An important provision within REACH is the formation of a Substance Information Exchange Forum (SIEF) to share information among exporters of the same chemical substances, as well as allowing participation of Downstream Users and other stakeholders to prevent duplicate testing, especially testing on vertebrate animals.

The main objectives of SIEF are

As a general rule, there shall be one SIEF for each existing substance. As a first step, Pre- registrants of the same substance in the list of pre-registered substances, expected to be made public by ECHA on the 1st January’ 2009, will have to establish whether their substances are indeed the same, for the purpose of SIEF formation and registration. Once agreement on the chemical identity of the substance has been established, SIEFs will be formed.

SIEF may also be a starting point for a suitable platform for participants to organize among themselves the mandatory joint submission of data provided for within REACH, including as an option, the exchange of the data needed to perform the Chemical Safety Assessment (CSA), drafting the Chemical Safety Report (CSR) and agreeing on guidance on safe use that may be part of the joint submission.

All SIEF Participants shall:

• React to requests for information from other participants

• Provide other participants with existing studies upon request

Potential Registrants shall:

• Request information from other SIEF participants

• Collectively identify needs for further studies to comply with Registration requirements

• Make arrangements to perform the identified studies

• Agree on classification and labelling where there is a difference in the classification and labelling of the substance between Potential Registrants.

Data Holders: Data holders can provide information to ECHA in order to participate in a SIEF. Once they do so, data holders have certain obligations; in particular, they must respond to any query from potential registrants if they hold the data relating to this query. Data Holders, however, are not entitled to request data.