The review programme in the European Union for existing biocidal active substances—outcome of the notification process

The European Commission Biocidal Products Directive 98/8/EC lays down rules and procedures concerning the placing of biocidal products on the EU market. Based on the Directive, a First Review Regulation was adopted for the review of existing biocidal active substances. These substances had to be either identified or notified (two different processes) to the European Chemicals Bureau (ECB) by 28 March 2002. More than 1000 companies took part in the review programme. In total 953 different existing active substances were identified and 372 different substances were notified. This article presents an analysis of the notified substances regarding the number of notifications per substance, notifiers per substance and per Member State and number of notified substances per product type. The results are compared with data from former statistics.