Symposium entitled “Prevention and protection against endocrine disrupting chemicals – What roles for an alliance of cities and local authorities in Europe?”

This symposium is organised by the Réseau Environnement Santé (RES), in partnership with the EDC-Free Europe coalition and the Baltic Environmental Forum (BEF) Germany; and with the financial support of the triennial contract Agora Strasbourg European Capital.

It will highlight the important role that local authorities can play in reducing exposure to chemical pollution and will aim to initiate in Strasbourg the construction of a European Alliance on this issue.
As the improvements of EU legislation on chemicals are progressing slowly, people and nature continue to be exposed everyday to harmful chemicals including endocrine disrupting chemicals (EDCs) present everywhere in our daily life.

This symposium aims at promoting and sharing information on the initiatives taken at the national, regional, and local levels to increase awareness, prevention, and actions at different levels to inform citizens, and help reducing exposure to EDCs and other harmful chemicals, in particular for vulnerable groups. We will also explore the opportunities to increase synergies and networking between local authorities across Europe to contribute to this goal.

This initiative builds in particular on the experience developed in France with the network of cities and territories striving to be free of endocrine disrupting chemicals (VTSPE) and the experience of the Baltic Interreg project Non Hazardous Cities (NonHazCity). These initiatives have been highlighted in the European Parliament Resolution of 10 July 2020 on the Chemicals Strategy for Sustainability (2020/2531(RSP)) and in the policy recommendations of the 2019 Opinion of the European Committee of the Regions: Towards a Comprehensive EU Framework on Endocrine Disruptors.

Draft agenda of the event can be found here.