Companies have to comply with the regulatory requirements to provide an emergency telephone number in their Safety Data Sheets (SDS) and to provide information on their hazardous mixtures to a national body responsible for receiving information relating to emergency health response according to Article 45 CLP.

According to Article 45 CLP, Member States must appoint a body responsible for receiving information relevant, in particular, for formulating preventative and curative measures, in particular in the event of emergency health response, from importers and downstream users placing hazardous mixtures on the market.

For Luxembourg, the Belgian Poison Centre is the appointed body according to Article 45 CLP. Hence, companies have to declare information on hazardous mixtures they place on the Luxembourgish market directly to the Belgian Poison Centre. The Centre also offers companies to declare non-hazardous mixtures.

A dedicated section for companies to declare mixtures in Luxembourg is available on the Poison Centre’s website. In January 2021, The Belgian Poison Centre published a note on the procedure to declare hazardous mixtures in Luxembourg. It is indicated that the Belgian Poison Centre decided to use two different systems in parallel:

  • The already existing national system in Belgium using an XLS tool (EDF file available on the Poison Centre website);
  • The e-Delivery system from the ECHA PCN Portal using the IUCLID tool.

However, for several technical reasons, the Belgian Poison Centre is currently not able to read information coming from the ECHA PCN Portal. At the moment, the poison centre therefore asks companies to notify their mixtures directly to the Belgian poison centre and to prefer the XLS form of the centre.

Therefore, the procedure currently in place for declarations to the Belgian Poison Centre remains unchanged for the time being, and the data to be provided and the format of the declaration must follow the requirements of the Belgian Poison Centre. It includes the Safety Data Sheet (SDS), the CLP label, the composition of the mixture and a declaration form (Excel format) that is available online. SDS and label can be submitted for Luxembourg in French or German. However, if SDS and label are submitted in German to the Poison Centre, it is recommended to submit voluntarily also an English version.

In the future, companies will be able to choose between one of these two systems to notify their mixtures to the Poison Centre. It is not necessary to notify via both systems for the mixtures placed on the Luxembourgish market.

Further information on the Belgian Poison Centre is available on Centre’s website.

According to Annex II REACH (as amended by Regulation (EU) 2020/878), an emergency telephone number must be provided in section 1.4 of the Safety Data Sheet (SDS). If an official advisory body exists in the Member State, its telephone number shall be given and can suffice.

For hazardous mixtures placed on the Luxembourgish market, the emergency telephone number to be provided in section 1.4 of the SDS is (+352) 8002 5500. It can be included in the SDS as soon as the information on the hazardous mixtures has been provided to the Poison Centre (see above). This free telephone number enables a 24/7 access to the Belgian Poison Centre, where experts answer all urgency questions on the notified products.

The ECHA web section that lists information on national REACH, CLP and Biocidal Products helpdesks also provides links to emergency telephone numbers and/or official advisory bodies for all Member States.

In Luxembourg, Article 45 CLP is implemented by Article 10 of the Law of 16 December 2011, Paquet REACH (amended by the Law of 16 May 2019). Article 10(1) identifies the Ministry of Health as the body responsible for receiving information relating to the emergency health response. In June 2015, Luxembourg and Belgium signed a cooperation agreement with the Belgian Poison Centre according to Article 10(4) of the Law of 16 December 2011. Since then, the Belgian Poison Centre has been appointed as the body responsible for receiving the specific information required by Article 45 CLP for all hazardous mixtures placed on the market in Luxembourg.