Europe wants to soften rules in the cosmetics industry

In Brussels, a reform of the European Cosmetics Regulation is under discussion which, if adopted, could alter the safeguards that today protect consumers from exposure to hazardous chemicals.

The dossier is part of the "Omnibus VI package", a set of "regulatory simplification" measures that the European Commission put on the table in July 2025, with the stated aim of reducing administrative costs for companies in the sector.

But behind this simplification lies a very real weakening of the rules which, for over twenty years, have prohibited the presence of carcinogenic, mutagenic and reprotoxic substances in everyday products: creams, shampoos, toothpastes, make-up and perfumes.

Générations Futures, a French NGO specializing in chemical risk prevention, and Yuka, the ingredient analysis application used by millions of European consumers, are sounding the alarm: the two organizations have carried out a joint investigation and published a detailed report that dismantles the industry's arguments one by one, documenting the concrete risks to public health which the adoption of these modifications would entail.

CMR substances, an acronym for Carcinogens, Mutagens, toxic for Reproduction, are exactly what the acronym implies: chemical compounds whose capacity to promote cancer, alter DNA or disrupt fertility and foetal development has been scientifically established. Their classification is based on a rigorous process led by the European Chemicals Agency (ECHA), based on decades of research, epidemiological studies and toxicological data.

For over twenty years, the European Union has prohibited these substances in cosmetics by default. When a substance is officially classified as CMR, companies have 18 months to reformulate their products. This solid protection, built up over time, is now in danger of being dismantled.

As part of a vast "regulatory simplification" package, the European Commission proposed a revision of the Cosmetics Regulation in July 2025. The Council and Parliament then presented their own versions of the text, all pointing in the same direction. The result is a package of three amendments which, taken together, significantly weaken existing protections.

The first concerns withdrawal times. Today, once a substance has been classified as CMR, companies have 18 months to withdraw products containing it. Under the proposals currently on the table, this period would be considerably extended: up to 30 months if no derogation request has been submitted, 39 months if the derogation has been refused on safety grounds, and even 75 months (six and a half years!) if the derogation has been rejected on the grounds that valid alternatives exist. In concrete terms, given that it already takes an average of four years to classify a substance, it could take more than ten years between the start of the classification process and the actual disappearance of the substance from the shelves.

The second change concerns derogations. Currently, to obtain an exception to the ban, a company must demonstrate, among other things, that no suitable alternative exists. The proposal restricts the definition of "alternative" with such strict technical and economic criteria that it becomes almost impossible to identify one. In practice, derogations would be much easier to obtain, paving the way for the systematic use of hazardous substances.

The third change reduces the scope of the ban itself. Certain CMR substances would no longer be automatically banned if the risk only concerns exposure by inhalation or ingestion, and not by the cutaneous route. Even natural extracts containing CMR compounds, such as certain essential oils, could benefit from an exemption. However, the idea that "natural" equals "safe" has no scientific basis.

In January 2026, the French NGO Générations Futures published a detailed report in which it analyzed these proposals point by point, showing how consumers could remain exposed to a CMR substance several years after its formal ban. The association then collaborated with Yuka, the French cosmetics and food ingredient analysis application used by millions of people across Europe, to launch a joint investigation and raise public awareness.

In response to companies' arguments that they need more time to reformulate their products, Générations Futures points out that CMR classifications never come as a surprise: for the last 35 substances classified, an average of five years elapsed between the first announcement and the official classification, even before the start of the transition period.

As for alternatives, the cosmetics sector has a vast arsenal of authorized ingredients: 153 colorants, 60 preservatives, 34 UV filters, of which only 7 have been classified as CMR since 2003. Situations in which a company would find itself genuinely without an alternative are, in the words of the researchers,"extremely rare".

The political crux of the matter, according to the survey, concerns the perfume sector in particular: some ten perfume substances are likely to be classified as CMR, and their substitution would require the reformulation of hundreds of thousands of products. A real cost, to be sure, but one to be set against a European cosmetics market that generated around 104 billion euros in retail sales in 2024, and a perfumery sector growing by 5% a year.

On April 29, the Parliament will vote in plenary session, and this vote will set the position of the hemicycle in the final negotiations with the Commission and the Council.

Générations Futures and Yuka are asking European legislators to maintain the current 18-month transition period, to adopt a non-restrictive definition of "suitable alternative" in order to encourage innovation towards safer ingredients, and to ban all CMR substances in cosmetics, whatever the route of exposure, with no exception for botanical extracts until full scientific data are available.

All this in a health context that makes these demands even more urgent: the incidence of certain cancers is on the rise, male fertility in Europe fell by 50% in terms of sperm concentration between 1973 and 2018, and this trend seems to have accelerated since the 2000s. Against this backdrop, relaxing the rules governing substances directly associated with these problems is not a matter of simple bureaucratic simplification, but a choice likely to have very real consequences for people's health.
 

(©GreenMe.it 2026 / Managing Editor: Malvina Parker - The Global Lifestyle / Pic: ©Unsplash)