Eurospace calls on the European legislators to repeal the SCIP rules as a matter of urgency

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ASD-EUROSPACE strongly supports the European Commission’s proposal COM(2025) 986 of 10 December 2025 to repeal the obligation to report SCIP (substances of concern in products)-related data as well as ECHAs SCIP Database by amending the EU Waste Framework Directive 2008/98/EC (WFD).

At the same time Eurospace asks the European Parliament and the Council as the co-legislators to adopt and bring into effect the required amendments of the WFD as early as possible. We further urge the Member States to prepare for timely and coherent transpositions of a forthcoming WFD amendment repealing SCIP reporting.

ASD-Eurospace has shared detailed feedback on this matter in a paper of 6 May 2026 (ref. MPTB-ES-PO-0229) on the European Commission’s initiative to reduce the administrative burden on companies and public authorities in the EU from environmental legislation.

Rationale for SCIP repeal

The need for a speedy repeal of the SCIP rules is not only motivated by the continuous administrative burden and costs, but also by the fact that SCIP notifications to ECHAs public database keep on posing risks of uncontrolled disclosure of classified data as well as know-how / confidential and business sensitive information (CBI) on advanced space technologies, especially for missions with strategic, defence and/or dual use nature (such as European launch vehicles or Galileo, EGNOS, Copernicus and other European space programmes).

Therefore, the SCIP Database needs to be fully removed from publicly accessible domains as early as possible.

Broad sector support

The Eurospace feedback has been prepared by the participants of the Waste Framework Directive Task Force of the European Space Sector addressing Substances of (Very High) Concern in Products “SCIP” (WFD/SCIP Task Force) under the Materials and Processes Technology Board of the European Space Components Coordination (ESCC MPTB). The WFD/SCIP Task Force comprises participants of the European Space Industry, the European Space Agency (ESA), national space agencies from France (CNES), Germany (DLR) and Italy (ASI), as well as the European Defence Agency (EDA) as an observer.

Status of the co-legislative process

The proposal to amend the WFD is now with the European Parliament and the Council. In a national contribution received on 13 April 2026 Germany (Bundesrat) has already shared the Commission’s view that the SCIP database is redundant and it therefore should be abolished (COM(2025)0986). On the other hand, in its opinion adopted on 7 May 2026 (CDR-0953-2026), the European Committee of the Regions (CoR) “warns against the announcement to repeal or suspend the SCIP database unless and until a fully functional and interoperable digital product passport (DPP) system providing at least the same level of traceability, accessibility and enforcement capacity is operational across the EU”.

In Eurospace’s view, the CoR opinion completely ignores that existing legal obligations for SVHC reporting in articles – which are duplicated by SCIP – are already in place, namely REACH Article 33. It also ignores the finding by the European Commission that “the environmental and health impact of repealing the database seems negligible”.  The DPP is still in its infancy and will only be introduced for specific product groups, not complex products such as space hardware in the foreseeable future. Maintaining a redundant database is a waste of industry and public resources.

Further information

  • European Space Sector feedback on Commission Proposal to repeal the obligation to report SCIP-related data of 6 May 2026 (ref. MPTB-ES-PO-0229 and Ares(2026)4699843), available on the EC website and HERE).
  • Secretariat: Valentin Marie, Research Analyst & Compliance Manager, ASD-EUROSPACE, valentin.marie@eurospace.org, +33 (0) 7 86 58 74 34
  • WFD/SCIP Task Force Coordinator: Tim Becker, Senior Legal Advisor, REACHLaw Ltd., tim.becker@reachlaw.fi; +358 (0)40 773 8143