Every few months, Europe’s chemicals lobby and trade organisation, Cefic, clears its throat and roars that what the chemical industry really needs is “simpler” regulation. Simplification, of course, is a wonderfully polite way of saying: “Could we please have fewer rules?”
It’s a tempting narrative: clip a few bureaucratic wings and suddenly steam crackers will jump back to life, profits will bloom, and ethylene will flow like prosecco.
But there’s a small, awkward detail getting in the way of this magnificent dream — energy prices.
The war affects energy prices
When Donald Trump decides to audition for peacemaker-by-bombing in Iran, or when Vladimir Putin rolls tanks into Ukraine, energy markets do not consider regulatory burdens in Antwerp.
No, they surge. They spike. They develop vertigo.
Indeed, as US and Israeli strikes on Iran rattle global energy markets and revive fears of an extended energy shock, oil and gas prices have been rising at a blistering pace in Europe. Prices of naphtha and sulphur — both derived from oil and used in everything from fertilisers and plastics to computer chips and metal processing — have also surged.
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Fewer missiles, more molecules
For a sector where energy is not just a line item but THE line item, oil prices matter far more than whether a chemical safety data sheet has 15 or 16 sections.
You can streamline paperwork until it’s a haiku, but if gas prices triple, your competitiveness evaporates faster than a solvent on a hot day in July.
There’s also something faintly comic about the chemical industry demanding deregulation in order to compete globally, when the real competitive disadvantage is imported instability. It’s like arguing about the aerodynamics of your bicycle helmet while someone keeps setting fire to the road.
Stable trade routes. Predictable diplomacy. Cheaper energy. Fewer missiles, more molecules. If the chemical industry truly wants structural relief, perhaps the boldest lobbying slogan wouldn’t be “simplify chemicals legislation” but “could you please make peace?”
In the end, the most powerful industrial policy isn’t hidden in a footnote of REACH. It’s found in the absence of war.
Theresa Kjell
Head of Policy at ChemSec
