National enforcement authorities in 22 Member States inspected almost 1200 companies and checked more than 1800 treated articles including clothing, paints, bedding, and chemical mixtures under the first coordinated enforcement project on biocides (BEF-1) run by the BPR Subgroup of the Forum (BPRS) focused on checking obligations for treated articles in 2019. It is found that 73 % of the treated articles were produced in the EU. In 36 % of cases, the quality of the information provided on the labels of the treated articles was inadequate. For 42 % of articles and 23 % of mixtures, basic information, such as the name of the biocidal active substance used for the treatment of the product was missing. National languages were used on the labels in 83 % of the cases as required, but this rate varied across different Member States and was significantly lower for languages other than English, French, or German.

Inspectors also checked whether the biocidal products used to treat the articles contained active substances that were allowed in the EU. According to the self-declaration of the producers, this duty was fulfilled with less than 2.5 % of inspected products found to contain an illegal active substance.

The output of this project indicates that companies need to increase their knowledge about their responsibilities for treated articles and intensify their efforts to improve the overall quality of labeling, especially for articles treated with biocidal products.

Reference:https://echa.europa.eu/