The European Union's Chemicals strategy for sustainability aims to better protect the environment and people from chemicals and to stimulate innovation for safe and sustainable chemicals. One of the actions in this strategy is to ban the most harmful chemicals in consumer products and to allow their use only where essential.
This action led to the need to define the notion of "essential use".
The concept is for instance cited in one action of the strategy: "phasing out the use of PFAS in the European Union, unless their use is essential".
To assess whether the use of the most harmful substances is justified from a societal point of view, the European Commission has adopted the following guiding criteria and principles : their use is necessary for health and/or safety and/or is critical for the functioning of society, and there are no acceptable alternatives.
Detailed provisions should be set down in specific European Union legislation applying the concept of essential use.
Source : Limiting most harmful chemicals to essential uses (europa.eu)