Europe
By mid-2017
all coatings
products on sale
in the EU will
have to bear the
CLP labels with
hazard symbols
or pictograms
different in
appearance
and scope to
those required
by previous
legislation.
EU’s New CLP Regulation
on Labeling Cause Concern
by Sean Milmo
European Correspondent
milmocw@rodmanmedia.com
The European coatings industry entered this year in the final stages of a big exer- cise in the relabeling of its products to
comply with a new European Union regulation
on hazard warnings for mixtures of chemicals
and other formulations.
Although several years have elapsed since
the regulation were first drafted, the industry still has a number of worries about their
implementation.
By mid-2015 all new coatings products and
other mixtures like detergents and household
and industrial cleaners will have to carry specif-
ic labels complying with the EU’s Classification,
Labelling and Packaging (CLP) Regulation
By mid-2017 all coatings products on sale
in the EU will have to bear the CLP labels with
hazard symbols or pictograms different in ap-
pearance and in scope to those required by pre-
vious legislation.
The CLP regulation was approved by the
European Parliament and the EU Council, representing the Union’s member states, in 2008 so
that it could start to come into force in 2009.
In its first stage of implementation, only
individual substances or chemicals had to be
classified and labelled according to their hazards by a deadline of December 2010, which
is followed by a second stage deadline of June
1 this year for the classification and labeling
of mixtures.
A major concern for the coatings industry is
ignorance among coatings users about the CLP
scheme, particularly about changes to hazard
classification and symbols. “There are coatings
which will be labelled hazardous which have
not been labelled that way before,” said Wayne
