Prioritisation of existing biocidal active substances in the European Union

This article describes the priority setting process in the 10-year review programme for the systematic examination of all existing active biocidal substances as foreseen in Article 16(2) of the European Commission Biocidal Products Directive (BPD). In the first phase of this programme, all existing biocidal substances were identified or notified. For the evaluation in the second phase, the notified substances will be grouped in four priority lists according to the product types (PTs) for which they were notified. The prioritisation principles were the availability of test guidance for efficacy testing, overlap with other review programmes and overlap between the substances in different product types. The details of these principles are explained in this article.