On 26 June, the first meeting of the HEFESTOS Industrial Cooperation Group (HICG) will take place online, bringing together the organisations already engaged in the Hub to start working jointly on the...
HEFESTOS is a European Commission–funded initiative supporting the transition away from Brominated Flame Retardants (BFRs) in key industrial sectors.
This transition requires real industrial knowledge. Without it, substitution risks becoming fragmented, unrealistic or ineffective.
HEFESTOS creates a trusted, non-competitive space where companies can contribute their expertise, identify technical barriers and help define practical substitution pathways.
The EU needs your input to ensure that the transition towards safer alternatives works in practice.
Goals
Across Europe, hazardous chemical substitutions often occur in a fragmented and uncoordinated manner. Companies assess alternatives individually, data remains siloed, and cross-sector dialogue is constrained by confidentiality and competition law concerns.
At the same time, regulators require robust and comparable evidence to ensure that substitutions are technically feasible, economically realistic and environmentally viable, avoiding regrettable substitutions that simply replace one risk with another.
HEFESTOS responds to this structural gap by establishing a trusted, non-competitive and legally compliant cooperation framework that enables structured information exchange without compromising commercial sensitivities.
1. Assess the feasibility of establishing an EU-level Substitution Centre that strengthens cooperation while fully preserving confidentiality and compliance with EU competition law. The objective is to demonstrate how a structured and moderated interaction model can clarify sector-specific challenges, define stakeholder roles and outline realistic substitution pathways, laying the foundations for a credible and operational EU mechanism supporting the transition toward safer chemical alternatives.
2. Establish a dedicated substitution group operating under clear safe-cooperation principles to support stakeholders and the European Commission in advancing the replacement of Brominated Flame Retardants with safer alternatives. This includes consolidating existing knowledge on BFR uses, mapping relevant value chains, identifying key technical and information gaps, and ensuring that all analytical outputs are aggregated, anonymised and competition compliant.
HEFESTOS is designed as a trusted cooperation environment that enables open participation without compromising commercially sensitive information.
NEWS
A recent environmental report highlights how delays in implementing EU chemical restrictions may have contributed to tens of thousands of tonnes of hazardous substances continuing to enter the environ...