REACH fee regulation updated: lower amounts for SMEs

ECHA/NA/13/14

The European Commission has informed ECHA that it amended the REACH fee regulation and asked for immediate introduction of the new fees, which will benefit SMEs. Fees for large companies will increase so that ECHA's revenue is not reduced. The changes will come into effect on 22 March 2013 after REACH-IT has been updated.

Helsinki, 20 March 2013 – Following the Commission's decision, the reduction awarded to micro, small and medium-sized enterprises in registration and authorisation fees will be increased by 5 percentage points. This is to lessen the impact of complying with REACH obligations on SMEs.

In order to avoid any negative effect on ECHA's revenues, the standard registration fees and charges will be increased by 4 per cent and the standard authorisation fees by 3.5 per cent. Moreover, all fees will for the first time be adjusted for the inflation that was recorded in the EU in 2011, which was 3.1 per cent. REACH fees have not been updated in the four consecutive years (from 2009 to 2012).

The new fees enter into force on 22 March 2013, one day after the amendment of the fee regulation has been published in the Official Journal of the European Union.

Further changes were made to the fee regulation. In particular, companies can now ask for an extension to the payment deadlines in two specific cases: invoices concerning confidentiality claims in updated dossiers and invoices concerning legal entity changes. To benefit from these extensions, companies are requested to contact the ECHA helpdesk.

ECHA has decided to take REACH-IT out immediately for service maintenance so that it can adapt its IT-tools to calculate the registration fees according to the Commission decision by Friday 22 March. Therefore, REACH-IT will be closed until Friday 22 March 10:00 EET. In addition, a revised version of the REACH fee calculator plug-in and of the corresponding dossier submission manual will be available as soon as possible on ECHA's website.