8.5.1 Experiment regarding consumer information under REACH

The effectiveness and enforceability of the consumer's right to information provided for in article 33(2) of REACH can be measured in various ways. One of them is by measuring the compliance rate of companies in answering a consumer's request for information regarding the presence of SVHCs in a product, and to evaluate the quality of the responses. In view of this chapter, such an experiment was conducted by sending a request for information to 32 companies in the Netherlands. Each request pertained to a specific product of that company. For the request, they used the format included in Annex 8.2. The results are presented in Figure 8.1 below, and in Table 8.1 in fine in more detail. Since the experiment only concerned a small sample and was only undertaken for illustrative purposes, the author will refrain from drawing affirmative conclusions. However, certain observations can be made. Firstly, the response rate of 52 per cent illustrates that not all companies consider their legal obligation to provide information to consumers pursuant to article 33(2) to be as a 'hard' obligation. Secondly, the variety in the level of detail provided in the responses raises questions of uniformity: 24 per cent of the companies included in the sample gave an incomplete answer. Arguably, the lack of a standard reply template can lead to ambiguous and vague answers. Finally, 28 per cent of the companies adequately addressed the question posed. Most of them referred in their e-mails or letters to their websites, where the requested information could be found. From an enforcement perspective, the question emerged whether an incomplete or vague answer qualifies as an insufficient response, and should therefore be regarded as a breach of REACH.