The EC Inventory is a list of substance identities which is based on a combination of following EU inventories:
EINECS: European Inventory of Existing Commercial Chemical Substances, which includes substances that were on the European market between 1st January 1971 and 18th September 1981. The EINECS is based on the European COre INventory (ECOIN) to which supplementary substance reporting could be made by industry (according criteria for reporting substances for EINECS). ECOIN was composed by blending different lists of chemicals presumed to be on the European market (e.g. the TSCA list (The Toxic Substances Control Act)).
ELINCS: European List of New Chemical Substances, which includes substances notified and placed on the market after 18th September 1981.
NLP-list: No-Longer Polymers list, which includes substances that have been on the EU market between 18th September 1981, and 31st October 1993 and satisfy the requirement that they were considered to be polymers under the reporting rules for EINECS but are no longer considered to be polymers under the 7th amendment of Directive 67/548/EEC (Directive 92/32/EEC). The NLP-list is a nonexhaustive list.
The EC Inventory is centrally managed by the European Commission / ECHA and provided for download as instructed in chapter D.12.3 Feature "Inventories - Import": How to import the EC Inventory. After storing it in your local IUCLID installation, it can be viewed, searched and used as basis for identifying the Reference substance(s), if they are listed in the EC Inventory (see chapter D.11 Reference substance (create and update Reference substance related information)).