 Good morning and welcome. I would like to welcome all the participants and panelists in this webinar today, Chemical Safety in the Context of the European Union, Transfer of Knowledge and Overview of the Good Practices. My name is Boris Len Malinovich and together with my colleague Melina Djajic-Valjevac I'll moderate today's webinar. I work as the Associated Professor of the Faculty of Technology in Panyaluka. Before we start with the webinar today, I'd like to draw your attention to some technical details. I will be using the Zoom application today in the webinar mode, which is somewhat different and offers more options than the usual meeting mode. The first of all means that you will not be able to turn on your cameras, but you have the option Q&A, questions and answers that you can use to communicate with the panelists of the day. And you will be able to ask them questions. You can ask the questions immediately during the presentation or after the presentation. And after all the presentation we have set aside some time for panel discussion that we'll try to use to answer most of your questions. It's also the chat option to communicate, but we will still ask you to write your questions to the panelists in the Q&A, not the chat option. The part of the webinar will be in English, so I would like to share with you that we have the option for simultaneous translation. You can select in the menu, if you are using the mobile application, you have interpretation, this symbol of a small globe where you can select the language that you'd like to listen and I can only guess that you will be selecting BHS when the panelists speak in English. And the opposite works for the panelists. If you have any technical problems, for example, cannot have the good quality of the sound. This webinar is also broadcast on the YouTube. So you can go there too, but you will not be able to ask questions. I have a great pleasure in saying that we have 116 participants already and I hope more will join us later on. Now I will say a few sentences about the project ASAP 2030 under which this webinar is organized. This is an assistance by the Embassy of the Kingdom of Sweden in developing the strategy and action plan for environment for the whole country with the strategies and action plans for all administrative levels. The entities, the Federation Republic Aspska and the Borchko district as well as the state development of this ASAP was entrusted to the Swedish Environmental Institute. And the Bosnia Herzegovina is expected to receive the key instrument for protection of environment and improvement of health and welfare of present and future generations of Bosnia Herzegovina. This project was officially started in September 2019 and the plan is to finish it in April 2022. The content of the ASAP will include the following seven areas policy environmental policy like water, waste, biodiversity, environment protection, air quality, climate change and energy, resource management and environmental management and chemical safety and noise. The working group were established at all levels of authority and they involve many participants respecting participatory processes and all of them want to contribute to this ASAP. In the project ASAP 2030 plus, together with my colleague Melina Jayčvaljevac I participate as a co-leader of the working group for chemical safety and noise. And I'm using this opportunity to invite my dear colleague Melina to address you to share with you an overview of situation in Bosnia Herzegovina in the area of chemical safety Melina. Hello, Borislav. I also want to welcome all the participants. My name is Melina Jayčvaljevac and I have a master's degree in chemistry and many years of experience working in environmental project. I will try to briefly present in one presentation everything that we have done in our working group, actually four working groups for four administrative levels in the country. And I can say that the activities were mostly focused on identification of all the gaps and problems that we have in the field of chemical safety. And also, when we recognize certain issues, we need to engage in strategic planning in order to achieve what we want to see in 10 year time as a solution to our problems. Now I will share my screen just a moment please. So, this thematic group covers chemical safety. And under this heading we look at the use of chemicals and safety of humans and environment. Our strategic plan and the action plan wants to achieve are the is the implementation of European directives as well as the conventions listed in this slide. I would like to burden you with the numbers and decrease and the numbers of the directives, but I just listed the areas regulated by this European legislation. Regulations we have labelling and packaging some provisions regarding different types of chemicals like mercury or detergents or the ozone depleting substances then pops asbestos as a part of structures, buildings that can become very hazardous waste. Then we have plant protection products, pesticides etc. In addition, Bosnia Herzegovina, apart from being under obligation to align their legislation with European legislation. They also need to align the legislation with the convention it had signed the Stockholm Rotterdam and Vienna conventions. And we need to ratify the Minamata convention. In this slide you can see what we have right now in Bosnia Herzegovina in terms of the institutional and legal frameworks. Institutions of Bosnia Herzegovina, when it comes to chemical safety are mostly responsible for reporting to the EU institutions, the secretariat to the conventions and for the customs policies including the controls and prevention of entry of the prohibited some substances into Bosnia Herzegovina. We can say this is quite well organized in the area of ozone depleting substances and plant protection products. But when we go to the entities and their competencies, entities and the Borchko district of Bosnia Herzegovina, we have the ministries that are competent for health, environment, labor and inspections. The legal framework, we can say that there is a significant difference between the legal framework that covers this area in Republic of Srpska and the one in the federation and the Borchko district. Since in Republic of Srpska we have an exceptional situation since we have the law on chemicals and biocids, and we've had it for a number of years already. And we have the secondary legislation developed which is already enforced. In the federation we have the law on chemicals that was passed in November last year and there are 24 months allowed to pass the secondary legislation that will allow for much better transposition of directives and implementation of all the requirements of the law. In terms of Borchko district, no progress has been made. We've had legislation 30 years old which were inherited from the old Yugoslavia that mostly talk about poisons. In the past the working groups had two series of meetings and we discussed the challenges and problems Bosnia Herzegovina is facing. I must say that the members of the working groups comprised representatives of institutions, representatives of NGO sector, representatives of business sector and research and educational centers. So in our discussion and through a participatory approach we discussed the priorities of the strategy and the action plan. So we have identified these challenges as listed in this slide. First of all we have lack of harmonization of legislation at the level of Bosnia Herzegovina which leads to uneven trade with chemicals. This necessitates improvements in the legislation because the business sector suffers a lot of adverse consequences of facing, of being faced with different rules enforced in the Republic of Sbsk as opposed to the federation and Borchko district. We don't have the chemical registration in the federation but now we have the legal basis, we have the law that means that this will be established. What is very interesting and what all the members of the working groups at all levels mentioned is that we have outdated chemicals, deserted industrial contaminated areas, buildings with asbestos that requires some to be inventorized and rehabilitated. We have this legacy of harmful chemicals. Then we have the competencies and capacities of institutions, technical capacities of institutions and lack of awareness among the users of chemicals and general public and the lack of a statistical set of data to follow the implementation of the conventions. So once we recognize the challenges, it was easy to see what could be the objectives of our work. First improve the legislation in the area of chemical safety, establish a system of chemical registration, which can now be done, which now applies to the federation and Borchko district, establish inventory of the outdated chemicals, deserted contaminated industrial areas and buildings containing asbestos, improved processes and capacities of institutions. Also the same goes to the technical capacities of institutions, improved awareness of the users of chemicals and public and establish a set of statistical data to follow the implementation of the conventions. What we have before us is the third meeting of the working group and one of the purposes of this webinar is to empower the working group with the examples of the good practice from the European Union so that we can continue working on our strategy and action plan. We could be better equipped to continue this process. Those who are not the members of the working group, I'd like to use this opportunity to invite them to visit the page of the ESAP project. There is one section about the e-consultations where they can leave their contact data and take part in the process of developing this strategy. They will be able to offer some comments, proposals, etc. And thus take a direct participation in the development of the strategy and action plan. I invite you to really do so because this is the first time that Bosnia Herzegovina is developing a document of this importance at all administrative levels and for the first time the chemical safety is covered in a document of this importance so please do take part in this. That would be all from me for the time being and one other thing I wanted to add. During the day to day the idea is that after each presentation we ask you some questions to make the webinar a bit more interesting and you will be asked two questions after each presentation just to these are all questions from your respective areas. Sometimes they are not directly linked to the presentation. Since we have 138 participants at this point, we would like to use the opportunity to get some feedback from you. So I believe you will see the first set of questions now. These are easy questions. Mark your answers. Thank you, Melina. Melina has had this awkward task to try to summarize the current situation in the area of chemical safety for us. Now you have two questions on your screen and we would appreciate seeing your answers. We know that we have some participants who will find these questions too easy but please bear in mind that we have some participants who may not fully understand the concept of chemical safety and while you are completing this poll, we'll see the results. Since we don't want to spend too much time on this, I'd like to say the following. We have some presenters from the Swedish agency for chemical. These are Messers Mats Vorkman and Torbjörn Lids and we have people from ALCHEM, the association for chemical safety from Serbia. We will wait for the poll to finish and we'll move on to the first presentation, the control of chemicals in the market by Mr. Vorkman. We'll just wait for the poll to finish. So we have the results. We can briefly look at them, but maybe it would be better to see all the answers at the end of the webinar. Let's show the biography of Mr. Vorkman. Mr. Mats Vorkman is a senior advisor for the Swedish Chemicals Agency and his experience includes risk assessment, risk management, enforcement and impact assessment. He's had 16 years of experience in the chemical industry as a consultant and he's also a project manager for the improvement chemical project in Albania. Mr. Vorkman, the floor is yours. So thank you very much and good morning to everyone. I'm very happy to be here and to speak on this very important topic. So I will speak on preventing harm, so controlling chemicals when they are placed on the markets. Next slide, please. Thank you. So to start with, I mean, we need chemicals. They are a very important part of modern life and we couldn't do without them. But we also need to control chemicals or they will cause harm. So I have some examples from the Sustainable Development Goals. For example, for the good health and well-being, we need to reduce the number of deaths and illnesses from hazardous chemicals because there are too many or any death is too many. But we also need safe medicines and vaccines for good health and well-being and to do these medicines and vaccines, we need chemicals to produce them and to research them. And we need to have a sound management of chemicals and waste throughout the life cycle. But for to have affordable and clean energy, we also need resource efficient and sustainable materials, which are chemicals, we need chemicals to do these materials and we need to use chemicals. So next slide, please. Just to remind ourselves, we are surrounded by chemicals. There are chemicals everywhere, not only in, you know, in a chemical lab. And we are exposed to these chemicals. And being exposed to chemical means that we have a potential risk of harm. And we therefore have to think about what we need to address. Where do we find these chemicals? What is the problem or could be the problem? Well, the workplace is perhaps the most obvious, especially a workplace where you use chemicals. But also in household chemicals, like cosmetics, detergents, maybe you use anti-mosquito pesticides at home. And not only the chemicals, but also in articles like electronics, toys, clothes and building materials. They also include chemicals and they release chemicals, more or less, but they are an important part of the exposure. And this exposure of chemicals, I mean, that means it's a potential harm or a hazard for us. It could be a cure toxic, I mean, like poison, immediate poison, something that happens immediately. Or it could be corrosive, like to the eye or the skin, irritant or even worse, corrosive. It can also be long-term effects like cancer. It could be reprotoxic, which means that it's either harms the unborn child, which is developing or the organs are developing. And so it's very sensitive or the possibility to have children to conceive. And it could cause allergies, either contact for the skin or respiratory allergies, which is also really something that could be a major harm to individuals. And of course it could harm the environment and the organism in the environment. And we need to assess these hazards and these exposures. And that means that we will have the risks. And from that we can then address them, but we have to do the assessment first. And when we do this assessment, it's very important that we consider that there are vulnerable groups. Not everybody is a healthy grown-up or adult. We also have children and pregnant women and the unborn child. And the children are not yet fully developed. The organs are still developing, so they are more sensitive. They also put a lot of things in their mouth. Anybody who has had a small child knows that, which means they are exposed in a different way. They also often spend a lot of time on the floor, which means they are closer to the ground and get inhaled dust, for example. So we have to take into account that when we do our risk assessment. We want to protect all people. We also have to consider gender because female and male are different. There's a skeptibility to harm. What harm a certain exposure gives is different for biological reasons. And there's also the social norms, which means that typically the division of labor is not equal between men and women. And that means that exposure is different. Typically men work in a more heavy industry, more chemical-intensive industry, whereas women work perhaps more in textile industry, and that kind of industry. So they are exposed to different chemicals in different ways. And it's very important that all have a right to a high level of protection for health. So we have to consider both the typical female workplaces and the typical male workplaces. And also you have to be represented in this decision-making when you are deciding on things that affect you. And also access to resources, the laws, the information training, the personal protection equipment. It has to be considered that everybody, all people should be protected, not just the obvious perhaps. And when we address these risks, we want to be preventive. So next, please. And why do we want to be preventive? Well, we want to start when they are placed on the market. And these are just two examples of why we should be preventive rather than trying to fix things when the problem is already there. I mean, first of all, we want to prevent suffering, of course, but also costs, so healthcare costs, costs for remediation of contaminated land, etc. And these are sometimes irreversible harm that cannot be possible, it cannot be undone, it's not possible. So two examples is one is asbestos that was already mentioned. You had early warnings from around 1900, that's more than 100 years ago, that they were, and asbestos has been widely used in the EU and in the world. And it's still, even though it was banned in the end of the 1990s in the EU, there's still a large number of deaths. I mean, it's estimated to be deaths after the ban and the third five-year period after the ban up to 400,000 deaths because of asbestos. And this is also an example of where we should perhaps use the precautionary principle, which means that in the early 1900s, it wasn't a conclusive scientific evidence to show that it was, did give cancer asbestos. But there were strong indications and that's where you should have acted, even if it was not completely certain, you shouldn't delay acting. So I've included one of the definitions of the precautionary principle, there are other definitions as well, but basically it's acting before there's absolute certainty if it's required. Another example is the PCB, which has been used extensively in different electronic equipment, for example, and sealants and paints. And we measure that in Sweden in mothers' milk. And this is mothers' milk, so that's something for the very vulnerable group of very small children. They are still exposed to this, even though it was banned in 1995. They still found in mothers' milk. And these are not mothers that work in a PCB factor or anything like that. This is statistical samples. So it's not possible to do really to remove it. We have to live with this, even though it was new use was banned in 1978 in Sweden. But we still have to live with the harm from that use more than 40 years ago. So we want to prevent harm rather than do something about it later. And we want to be systematic. Next, please. Well, we need to be systematic. So how do we do this? You have to have a set up. You have to have a legal framework that sets the objectives we want to achieve. For example, high level of protection for human health and environment is typically a good objective. You also have to clarify the roles and responsibilities of industry along the chemical life cycle from manufacture to waste and recycling, but also for enforcement, etc. You have to have the instruments in the law. So how do you like registers, pre-market approvals, restriction processes, etc. And this will influence who carries the costs. Of course, at least there will be benefits later, but costs, there will be costs at an early stage to do all this and that is then defined by this. You have to have an institutional arrangement to make it operational. Otherwise it will not happen just having laws is not enough. And with that institutions, all the institutions involved both private sector and public sector, they have to have the capacity of course. And they have to be coordinated both between government institutions between different jurisdictions, but also between national stakeholders and international stakeholders as well. To avoid duplication of work and be effective. So next please. So what we want this system to deliver. Well, we need how to go forward we need knowledge. Recall the discussion we had on exposure chemicals are everywhere. In the EU, you can't something between 25,000 100,000 different chemical substances. So we have to know which is the ones we should address first, which are most relevant. So knowledge on the health environmental hazards. But just having this data in a database or the information in a database is not enough. If it's hidden there, the users need to have this information. The users of the chemicals, they have to know about the hazards and the precautionary measures they should take. And it's not enough that they know. I mean, they also have to act. They have to use chemicals in a safe way, the way they act is important. And some substances are simply not possible to use safely. I mean, they might be typically substances with irreversible damage and very serious damage PCB is one that I mentioned. Typically those that give cancer, for example, reprotox that I mentioned, that are very persistent in the environment that remain a prolonged time in the environment to bio accumulate accumulate in living organisms. A typical ones that should be phased out like mercury a persistent organic pollutants in the stock on convention that was mentioned. So how do we do this in practice this knowledge information to users safe use and phase out. So next please. So I've taken you as an example because that's what I know best, but of course that's just an example. So knowledge, how do we get knowledge or generate knowledge. Well, in the EU you have pre market requirements. So if you want to market a chemical places on the market, you have to give the data first on environmental health assets. No markets. That's part of the EU retribution. And in other cases like plant protection products by side of products, you have to have an authorization to be allowed to sell it. And to get that authorization, you have to give the data first. And so next step then how do we get the information to users that's a very important part. And it's based on the United Nations international system, the globalized, the global harmonized system for classification of assets and communication of assets. In EU it's called a CLP regulation classification labeling and packaging. So it's very important that this gives format a language to present hazard and precautionary statements. And it's the supplier of the chemical that you do this in the EU. Classified in a common language and format labels are standardized with the hazard and precautionary statements and the pictogram, you know that like the exclamation mark here. Professionals get the safety data sheets with the information on hazards, safe use, first aid, what to do with spills, etc, etc. And there's also public databases on hazards and so on. These are open for everyone. So the knowledge is already there. It's free for everyone no need to log in just go in and get the data from anywhere in the world. So next piece. And when it comes to safe use them how do we use this information that uses how do they use it. Well it's typically in other legislation. So the chemical legislation gives information and on the hazards and the precautionary measures to other legislation that then sets what should be done like protection of environments or environmental permits, workers health and safety legislation, legislation to prevent major accidents, transport recycling waste handling. All of these can refer to the chemical legislation but if it's classified in a certain way it has to be handled in a certain way. And when it comes to facing out the EU has in within the reach a system where they can restrict the use of the manufacturer on the placing on the market of an article or a mixture or substance. And that can be for specific it can be restricted just so that the public cannot use it or with completely banned like asbestos or anything in between. And in other cases, there are authorization requirements. So for substances are very high concern in reach a list of substances and by side of products and plant protection products, as I mentioned, you have to have an authorization. And of course you can refuse to give an authorization. If you think that it's not safe. Okay, so next please. What benefits then what we benefit from and this is looks like a lot of cost we have to do a lot. Well those benefits for everyone. I mean it helps to achieve the sustainable development goals. It's necessary to have this system and preventive and systematic chemicals management. And it's not only the government that the voice healthcare costs, voice cost to remediate contaminated land, and make sure they achieved objectives of the government effectively. But also industry have major advantages or benefits. They have one system that's foreseeable they can plan. They don't have to duplicate work. If you have the same system that it facilitates trade. And of course the brand value. I mean no company has as an business idea to give their customers cancer. And people are more and more interested in health and environmental effects. And of course, for the public, the health of well being, and also right to know and participate in decision making. You have to have the information to be able to participate. And that's essentially human rights. So there are major benefits, even though there are initially some costs. Next please. So how do we know we're going the right way or how do we measure that we are actually doing effective preventive chemicals control it's not that easy to have indicators. It's very challenging because you have very complex there are many chemicals I said, like 25 to 100,000 a number of uses, any number of uses. Large groups exposed a long term exposed time between a long time between exposure to effect in many cases like cancer can take 10 decades 30 years or more. So one way is to meet is to measure and have indicators that's got to do with the regulatory outputs with estimates. So for example when they review reach. They have that you have 70,000 substances you have data on that will estimate to be protecting human health and environment. It's more than 70,000 17,000 now by the way. And there are a number of restrictions restrictions that's now in place, etc. You could also look at environmental health outcomes like emissions. If you have registers of that consumption. So for example, Sweden uses the percentage of energetic consumer products as an indicator are moving in the right way trends. We have environmental objectives where we use that environmental monitoring. So you have a water framework directive that measures that thresholds for various chemicals. You have to have long series of time but of course by monitoring I mentioned the PCB in matters milk that's one example which is used as an indicator in once again in Sweden. But there are of course others as well. And you can have epidemiological studies we study groups of people with the exposure and effect, but these are quite complex and really resource demanding. So they are often done academically, but it's difficult to do for for many substances. So, next please. So thank you. I just want to recap size mean chemicals surround us. And we need to control them, we need them, and we need to control them. And we need to protect everybody. So including vulnerable groups we have to take that into account, and we have to have a preventive and systematic approach. It's not enough to do something after the harm is there. So I'm looking forward to questions in the panel discussion but I think I see one question here now I've looked at soon. And I also just wanted to add here some more resources these are things I've picked, you know, information from 20 minutes is a short time to give a presentation on all this. So these are all downloadable for free, of course, and have a lot of information that you could look at. Yeah, just, yeah. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Borkman for this very interesting and useful presentation. Here we could see a brief overview of chemical control in the market and the perhaps even more important for us, some of the indicators that confirm the justification of all the legislation that to regulate this whole area I can say that here in Bosnia Herzegovina. We are lacking this such a reference studies that you developed in in Sweden that you started a long time ago I hope we'll be able to do something like that here just to remind the participants. You can ask questions in the Q&A section already. And I think it's time that we can we can have the next question Paul. I will read them. What do you think whether the inspectors should know how to properly assess the risk, the hazard and how to do the classification and marking of the chemicals and what do you think is the most important for the government bodies to offer to industry in order to ensure adequate implementation of regulations or adequate enforcement please do answer these questions. And while you are doing that. I'll announce the next speaker transposition and alignment with EU legislation. In non-member countries. This will be presented by Mr. Tobjörn Lind. We'll wait a few more seconds for the poll to finish and then we'll go to Mr. Lind. Thank you. We see now the biography of Mr. Lind. Mr. Tobjörn Lind is a senior advisor for the Swedish chemical agency. He has worked as advisor in Croatia, Hungary, Poland and Tunisia. And as a Swedish advisor to Albania, Macedonia and Serbia, he participated in four missions in Bosnia and Herzegovina in the period May, September 2016. Mr. Lind, you can start. Thank you very much. Well, thank you. Happy to be with you. First, I like to just underscore that what I will deal with today is based on my experience and experience that I share with colleagues in church in the western Balkan countries. But I will not specify directly that I'm talking about experience from Croatia or from Serbia. But be more general. Findings that I could say is general to all countries and would be of interest also to Bosnia Herzegovina for that reason. So now you can go to the next slide please. Change slide please. For countries that approximate to the EU legislation in this area, it's a virgin area. Candidate countries have a legislation for workers health and safety and safe transports emissions to the environment, etc. environmental legislation since long but what we call chemicals legislation in the EU is something quite new to countries so they are facing a new area. They have to establish the appropriate framework for that legislation. There are say new principles that are put into practice. It's prevention. It's about prevention at the most early stage in society when chemicals are placed on the market. The risks from the upper beginning when chemicals enter society. You can compare it to what has has been the tradition in the workers health and safety area with the personal protection equipment. It's also prevention but it's the very last resort. It's in the other end of the other lines to say. Chemicals legislation is very much about preventing risks from occurring from the beginning. So that is something that you have to count on and that it's there are a few persons in the countries that are familiar with this area for that reason. So you start from scratch you lay the ground. There have to be the effective division of the responsibilities. You base legislation on parliamentary law primary law. And you you build the necessary institutional competence and capacity. Normally from scratch. You can find the knowledge demands that not mentioned. Talked about, but also the detail the information requirements about hazards, how to communicate hazards with classification and labeling, communicate risks and precautionary measures. Also, you you regulate the free and open access to substances, particularly hazardous substances and chemicals and substances also used when they are used in in articles. We can take the next slide. So to see the rule of chemicals legislation in the EU. It's important. So you do not mix it up. The key community are the EU. Legislation listed has the sub chapter about chemicals, and then it's about chemicals legislation and distance. Worker's health and safety is another chapter. So this chapter is about chemicals legislation in in basically two senses. One is the communication on hazards. What's to the left in this picture. The classification labeling the safety data sheets that serve chemicals safety in all areas in society where where chemical risks are a concern. And that you should not just see as a sort of technical thing is something written on the cans or bottles some technical message. It's an important factor for the choice of chemicals. If you know the classification if you have a possibilities to see the potential risks, then you can also choose other chemicals you can adjust your choices and your also your choice of technique. And you can do that in quite a short time compared to the perspective of investments because many times you can substitute chemicals for less hazardous chemicals, almost overnight, or during at least the short period of time in comparison to investments that have a 10 year perspective. The other main component is what I mentioned the prohibitions and restrictions of the particularly hazardous chemicals and substances of our high concern. So this is taking care of from the beginning. There is the reduced allow the use for for the substances is about say 1200 substances that somehow are restricted in the EU. And since it's made from the beginning that they do not appear on the market for those purposes that are restricted. You can compare it with the traditional environmental legislation where you have used to have permits at the sites, when you already are using the chemicals you have the permit to to contaminate to a minor extent. But you still have the pollution. In this case, we have the system that that substances are not allowed to be placed on the market for for the most risky uses, and that way we also hinder the the risk from occurring we are preventing the potential risks. And this you should not perceive as as impossible somehow that it's very difficult to restrict we have done it. It's not common in the world I should say compared to the US for example we have with our about 1200 restrictions we have a. We could compare to the US where they have about a dozen and most countries have new restrictions, apart from what they are, what they have undertaken in regard to multilateral multilateral conventions, like the Stockholm Convention. So, and what's in the in the white part of the other slide, supporting the use of safe chemicals and safer techniques everywhere in society. It's the rule of chemicals legislation in relation to other legislation about chemicals. It supports with knowledge and information and with restrictions, food safety, the protection of children, safe waste disposals, etc. We can change the slide now. Nowadays, this area is fully harmonized. And it's codified. We have a community system for chemicals management, compared to earlier when the countries entered the EU in 2004 or 1995 we had the directives it wasn't fully harmonized yet. And we are mainly speaking about the CLP regulation, the rich regulation, the biocidal product regulation and the Rotterdam and Stockholm conventions in this area. We can take the next slide. And here I tried to give a picture metaphor for what what what the community system stands for. It's like entering a ship. You enter the EU, you enter the community system, you cannot enter it before you have to prepare for entering it. You can, and you are supposed to implement important parts of the regulations, but you cannot implement all the rules in this or the provisions and these systems that stipulate the membership. The ship is where the where to navigate the ship is decided by the 27 members and the navigation tools and how to stop the ship is the European Chemicals Agency on the member state competent authorities are stopping the ship. So this is the situation you encounter as a candidate country and it could be quite difficult to to see really what it means and that has been the case I should say in all candidate countries because you mix it up. You mix it up this system with the regulations that build up the community system, you mix it up with the directives that are directives to establish national systems and we could look at the next slide them. Try the same metaphor to show how it works will, for example, the, the service or directive. Each member state has arranged for and established a system to prevent and control major chemical accidents through the service or three directive. And that is something that the candidate country can and should and should do as well. So you could say that during a pre accession, you can build your, your sailing boat, and you can be fully ready with your service or system. And you can enter the EU with that system national system for preventing and controlling major chemical accidents. And that those are also minimum requirements so you can be more ambitious certain certain basic demands are common principles and requirements. And as for example, in Italy, you can find very ambitious systems for for in this area, and then you enter and there are 27 already sailing boats in place so you enter the fleet, and we cooperate with each other. But those are national systems in comparison to the community systems. And they, they are stopped each one with national for administration, people, administrative and technical staffers. We can take the next slide. These are things that you're supposed to to establish before being able to to to be able to to take on the EU regulations under cooperation. So during pre accession trade and industry have to get a good understanding of chemicals legislation. There are obligations and the demands that will be there in place on accession day, if not earlier. You have to ensure that you have enforcement provisions and resources institutional resources. So, so that you can comply with your member state obligations participate in the rich system in the CLP activities on the community level. And also that you can provide expertise to to the work of a risk assessment and socioeconomic analysis. If you have, if you have to have a transition arrangements and it's normal. You put it in the accession agreement that you that will come, let's say half a year before accession, you will have the accession agreement in place. These are things that that you have to have in national legislation so when you enter the EU you have to have a national legislation showing what what is the competent authority. What is the inspection. Who is is the inspection in this area and you have to have the panel penalty provisions in place. And also you have to have a help desk resources for the three regulations reach CLP and the by side of products help desk to to help industry navigate in the in the legislation. You can take the next slide. So, indispensable to transpose and to put in practice in due time before accession to be prepared for membership is the classification labeling and packaging provisions that implements the GHS the global harmonize system for classification and labeling the UN system and the safety data sheet requirements also from the GHS. Then there is the classification and labeling on the individual basis of certain substances in the in the EU substances of very high concern active substances in bio size and also active substances and pesticides. So, centrally decided classifications precisely how substance should be classified. Normally, it's the general requirements on importers and manufacturers to classify and label chemicals and substances but in this case, when it comes to this kind of substances. And several genes, multiple genes, reproductive toxic substances. Substances that are irritants to the respiratory tract. And others, the same concern. We have, we have this system of centrally decided classification and that classification, you can introduce this list of classification and labeling of individual substances you you can introduce the during pre accession to have in place. In due time, and you can, and you are supposed to also to establish the prohibitions and restrictions. You can introduce the list of substances of very high concern. And the list that has certain importance for the requirements of when it comes to chemical substances and articles. Most countries did that during pre accession. And when it comes to the conventions there are some further demands in the in the EU regulations for example the export import regulation requires that you should notify the export, not just of the substances listed under the Rotterdam convention. Your companies in your country export to another country. You should notify the export also of a long list of the EU substances, EU restrictions of substances, other substances. And that is also something that you normally countries normally established before, before membership. Next slide. And at the same time you should keep in mind, and that has been the problem for issue for many times in the candidate countries that you cannot establish the procedures the parallel procedures to the EU procedures you can issue the lists of restrictions you can issue the list of substances of our high concern. You can issue the list of, of classification of labeling of those, particularly acid substances. But you cannot introduce the same kind of procedures as the EU, because then you are starting to have a parallel procedures and you will take your, your decisions on other base, another basis and in another context on the EU. And it could be also already formally, it will be a sort of competition with the when you will get results from your procedures that are not in tune with the EU decisions. So you to introduce the procedures. It's not, it's not supposed to be done in the candidate country and it isn't done in the member states because these are community systems. I refer back to what I said, these are community systems so the member states do not have those kind of procedures on the national level. They are participating in these procedures at the community level. So the candidate country shouldn't, shouldn't have the procedures neither. Well to, we can take the last slide them. I've tried just to indicate the roadmap. This is based on how countries have done it. You start. And you need to three years to establish the framework law with the basic obligations with the clear mandates and also laid the ground with the, with the legislation for a sustainable funding financing with enforcement provisions etc. The industry and trade have to get engaged at this early stage in this area. Then there could be about five years of building capacity, both within industry and trade and in the state or administration. And this gives you the application rules, the secondary legislation could be a step-by-step introduction of the information and communication demands classification and labeling, as was done, for example in Republic of Serbska. You start with the requirements for on substances and then you can have some two or three years time, the same demands for the classification and labeling of mixtures. And well then the last two years, you make yourself ready industry trade government. And discuss the possible transition agreements in the accession agreement, and, and you prepare for the laws that you need as a member state that I mentioned about what is the competent authority, who is the, who has the inspection duties. And what are the penalty provisions and where is the help desk seated, the help desks for the various regulations. And that means that you are ready then to take on member state responsibilities in the community systems and cooperate with other member states. So all together it could be a 10 years perspective. In Bosnia-Herzegovina you are in a sort of uneven situation where the Republic of Serbska started this process a long ago and hopefully the other parts, the federation and the Brisco, could keep up with it and that it could be done faster possibly in the rest of the country. Thank you very much. Thank you, Mr. Lin for this very valuable and interesting presentation as you've noticed well, and we can see that you know the situation in Bosnia-Herzegovina very well. We have a different situation in various parts in the Republic of Serbska. We are quite advanced in this process, but in the federation and the Brisco district, we only have to engage in activities to set up the system now. I know I am aware that we need to accelerate the process and we want to make it make this time shorter than 10 years. And as you reiterated on several occasions, you actually propose that we should not set up parallel procedures to the EU procedures because I have a feeling sometimes that we need to transpose all the directives and regulations as such and as a whole and you showed here and you explained that we didn't need to do so that we only need to be well prepared and do it our way. Thank you very much. When it comes to these regulations, yes. For example, if you look at the REACH, the REACH regulation, I would say that there is about 70% of the provisions that are designed for and presuppose membership. So they address the member state, not the candidate country. If you count on the number of articles, you will find out that less than 30% of the articles are possible to implement. So that's one thing, but it's also the other thing that the REACH regulation is designed and made for the vast area of the European economic area, the community market, the common market. This opposes the strength of the industry in the EU that the big producers of the substances are under the jurisdiction that you have more or less complete supply chains that so you can put demands on the actors in the supply chain, that you have access to the resources of 27 member states and the Central Chemicals Agency, the ECCA. Those are conditions that can never be met by a normalized country. So the whole system is designed in a way that it's impossible to have a parallel setup. You will not be able to generate and finance the data search, you will not be able to accomplish the joint or share the cooperation for compiling safety data sheets that there is in the EU etc. So this was very much mixed up in the beginning in Serbia, for example, they got early on in the procedure, the advice to have a sort of blue copy of the REACH regulation, the procedures, something that is impossible really. And it's not at all required. From the metaphor that I had with the sailing ship. Thank you very much once again for this useful advice and now it's the time for our break but just before the break may I ask for another set of questions from the poll and then we will have a break of 10 minutes after our participants answered this question. We are lagging behind slightly because the presentations were interesting. I did not want to interrupt or to restrict anyone's time. It was very significant and useful for us. And after the questions are answered. Then I suggest to reconvene on 1025 you don't need to log out, but I will read the question. Do you think when will the new regulation ensure that the chemicals are adequately classified and labeled the technical list and do you think that, sorry, I lost. But you need to know the regulations in the area of chemical management for export of products in EU countries, which are not chemicals such as furniture, toys, clothes. We will have several questions from our participants and if anyone wants to comment on these questions or the others, you will have an opportunity. I apologize. This is the end of the poll. Well, if Melina agrees, perhaps we could prolong the break until 1030. I don't think this 15 minutes will make a major difference. Yeah, I agree. I agree. 15 minutes. See you at 1030. Thank you. I hope we had enough time to take a brief rest and that now we can continue with our presentation. The next one is chemical safety and useful experiences from the neighborhood. Here's the case study from Serbia. This will be joint presentation. And first we'll hear Ms. Yasmika Rangelovic. She is the program coordinator of the organization alternative for safer chemicals. She is a civil society organization which promotes reduced risk of hazardous chemicals aimed at protection of human health and environment. She implements international project in the area of chemical management and works as a consultant for chemical management in the public administration. She worked on development of the national strategy and management of chemicals and chemical products. And as an inspector for control chemicals and she is also worked as a Republican inspector for chemicals she's actively engaged in activities of international organizations like coalition 27 miss Rangelovic. First of all, I would like to greet all the participants in today's meeting and to thank the organizers for inviting us and for recognizing our experience in this doing this work in Serbia. Just to very briefly to introduce my organization Alhem. This is alternative for safer chemicals. It was established in 2013, and it gathers experts with many years of experience in this area. What we advocate is the safe chemical management in Serbia. For the purpose of reducing the risk of the chemicals may pose to the health of people and environment. We work in Serbia, but we are also members of some international organizations active in this field. The IPAN, the international network for future without toxic chemicals, then the largest European organization for environment protection, the EB and a member of the working group for chemicals and the organization heal health and environmental alliance with the state in Brussels that is working on protection of health of people and specifically the chemical impact on health. We are a member of an informal association the network that's called coalition 27 that enters the process of Serbia succession to the European Union and progress achieved under chapter 27 that concerns the environment in this coalition, we are responsible for chemical management and one characteristic of the coalition 27 is that every year we publish a report on the progress in Serbia on this path to European integration in connection with the accession process and we come up with the set of recommendations. What all the stakeholders need to do in order to achieve the objectives and meet the requirements of the EU in this context. Our most important we have several target audiences. And we work of course with the decision makers in this process we work to improve policies in this field by public advocacy with the responsible agencies in accordance with the international policy of chemical management and policies of the European Union we also work as the watchdog organization to monitor how the legislation is actually enforced in practice specifically the legislation in Serbia, because sometimes we worked on establishment of the regulatory framework and now as the civil society organization we are monitoring the implementation of these results and we are trying to do at least once a year the testing of products and to check how the restriction of use of substances in the general use projects is implemented and we publish these results in our reports and later share that with the competent bodies and citizens to take measures in this field and all those who are putting these products in the market we also work with commercial entities. We are trying to find ways to share the information that we have that we receive from the European institutions, active in industry and also the NGO sector about the chemicals that they use in their production processes and what are the safer alternatives we are promoting this substitution process. Typically we work through the Chamber of Commerce of Serbia with the association of chemical producers and the trade association because they gather most of the importers and distributors of not only chemicals but also the products containing hazardous chemicals. So we work directly with companies, especially in relation to the substances causing concern and our broadest target audience are the citizens we help them be protected from the hazardous chemicals by making the right choice and implementing the correct protection measures not only against the chemicals and the mixtures but also the products containing chemicals and we work with other civil society organizations in Serbia in order to help you of our limited capacities to fulfill our mission and vision related to the safe management of chemicals. We consider particularly important to the cooperation with the consumers association and we are implementing some joint activities and joint projects and we provide each other this technical knowledge that is required in this field. Before, in 2015 before we started implementing major projects we did an analysis of perception, public perception with respect to the chemical safety to see what the citizens think and how do they behave with respect to the chemicals and we did with an agency that is doing normally the public opinion surveys. This was the first survey that we did and this is used for us to measure our own impact, not only of the alhambra but also other stakeholders active in the field. So these initial associations when it comes to chemicals what comes to mind of ordinary citizens are in a negative context. The red, the chemicals are unhealthy, harmful for environment, dangerous and they have, they show much higher percentage than the opinion that the chemicals are useful, effective, modern, innovative etc. So the first association is negative. We also asked the citizens to what extent they recognize the presence of chemicals in the generalist use products, like the clothes, toys, plastic toys, electronics, and this was interesting almost 85% of people recognize and are aware that chemicals are not only the household products or construction products that there are everywhere. Majority believes that they cannot be eliminated from everyday life and they believe that the new chemicals do not contribute to healthier environment. So mostly the association is negative. In the opinion of citizens on what are the products that are the highest chemical risk the citizens recognized with convincing majority, the pesticides and insecticides, the agricultural pesticides and biocids. Specifically insecticides because this is the group of products that citizens often get in contact with and these are the group of products where the supplier needs to get the permits from the competent body prior to placing them in the market as opposed to other chemical products. Detergents come second and they are considered to be a risk then cleaning products, gardening products, cosmetics, construction products, then come the toys, electronics, clothes and footwear, furniture etc. One question concerned the labeling specifically of the chemicals, the substances and mixtures, because we wanted to see whether the citizens, the consumers read the instructions for use. In 2015 we had some regulations in force about the classification packaging and labeling that was in line with European CLP regulation and international globally harmonized system and some pictograms were already on the chemicals. Because the results showed that around 60% of citizens sometimes or often or always read the labels on the chemical products, while 40% very rarely or never. But we also wanted to learn amongst those who do read the labels, whether they really adhere with the instructions provided on the label and the answer was fully half of the responses were fully adhered to 43 partially. This percentage if this is the share of those who do read the labels but if we consider it as a share of the total population, we can say that 33% of citizens read the labels and adhere to the instructions. So in 2015, we had a very large room to act in terms of educating the population on the labeling and communication. So the activities of the Alham and at that time we're focused on on this topic, labeling the chemicals and recognizing the pictograms. So in our on our site we have even a quiz that where the citizens can test their knowledge. Later on, we moved more towards the testing of the products in general use, but related to the risk assessment and the proper use of chemicals. In addition to prohibitions and restrictions these are the two aspects that are the most important for controlling the risk of hazardous chemicals we also wanted to hear what the citizens thought about whom would they trust most in case of the chemical safety doctors and medical institutions 37% the competent body 33% centers for poison control that's also part of the health system. So we can say that 60% lay most of their confidence in the health institutions, scientific 23 percent of the suppliers are to be believed by only 20% NGOs 9% and media only 3% European Union and its institution were mentioned by only 5%. We assume has changed over time and we should probably repeat this survey with some of these questions to see what's the current opinion, what was important to us was that the doctors the health sectors should be involved and included in this area from the very beginning. Who is responsible to ensure the chemical safety. In the view of the citizens the competent government body 23% the producers 13% both 61% and this is this corresponds to the reality according to the reach directive and the chemicals the suppliers are not only the producers but importers distributors and traders are responsible for safety of the project but there is also the competent body who needs to pass the legislation and establish the inspections. The last question was about harmonization with the EU legislation. Do the citizens believe that this harmonization legislative harmonization contributes to better safety and 50% said yes, 20 that they disagreed and some 30% think that that would not contribute to the safer market, which is not negligible. These were the answers given in 2015 in 2017 when we repeated just some of the questions mostly related to the part on the classification packaging and labeling because we wanted to see how the awareness of the consumers changes of time we saw some much better results in terms of recognizing pictograms and the part related to the substances that raise concern. And we asked, do you know that you have the right as a consumer to request information about the presence of hazardous chemicals and substances that cause concern in the product 29% said that they were aware of this right but only 2% used this right. Based on this survey, the first project that was done in Serbia, the first one of the first major projects that was implemented in cooperation with the competent body and the consumers associations and the UNDP and the one organization from Germany, a CSO organization from Germany was very important in terms of development of this system in Serbia. This was financed by the Sycombe the International Association for chemical management policies at the international level, and it was implemented in 2015 and 16. This objective was to link all the stakeholders who were interested in this area in Serbia. First of all, the competent authorities, not only the ministry that's responsible for environment where the department for chemicals is placed, this body is responsible for the implementation of the long chemicals. There is also the part of the Ministry of Health that contains some of the inspection and other regulations that have to do with chemicals such as the lawn products, objects of general use. That includes toys, cosmetics, products that get in contact with the skin, and the ministry that's competent for trade and consumer protection. This applies to the retail sale of chemicals. And it also includes the inspections of the UNDP as the implementing agency to civil society organizations, but us and our German colleagues WECF. The project was implemented by two, by three major consumer associations from Novi Sad Belgrade and MISCH because we wanted to cover as much of Serbia as we could. We involved the Institute for Public Health, Batut City, Institute for Public Health Belgrade and the Chamber of Commerce who represented the business sector. The project was about the substances that cause concern, the ones that are according to the legislation, classified as carcinogen, mutagen or toxic for reproduction and very persistent and bio-accumulative. And this group also includes the substances that represent the substances that may act as endocrine disrupting chemicals. On the site of the European Chemical Agency, you can find 211 substances and there is also a list of candidate lists which is updated twice a year, typically in January and June. So it's very important when the secondary legislation is adopted and the list of substances that it is regularly updated. The project also engaged in verification to see how this article 27, which corresponds to article 33 in the REACH regulation and in the law of the Federation and the law of the Republic of Sepska, this is article 37, which says that manufacturers, importers and distributors of products have obligation to provide in the supply chain information needed for safe use of the product at the request of consumers. The consumer, this information is not available on the label of the products. These products are still on the market and that's legal while they're still on this list, while they are not shifted to the list of bands when they will need the authorization that is implemented at the level of the EU. So it is important that the only mechanism, the tool is for consumers to take an active approach to seek to obtain information. They should be aware that they have this right to contact the provider or trader where they purchase the product to obtain information. On the basis of their answer they receive from the supplier, then they can take an informed decision whether they will buy the product or not. Let me just mention that the supplier is under the obligation to provide such answer if the concentration of the substance is more than 0.1%. That was one of the purposes of the project to see how legal obligation or provision is applied in the practice, especially among the traders in retail and suppliers. However, how this is implied in practice. Alham worked together with three associations of consumers and requests were sent to 90 distributors in the retail and we requested information about 90 products that belong to the groups that you see on the slide. It is a quite broad range of products and these are the products which are produced from plastic, the soft plastic mainly on the basis of polyvinyl plurids and where we could assume that it is very likely that we will find some pallets which is used for softening of plastic. What did show this survey from 90 distributors, 52% responded but only 22 responded what we asked the rest of them did provide an answer but they did not answer very specific question and the question was very clear whether this product under the serial number of the product contains any of the substances which is on the candidate list 22% responded provided answers and all these 22.2% said that their products do not contain any of these SVHC we then conducted a test in an accredited laboratory and of all these products 27% were positive on tallades. Mostly we found this in cables, floors, platings, footwear, household tools and equipment, beach equipment. After that, we use this, not really to control these manufacturers because the presence of these mixtures these compounds compounds is not banned except for children care products and choice. That's only where they are banned but they are allowed in all other products but this is the way we wanted to make sure that consumers are in a position to take an informed decision whether to buy product or not as you can see a number of choice where tested positive with the relevant bodies the Ministry of Environment together with the sanitary inspection conducted several inspections and these children care products and some other choice were removed from the market some bibs or so. This information was used in order to carry out various activities in contact directly with the citizens and industry to raise the awareness of this topic and especially about the presence of SVHC in products. We also produced some information materials for citizens advising them how they can avoid buying such toys and we also issued one publication in relation to detergents and cleaning material for households. Together with the associations of consumers, we organize some local events during the consumers week it takes place every day every year in March. We will have soon the day of consumers and we always use this stage to carry out some joint activities with the associations of consumers and we focus on chemicals. We also held two media conferences together with the responsible body and we also hold held the workshop for journalists that's also very important and we seek to get their journalists on an annual basis the journalists which cover this topic and it is not easy to find the scope in the media to cover this topic these are mainly the journalists which cover environmental issues protection of consumers and since recently increasingly they focus on human rights because the right to health and the right to information is guaranteed in the Constitution. So, there are a lot of common activities which we can take and which touch upon human rights. We also organized a seminar. What we would like to stress is satellite symposium and the green disruptors and women health, which we carried out together with the health sector. The doctors were involved and specialists and we had a side event, focusing on the topic of endocrine disruptors, and we hosted the most distinguished doctors from all over Europe. This was also the results of this conference were also presented at the regional conference in Poland and it was considered to be a good example of cooperation of all stakeholders that are engaged in activities on this topic then we continued our cooperation with the public health Institute bus, but to and we organize the conference on endocrine disruptors. We involved the health sector since the beginning. That's what you should do in Bosnia. We also continued covering various as a we see we mainly focus on delayed recycling of hazardous waste and hazardous chemicals in various products but you can find all this publication on our website and at the end. I would like to finish with the applications, communication, what happened, instead of exchanging letters and email us and seeking to obtain information about SVH sees we launched a live ask reach project and we designed an application for mobile phones. Which entitles can for camp. It is an IT tool which can be uploaded to smart phones and you can send your request automatically in order to receive answers from suppliers. This project is implemented by 20 organizations from 13 countries of the EU and it is interesting to note that this is a project which is implemented by the environmental agency of Germany then can be then the Danish responsible authority, but the others are civil society organizations and academia so it is a joint project and initiative. From Serbia is the only partner which is outside of the EU in this project and we are also managing and administering this application for Serbia, Montenegro and Bosnia and Herzegovina and if I may mention at the end this application is available in Bosnia and Herzegovina since December last year and I encourage all the participants who have interest to upload this application you have can find more detailed information on our site on our website and instructions for use but it is designed in such a way that you don't need any any instructions. Our goal is not only to send information, send the request and obtained information, but also to provide companies with information about SVHC. This is a case where a producer can send their products to the database and the consumer will immediately have information whether the product contains SVHC or not. You don't need to wait 42 days you have information at the point when you are buying the product and you can take an informed decision as you buy the product. You can find multiple information about on the site of the EU project AskReach and I should also note that two organizations from Bosnia and Herzegovina, EcoForum from Zenica and Center for Environment from Banyaluca showed interest to promote this application in Bosnia and Herzegovina and EcoForum from Zenica in December published the information about this and I am very happy to provide all the necessary support to organizations and of course the responsible body from Bosnia and Herzegovina to distribute this application and we are happy to provide all the materials we may have on this topic. This is the end of my presentation, my part of the presentation concerning the activities of ALHEM and our slogan has been is that the chemicals among us are good thing except for situations when they are not. Thank you Miss Arangelovic for this presentation. I will try to restrain from plenty full positive comments I will only say that it is impressive that your civil society has conducted so much activities so many activities and that you have so many information that you shared with us now I will give the floor to Miss Valdin Amart. Valdin Amart is a consultant to engaging projects related to safe chemical management in the organization Alternative for Safer Chemicals Management ALHEM and its founder until 2013 she worked on development of chemical management system in the Serbian authorities, she is a creator of laws and other regulations in this area and all other components essential for the implementation of the legislation including the establishment of the agencies for chemicals she was executive officer responsible for technical streamlining of activities in chemical management in this agency and she worked on the ratification and implementation of international instruments in the area of chemicals management she was also responsible for the strategic approach to the international chemicals management SAICM Miss Matiu had the floor. I hope you can hear me well. Yes, and we can see your presentation. I will try to speak less than my colleague because we said a lot of things at the beginning. Let me share with you that I believe you're very patient and eager to hear a lot of information that we have provided in this area and I hope I will keep your attention it is truly a pleasure to be with you here today and we are only several hundred kilometers away from Bosnia and Herzegovina a few hours drive but the majority of chemicals we discussed today do not recognize borders at all and it is not simple you cannot only address the problems on your side of the border and we cannot say that we will work only in Serbia and resolve the problem and I think this is the reason why Sweden is providing support to all other countries to achieve the level of safety which will prevent chemicals to travel across the continent. You've heard about my experience and I have been in the non-governmental sector for seven years but I co-authored the law on chemicals I cannot see who are participants but I hope that our their colleagues who visited us in the Ministry of Environment and Chemical Agency mostly from Republika Sepska who visited us and who tried to obtain some knowledge and information we had at that time and who worked together of us to create this chemicals management safety system. Bear with me for a second please. As for my experience, this area is like a puzzle. Mr Dodgern mentioned this and Mr Metz also in order to set up a system that you fully control chemicals in the field. You must provide all the necessary regulations to design all the necessary regulations and those in Republika Sepska who completed this process understood understand that this process was not an easy. It was easier for us because they had some regulations and directives translated into our language so that made it a bit easier for them and we had our own legislation in place. As you could hear from Mr Dodgern, these regulations can be harmonized only 70% with the EU so it took us a lot of thinking to know how to devise the strategy which will be relevant for Serbia. So we understand that it is not easy for you and we are happy to see that the Federation also has the law on chemicals in place now. What was also important for me because I was quite lonely when I was drafting this law. It was necessary to make sure I have an adequate number of people who will together with me carry out the whole process and set up a chemical control system. So there were a lot of people who we needed to train and educate in administrative work and chemicals management activities as for inspectors that was not something that the environmental inspectors did previously. So the knowledge of inspectors was different and in order to control a product and whether it is properly classified and whether the safety certificate has been prepared in a proper way. The inspectors needed to be trained and that required time so they needed to learn how to conduct control of chemicals then there was not sufficient knowledge in the industry that was required for the approximation. One of the titles in the media at that time said that this was one of the most complex regulations adopted at the EU level. So we set up a help desk. I use this term in English because that's widely used. This is an office which is supposed to help you. We also designed several instructions in the Serbian language and we organized several trainings for consultants and for the industry. This was an important part of the whole story in order to move everything forward. What is also extremely important is that nearly 15 years for nearly 15 years we have been receiving assistance from chemicals agency of Sweden and from the peoples of Sweden. They have been helping us to regulate this area in our country in a proper way. I should say that at that time when I was drafting the legislation I was quite lonely. I felt lonely and the support, the knowledge, the instructions and advice which came from the Swedish project were the major help in my work. Most crucial help and the currently employed in Serbia. We are still implementing this project with Sweden. I received assistance from Torbjörn which was highly adequate and I think this is a very complex process and this kind of a project from EU level can help a lot to countries seeking to regulate their chemicals management. I should say that we also had assistance from some other EU projects including the Twinning project where we had assistance from officials from Austria, Germany and Slovenia. This was also a significant project and it came at the right moment when we had in people who were employed civil servants who already understood what the Twinning project could offer. This is something entirely different from what Kemi project offered us and they helped us also engage some national experts who helped us with the terminology and everything. Regarding the project and the inspection control, you need to think about laboratory capacities which will help control all the bends or compliance with the bends that are in place in the legislation. This Twinning project I mentioned we received assistance and funds for portable devices which we could use to control the products on the market. So this is something you need to take into account when developing strategy regarding monitoring and biomonitoring. Biomonitoring is not that strongly represented but the law on chemicals has an article which has not been used fully yet which says that it is necessary to systemically monitor what is going on in that area. You've heard today from one of the Swedish experts that there is an EU project for chemicals that are regulated by the EU regulation which measures the quantities of the content of these chemicals in the blood or in other organs. So you will need to carry out measuring because in order to know whether you have achieved everything that the regulations should have achieved. And at the end I should say that knowledge of consumers and support by the non-governmental sector is very important. We unfortunately cancelled the chemical agency because there was not sufficient understanding why this area needed to be regulated in this way. And as you heard from Swedish experts, the crucial in these regulations and you have already transposed some of them in the in the public as a kind of a duration, it is very, it is crucial to have the label. First it is important to assess properly how hazardous the chemical is and then it is necessary to communicate while this has a this level of hazardous. After several years of application of the law and the regulations, I should say that this part of marking and laboring is operating well. When you visit the shop in Serbia, when you buy things there you can see the content of labels. And there is another point which is very important in my view, even perhaps even more important are the bends and restrictions. That's a regulation that must be controlled properly. You must have a list of bend substances and as Yasminka mentioned the bend on pellets, which is bend in choice, but in EU it is bend for all products. Now, when we speak about Serbia 10 years after, I believe that our research showed that we are still not implementing the control properly and that's very important. Although we had some information about Serbian market, I should say that the bends are not easily controlled even in Europe. In some reports you can see one of the screen and they discuss whether chemicals are well regulated and whether you can find some bent chemicals on the market. In some countries pellets had been bent 20 years ago, but 20% of inspected toys, they have a special system to select samples and to determine whether a toy should be inspected or not. 20% of inspected toys in this inspection in 2018 contained some pellets. So this trade of chemicals and requires huge efforts to obtain some positive results on the market. Although the bends are in place, sometimes you don't see the results. There was a study conducted in Germany in the period 2003-2006. They controlled pellets in the urine of children and 10 years thereafter in 2015-2017, we could see, given the fact that they took adequate samples and comparisons, so 10 years thereafter we could see that the quantity of pellets reduced during this period of 10 years and that's what's the result of adequate measures implemented in Europe. We also speak about the measurements of pellets in water environments and we see that in the water sediments has been reduced over these 10 years. There is another trend which indicates that they may be replacing these chemicals with other chemicals which are not entirely adequate but the trend is declining, the trend of chemicals in us and in environment. In order to set up an adequate system you need a lot of financial systems and the way to do so is to control chemicals on the market and let's say it's necessary to have sufficient funds to provide for adequate management in the field. We know that if we don't react now, it will cost much more and since June this year one of the infographics of the European Agency for Chemicals has been introduced. The European Agency for Chemicals when the pellet ban was introduced, an important part in this third part says that every year by introduction of this ban saves around 2,000 boys from the problems with reproduction health. And very importantly, at the end, the benefits of the funds put into phasing out the use of these chemicals are 10 times the costs. So that's all from my side, I hope I've met your expectations at least in terms of the time allotted to me. Thank you, thank you very much Mrs. Marta, I will take the liberty to say that you have met more than expected. You have a very rich experience even before you joined the ALHEM and we are very much impressed by your activities and projects as a person who comes from a civil society organization. And I can say right away that Melina and I when working in our working group Chemical Safety and Noise under the project SEP 2030 plus we had a problem to find representatives of NGOs. You said there was the Forum Zenitza Center for Environment Banyaluka. They have participated in this project but they decided to join other working groups like water, waste, air, etc. And they considered them a higher priority over the chemical safety so we don't have in our working group representatives of NGOs. And we even included in amongst our objectives to have the chemical safety sector meet some NGOs that are working to promote the public awareness on what we are doing. Once again, this was very interesting presentation, it was very encouraging to see all of your results and I sincerely hope that we will continue our cooperation because in Republika Srpska and now that's what the colleagues from the Federation and Republika Srpska need to do. We are organizing a set of seminars to educate our advisors or consultants for chemicals. Well, that's all from me. We, with this, we have actually finished the formal part, the presentation part. But I wanted to share the results of our poll once again and I will ask our technical support to show them. And to say that we have actually extended the time planned for this webinar, I apologize for that, but I think that you are very, you all are very good reasons to do so. Now we can take a look all together on these poll results and I'm inviting the panelists to comment on this. This may be a problem for our colleagues from Sweden because of the language barrier, so I will read it actually. So first question, what needs to be done to make sure that products are placed in the market that are safe or safe for use, most of you answered to pass all the necessary legislation then 66 ensure inspection supervision. The most of you selected the option seven. So we recognized that the regulation, the legislation is the most important, but it's not just the legislation that is enough. The inspection oversight is also very important. The question number two, who is responsible for safe placement of chemicals and products containing chemicals in the market in a way that is harmonized with the EU. Most of you responded both equally. If you would like to comment on this, who is responsible for safety of products. Can we move on to the next set of questions. What do you think whether the inspectors should have knowledge on how to properly assess the hazard level of hazard and do the classification and labeling of chemicals 77% said yes. And it requires adequate training. I think Mr. Mart mentioned this in her presentation. Then what do you think would be the most important thing that the government bodies can offer equal percentage here we have a training and 34% instructions and manuals. The one of the offered answers was nothing. The industry should all should provide the knowledge on their own. Are there any comments on this. Okay, then we will read the remaining questions. In 10 years the new regulation will make sure that chemicals in the market are adequately classified and marked and have adequate safety data sheet. That is 38% 10 years 29% and the last question is, do you think that the knowledge of the regulations in the area of chemical management is necessary in exporting other products to the EU countries that are not chemicals such as the furniture toys, clothes, etc. The law on chemicals regulates the presence of chemicals in other products 65% I'm not sure 22%. So, these all results are very interesting. If I may add one thing to the last question. We already had a comment of one of the participants and this is not precise enough because it's not only the law on chemicals that regulates the presence of chemicals and provides restrictions with respect to the furniture clothes and footwear. Because there are some other regulation decisions made by the Council of Ministers. This is just one addition to this offered response so it's not only the law on chemicals at the entity level. Thank you, Melina. I would add to this comment that you mentioned the area of chemicals management. I think that all these regulations passed by the market supervision agency and the agency for protection of plants are all the regulations in the area of chemical safety, although there are some other interlinkages but we cannot say that this applies only to the law on chemicals. There are many other pieces of legislation applicable to many other institutions. Thank you very much for these answers. Let's try to answer some of the questions that we received from our audience, from our attendees. We have a question by Mr. Darko-Kristich. In what way and how, what rule books prescribe the limits for the hazardous things, hazardous substances at job in the context of the protection at work in within and Serbia. Ms. Mart has already provided a link about the Serbia, then Mr. Baalivac also offered a link of regulations in the Republic of Serbia. And she said that these limits are regulated by the Ministry of Labor and Veteran Protection based on the law on chemicals. And here again, at the web page of the Ministry of Health, one can find these rule books. Perhaps some of our panelists from Sweden could say something about this area because what we have here is the overlap between the area of protection at work and the chemical management. I could say something about that. Yes, please do. When you look at the areas where chemical safety is a concern, you should keep in mind that it's all about obligations. Chemicals legislation places obligations on industry and trade and their capacity as manufacturers and importers placing chemicals on the market, not as producers, not as employers, not as transporters, but in this specific capacity of placing chemicals on the market. When you go to the workers health and safety area, you have another set of obligations. You address industry and trade in their capacity as employer. Employer obligations towards the employees. And it's quite different set than of conditions and you are in another, under another chapter of the EU legislation. When you go to the transport of dangerous goods, you address industry and trade as transporters, not as employers, not as in that capacity of placing on the market, but as transport. And when you go to the environmental area environmental legislation, you address industry as the polluter generator or waste. It's also different set of obligations and relations. And that is the case. If you look at the consumer protection area, chemical safety, dealing with consumer protection, then you have the liability of the product, the company that is responsible for the product as such and the liability issues. So this is how it was made step by step historically in the 70s in many countries in Europe you have this, you were concentrating very much on the workers health and safety later in the 70s and 80s on environmental legislation, and it became this way. Chemicals legislation when it was established in the 90s and later is complimentary when it places the obligations the way it does. So, you can say that chemicals legislation is about the responsibility for chemicals as such, how they look and what properties and effects they have when they are let into society by the companies that important manufacture them and place them on the market. And if you go to the workers health and safety area you can also see that the very concept of chemicals becomes so different, because they're also you have, let's say the, the melting, burning iron. You have the hot water vapor. You have the dust from wood that could explode or implode, etc. You have chemical agents at work that are not considered hazardous chemicals when they are placed on the market. So, you must see the differences here that you are in different worlds, different areas really. And that's also why it's in the workers health and safety area, you have the limits for exposure workers, because it's a, it's an obligation of the employer to ensure that you do not see those limits. Can I add just so specifically for there are occupational exposure limits on the EU level, but they are in the main indicative so it's up to each member state to set around there are a few binding occupational exposure limits, but most of them are indicative. So, it's in each member states, you make your own decisions on the occupational exposure limits. Like in Sweden they are binding in other countries they are not binding they are indicative. But always in the under the chemical extension under reach you have to make a risk assessment to see if it's a safe level in a typical exposure scenario. That helps. I can find I don't have the links to the websites explain this occupation exposure limits, but I'm sure I can find it if it's if you want. Thank you. Thank you for these responses. We will continue with our questions. Here we have several Commandments for our panelists. Very good kind words and we have one question I believe it is about the results of the public opinion survey. The question concerns the size of the sample. Okay, I will answer this this survey was done on with the 1009 interviewees. This is considered the strategic. Standard sample. The technique used was omnibus, and it covered representative age, rural urban gender balance, etc. So this is the sample that is considered the standard in this type of omnibus survey. Thank you. Thank you. Mr. Ranjelovich. Then Miss Mina Paevich is in the sector of the chemicals or the Ministry of Health and Social Protection she wants to thank the presenters for very important information. As well as to for support Mr. Linde provided support to the institutions of Bosnia Herzegovina when passing the new chemical legislation and the employees in the Ministry of Health and Social Protection of Republic of the Republic participated in their training. These are excellent courses that they want to recommend to all colleagues involved in chemical management. Miss Paevich also wants to greet colleagues from the Alham. I am familiar with their work. And they can offer some very important data they can be used for chemical management and raising awareness among general population. We hope that similar activities will be done in Bosnia Herzegovina. We hope that some of the CSOs in Bosnia will recognize the importance of safe management of chemicals and maybe work with Alham or other organizations in the region implement these experiences. As I said, I also hope that we will find some NGOs who will take a more active part in this. And Miss Paevich also added a link to the EU legislation on hazardous substances. And Zorica. It's interesting how they work with the civil sector. It concerns Alham. Andrea, good day. I want to greet everybody. And thank you for this great webinar. My name is Andrea Muharemovich, and I work on the environmentally friendly management of substances in the sector of solid waste financed by Sweden. I wish to exchange contact data with all the participants in order to discuss the possible future cooperation. Well, thank you. This is excellent. We've just done that. Nina Kadrić asks, have you done the testing of the materials used for packaging like PET, aluminum, glass, and other packaging materials that are used for packaging products? I don't know anybody wants to answer this question. Have you ever done the testing of materials used as packaging materials like PET? Yes, I can comment. More specifically, we did not engage in this thoroughly, but there is a set of regulation that is being adopted at the EU level. And that pertains to the right of the consumer to know about the presence of SVHC in terms of food. It pertains to the packaging. This application that we have been promoting, and that I explained, those who place food, solid food or beverage on the market, they are obliged to respond to the request of consumers to know about the presence of these substances in packages. So it doesn't pertain to the product as such, just to the packaging. And as for the packaging, we tested packaging of certain polystyrene plastic packaging. We cannot say that it was a representative sample, and we used some 10 samples. The packaging was mostly paper or plastic packaging, and we tested the presence of polybrom substances there, and we identified very low content of these. But I cannot say with certainty because we had a very few samples taken, and we are now the EU to regulate these food contact provisions, and then we will see what is the situation in our market. Thank you very much for this answer, Mr. Falkman. Yeah, I can just add that food contact materials is a separate legislation, because they have requirements, not only on content, but they also do simulation with oil and alcohol water to see how much is does actually leak out from the substance, from the material to typical food. So it's not our agency here in Sweden, it's the Food Safety Authority that makes that, but there is a legislation very specific with specific requirements as well and substances that cannot be used for food packaging. So it's more strict than just chemicals, articles in the chemicals legislation. Thank you. And with this answer. We exhausted all the questions received from our participants. I'm very happy we did so and may I use the opportunity now to ask our colleagues from Sweden. What is the way of operation and the of the help desk for chemical safety. Is it within the agency for chemicals or elsewhere. Perhaps, Mr. Lind. Well, member states have to provide official help desks, according to the rich regulation. It's very much about the rich registration and but also both safety data sheets. And when it comes to the CLP regulation classification and labeling requirements and the biocidal product regulation. Because in those three cases, you are, you have to set up a help desk as a member state and preparing for membership. You are supposed to have help desks as well. That kind of help desks. It could be coordinated. It could be one help desk for the three regulations. It depends also on how how you are organized in your country. If the chemicals legislation institutional setup is in the area of the environment as in Serbia, then help desk regarding by cycle products. Well, it, it, it would be set up by the Minister of Health. And you can. Valentina can explain how it was was done, I don't know, but in in Bosnia Herzegovina, as you have chemicals legislation in the health sector, you could have a combined help desk for the three regulations. And those are official help desks they are they should not give a consultancy service to industry they should help industry to navigate in the legislation to find where their obligations are and where the more precise requirements are. They should not interpret the legislation it's up to the companies to understand it, but they, they should help to find the way in the jungle, so to say. And often help desks are placed with a competent authorities, but it isn't said that they have to be there. Originally in some EU countries, the help desks were in a completely different place they were in Italy, for example, set up with a European Union Information Office, also in some other countries, but the tendency the very strong trend is that it's placed on the competent authorities, because it's a good way of using the competence and capacity, I think, and it's, it's also a very good way for the staffers staff at the competent authority to have a everyday contact with the companies will that have the obligations with them with the importance and the manufacturers. So, that's what I could say on that team. If it's to be more specific question. Yeah, but in Sweden, it's in the Swedish Chemicals Agency. So it started to be with, you know, just all the stuff where some knowledge went around and was sometimes in the help desk. But then it developed so it now it's established a unit that only does help desk function and also information material seminars, etc. And they are the first line if like they can go to the experts, if needed, but it's much more effective to have dedicated staff answering because they often get the same question many times and then they can write an answer and put it on the web page, rather than everybody has to write the same answer in an email again and again. So, so that's the way it's developed in Sweden at least for the help desk. Most member states have smaller competent authorities than Sweden and then they organize the help discuss as an expert tree tree. There are a couple of persons responsible for taking the phone calls and answering the emails but they have like branches of people in the network that can help them and they can forward questions to experts inside the ministry or other ministers. So you can organize that kind of backup for the help desk. Thank you very much for your answers. For the questions for our panelists. If there are no further questions, so we already exceeded the time a lot to this webinar, then we can close the webinar may once again thank all the speakers, panelists, participants. At some point we had 150 participants. I thank the technical support and our local partner for excellent technical arrangements for this webinar. Although the situation in Bosnia and Herzegovina is diverse in different territories in terms of chemical safety. I do hope that we successfully obtained answers which will be relevant for all these levels of administration but could this federation and the public as subsca and that they will be able to use this information to jointly work on further the progress that would be all for my side. Thank you very much and I hope we will meet again in near future. Thank you.