CJEU judgment in Case C-144/21 Parliament v Commission
On 20 April 2023, the Court of Justice of the EU issued its judgment in Case C-144/21 European Parliament v European Commission. The case concerned an action brought by the Parliament for the annulment of the Commission's Implementing Decision of 18 December 2020
granting authorisation of certain uses of chromium trioxide (the original CTAC authorisation).
As expected, the Court annulled the authorisation decision, but maintained the effects of the decision until the Commission issues a replacement decision. This will very likely be a rejection of the authorisation, as directed by the Court in the present judgment.
The judgment followed the Opinion of the Advocate General of 27 October 2022, and is based on the following factors:
- Lack of representativeness, reliability and completeness of the submitted worker exposure data, leading to an insufficient risk assessment, based on which the Commission was not in a position to conclude that the socio-economic benefits of the uses in question outweighed their risks to human health.
- Failure by the Commission to ascertain that there were no suitable alternatives for the uses in question.
The Court also considered that the conditions had to be met at the time the decision was adopted. This meant that the Commission could not remedy the lack of sufficient data by providing the obligation for applicants for authorisation to provide additional information in the review reports, such as exposure scenarios and related risk management measures, which were lacking in the risk assessment.
However, the Court also stipulated that the effects are to be maintained for only one year from the date of the judgment,
which means in practice that the Commission only has until 20 April 2024 to issue its replacement decision.
This limit was unexpected; it was not included in the AG's opinion, but has likely been included in order to emphasise the seriousness of the above-described issues with the annulled authorisation, and ensure that these are remedied in future applications, whilst pushing the Commission to take corrective action as soon as possible via the replacement decision.
Other news items:
On 19 January 2026 Defra granted Decisions for the three initial applications (AFA059, AFA061 and AFA063) which we published as news on 3 February. The granted review period for these three applications is 12 years. The Decisions are available on Authorisation decisions: UK REACH - GOV.UK . The Defra Decision come with a series of conditions that users of chromates should be fulfilling and these measures will apply from the 19 August 2026. To support the sharing of these GB obligations the ADCR Service Team prepared Formal Communication Letters that were shared with the Authorisation Holders for disseminating to their downstream users. These ADCR formal Communication letters have now been added to ADCR Guidance and Support , the letters set out the Authorisation conditions and monitoring arrangements as well for existing stock and REACH Article 66 obligations. For the four review report applications AFA058, AFA060, AFA062 and AFA064, Defra is expecting to make their decisions later in March 2026. As these applications are all review reports the use can continue until Defra makes its decision. The ADCR Service Team will update guidance documents on the ADCR website to cover the obligations of the Defra ADCR Authorisation decisions. The guidance is intended for Downstream Users of soluble chromates in GB. ADCR will also hold a webinar later in spring 2026 (April/May) to present the UK decisions and conditions.