OUCH! The European Court of Justice has ruled that the 0.1% weight threshold for SVHC (Substances of Very High Concern) under REACH must be calculated by component and not for the article as a whole as had been held by ECHA.
“…there is no need to draw a distinction between the situation of articles incorporated as a component of a complex product and that of articles present in an isolated manner.
In those circumstances, the Court rules that each of the articles incorporated as a component of a complex product is covered by the relevant duties to notify and provide information when they contain a substance of very high concern in a concentration above 0.1% of their mass."
US exporters of articles need to get your calculators back out and look at each component of the article that contains one of now 163 SVHC (remember the list keeps getting longer every 6 months). SVHC become treated like you do for RoHS. Your European importing customers need to know what they may have to notify to ECHA and/or communicate downstream.
ECHA will be issuing new guidance on the changed standard, with links to be posted on this site.