Governing Board

Governing  Board  (GB): The GB is the overarching body of PARC that provides the highest level strategic steering of the Partnership through continuous dialogue by its members with the implementation bodies to align PARC activities with activities undertaken at the European, national and international levels. The GB represents the national ministries or equivalent competent authorities of all participating countries (including, when applicable, countries of Associated Partners), and the relevant European Commission’s Directorate Generals.

Coordination and Exchange

National Hubs (NHs): Countries involved in PARC establish and extend the NHs created to develop collaboration and contribute to ensuring PARC’s activities are aligned with national activities. There are no prescriptive rules and the construction is based on country needs; however, relevant ministries, research entities and other stakeholders are involved. The NHs are coordinated by the National Hub Co-Coordinators ensuring that the needs of the NHs are fed into PARC.

EU Hub: An EU Hub will be set-up including the EC DGs (ENV, GROW, RTD, SANTE, JRC) and the 3 European agencies (ECHA, EFSA, EEA) involved in PARC and work progress will be followed, through this EU hub, by other interested EU organisations.

PARC Advising Bodies

International Board (IB): The IB contributes to the science-to-policy dialogue, identification of synergies & collaborations, contribution on open science, new approaches. The IB includes experts from other international chemical risk assessment platforms, scientific advisory boards and scientific societies, and experts in related EU and international institutions and activities. 

The IB members are:

• Antonia M. Calafat; Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (U.S.)

• Dag Ellingsen; National Institute of Occupational Health (Norway)

• Suzanne Fitzpatrick; U.S. Food and Drug Administration

• Douglas Haines; Health Canada

• Thomas Hartung; Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health (U.S.)

• Nineta Hrastelj; European Chemical Society

• Shoji F. Nakayama; National Institute for Environmental Studies (Japan)

• Robert Diderich; Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development

• Hanna-Andrea Rother; University of Cape Town (South Africa)

• Greet Schoeters; University of Antwerp (Belgium)

• Blanca Serrano Ramon; European Centre for Ecotoxicology and Toxicology of Chemicals

• Jaroslav Slobodnik; NORMAN network

• Annie St-Amand; Health Canada 

• Russell S. Thomas; U.S. Environmental Protection Agency

• Vasilis Vasiliou; Yale School of Public Health (U.S.)

Stakeholder Forum (SF): The SF provides the opportunity for stakeholders to share their vision on how to improve chemical risk assessment in Europe, collect recommendations and develop synergies at the EU and international levels. The SF  includes relevant NGOs, industry/business associations, employer & worker representative bodies, health professionals and consumer organisations.

The SF members include:

• CHEM Trust ↗

• Cosmetics Europe ↗  

• CropLife Europe ↗

• Cruelty Free Europe ↗ (CFE)

• Downstream Users of Chemicals Co-ordination Group ↗ (DUCC)

• European Chemical Industry Council ↗ (Cefic)

• European Environmental Bureau ↗(EEB)

• European Federation of Allergy and Airways Diseases Patients' Associations ↗ (EFA)

• European Network for Environmental Medicine ↗ (EnvMed Network)

• European Trade Union Institute ↗(ETUI)

• Eurometaux ↗

• Food Packaging Forum ↗

• Plastics Europe ↗

• SMEunited ↗

• WECF France ↗ (Europe)

 
Data and Ethics Protection Board (DEPB): The DEPB supports the Governance bodies (GB, GSB and MB) in these matters, ensuring PARC’s actions take ethics and data protection concerns into account, reviewing all related documents as well as established processes for the management of contractual and regulatory requirements. It is composed of PARC WP representatives and external ethics advisors.

PARC Management Bodies

Management Board (MB): The MB is the operational body that supports the Coordinator in the day-to-day implementation of the Grant Agreement based on the Description of Action and Annual Work Plans. The MB includes the Coordinator and the Work Package co-leaders.
 
Grant Signatory Board (GSB): The GSB manages the contractual implementation of PARC both on the scientific and administrative levels. It has an important role, in collaboration with the MB and GB, in the provision of input in the PARC orientations and priorities, and for the identification of synergies, resources and capacities between Participants. The GSB members are national or EU agencies in charge of chemical risk assessment or equivalents, e.g. national agencies dealing with chemicals aspects of environmental or health policies. The GSB members bring their network of scientists with whom they cooperate at national level into the Partnership as Affiliated Entities.
 
Coordination Team (CT): The Coordinator is the legal entity acting as the intermediary between the Parties, including their Affiliated Entities and Represented Associated Partners, and the Granting Authority. The Coordinator is responsible for the scientific and administrative management of the Programme. The Coordinator is supported by the CT for the administrative management and by the Deputy Coordinator and the MB for the scientific management. The CT ensures the secretariat of the GB, GSB and MB. The Coordinator, in addition to its responsibility as a Party, performs tasks assigned to it as described in the Grant Agreement and the Consortium Agreement.

P-A-R-C Executive bodies

PARC is organised in nine Work Packages (WPs) working closely together to achieve three levels of specific objectives as mentioned above. 

WP1 “Partnership Management and Coordination” is in charge of the overall coordination, including the administrative and financial management of the Partnership, the monitoring of the implementation of the activities, their follow-up through reporting, the development and monitoring of Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), the organisation of PARC governance meetings and the IPR and Ethics activities. This WP is managed by ANSES (France) as coordinating institution of PARC and will involve the participation of the members of the Grant Signatory Board, the WP co-leaders, the National Hub Contacts Points and the National Hub Co-coordinators. 

WP2 “A common science-policy-agenda” will establish a cross-disciplinary network to set priorities for research and innovation (R&I) in chemical risk assessment. The overall goal of WP2 is to ensure the adequate links between the research and the regulatory EU-added value, as well as ensuring the sustainability of the PARC activities, results and outputs after 7 years. WP2 will implement a process to ensure harmonised, fit for purpose priority settings. WP2 will also set up a common agenda at the science-policy interface through a prioritisation process, making available PARC knowledge and actively promoting its regulatory consideration, also working towards the sustainability of the network. This WP is co-led by the EEA (EU) and EAA (Austria). 

WP3 “Synergies, collaborations and awareness” will ensure the development of synergies and collaborations with external initiatives. WP3 will be in charge of stakeholder relations and international cooperation and will develop appropriate tools for the communication and dissemination of the results of PARC. This WP will be co-led by INSA (Portugal) and GCSL (Greece).

The R&I WPs (WP4, WP5, WP6) will support the regulatory assessment of chemical risk and the move towards next-generation risk assessment by implementing a joint R&I programme to respond to the agreed priorities defined in the Strategic Research and Innovation Agenda (SRIA) rolling plan. WPs 4, 5 and 6 will specifically work together on these.

WP4 “Monitoring and exposure” will aim at monitoring and measuring exposure both in humans and in the environment, taking into account the different sources, chemical fates & exposure pathways, working on necessary innovative analytical methods & tools. This WP is co-led by UBA (Germany) and SpF (France). 

WP5 “Hazard assessment” will contribute to the consideration of new approaches and methods of health assessment and provide data to fill gaps in knowledge on poorly characterised contaminants or new emerging hazards. WP5 will also aim to promote the use of innovative methods and tools and contribute to integration of new technologies. PARC is not intended to close all data gaps identified by key stakeholders and efforts will be focused on agreed priorities. This WP is co-led by ANSES (France) and BfR (Germany). 

WP6 “Innovation in regulatory risk assessment” will contribute to the development of regulatory workable and effective RA methods for human health and the environment, including AOPs and IATAs, to support regulatory processes, transition to a circular economy and relevant policy-related strategies. The IATAs will be developed in close collaboration with relevant stakeholders and evaluated through dedicated case studies. WP6 will also facilitate the development of innovative and practical approaches for exposure and risk assessment to prioritised chemicals (including mixture) and to better understand their impact on human health and on the environment to inform regulatory approaches. Review of existing regulatory assessment systems, will be carried out to prioritise research and facilitate the uptake of new approaches. This WP is co-led by RIVM (Netherlands) and KEMI (Sweden).

WP7 “FAIR Data” will strengthen exchange and reuse of research and regulatory data. For this, WP7 will interact with all the WPs to facilitate the access, storage and analysis of data, and the interfacing with the modelling and analysis tools developed by the WPs 4, 5, 6 and 8. It will work on data and metadata harmonisation as well as on the  FAIR data policies. Furthermore, it will develop innovative tools for analysing increasing amounts of data and their uncertainty. This WP is co-led by VITO (Belgium) and UOB (United Kingdom).

WP8 “Concepts and Toolboxes” will make available concepts and toolboxes in the form of integrative models, concepts and tools for the assessment of safe and sustainable substances by design and the concept of early warning. WP8 will work together with the different WPs and external communities including stakeholders, working on these concepts. In particular, stakeholders will be engaged in order to test the applicability of the safe and sustainable by design  (SSbD) toolbox to the defined criteria. This WP is co-led by AUTh (Greece) and UNINA (Italy).

WP9 “Building infrastructural and human capacities” will support the development of laboratory capacities and networking, both in the different fields of activities, by identifying existing and to be developed networks, supporting the implementation of standardisation approaches, evaluation of the reproducibility of performances and their monitoring (QA/QC) and setting up training for the Partnerships’ members, stakeholders, and the risk assessors and managers communities. This WP is co-led by MU (Czech Republic) and ISCIII (Spain).

Data and Ethics Protection Board (DEPB): The DEPB supports the MB in these matters, ensuring PARC’s actions take these into account, reviewing all related documents as well as established processes for the management of contractual and regulatory requirements.