Safe and sustainable by design

The Commission Recommendation in a nutshell

The Commission Recommendation on the European assessment framework for 'safe and sustainable by design' (SSbD), adopted in December 2022, is a voluntary approach to guide the innovation process for chemicals and materials.

 It aims to: 

• steer the innovation process in the transition towards clean and sustainable industries;
• substitute or minimise the production and use of substances of concern, in line with and beyond regulatory obligations;
• minimise the impact on health, climate and the environment during sourcing, production, use and end-of-life of chemicals, materials and products.

To whom is it addressed?

The Recommendation is addressed to EU Member States, industry, research and technology organisations (RTOs) and academia, with each stakeholder group giving feedback on different actions.  

Revision of the Commission Recommendation

The revised Commission Recommendation based on the updated SSbD Framework is expected to be adopted within February 2026.

Revision of the SSbD Framework

To make sure that the SSbD framework works well in practice, the Commission set up a testing period where EU Member States, businesses, universities and research organisations could try it out and provide their feedback. The goal of this testing phase was to collect insights and improve the framework, making it more useful, accurate and easier to apply. This testing took place over two rounds, one in 2023 and another one in 2024. During this time, over 80 case studies were submitted, reviewed and discussed. 

In addition, two large workshops were held in 2023 and 2024, each bringing together more than 500 participants, and a survey on the draft updated SSbD Framework was organised in 2025.

The final updated version of the SSbD Framework that informed the revised Commission Recommendation, can be found here.

Support for the user

To help users apply the SSbD framework in practice:

• The Joint Research Centre (JRC) has published a Methodological Guidance that provides practical suggestions on the most commonly encountered issues when applying the framework. An updated version of the Methodological Guidance will be available in April 2026.
• The Partnership for the Assessment of Risks from Chemicals (PARC) is developing a toolbox that provides an overview of existing tools for each step of the framework.
• JRC together with PARC are organizing annual SSbD Bootcamps (see relevant events below). 

Intrested?

Sign up the EU SSbD Stakeholder community to keep updated

Documents