information on hazardous chemicals contaminating their supply chain;
• Give industry the right to use hazardous chemicals even when safer substitutes exist.

Medical, scientific, trade union and environmental experts all support a strong chemical law. Mr Barroso and Mr Verheugen appear to prefer the arguments of the chemicals industry.