Safety in Cosmetics
Innovation drives the cosmetics industry to provide new, safe products for the millions of people who use them every day, throughout their lives. The industry’s capacity to innovate is fundamental to meeting consumers’ constantly growing expectations.
Consumer safety is the overriding objective for the manufacture and sale of cosmetics in Europe.
The first and most important responsibility for product safety lies with manufacturers — they welcome this duty as a fundamental principle guiding everything they do.
In Europe, the cosmetics industry is governed by the European Union’s (EU) Cosmetics Directive. This protects consumers by ensuring that all cosmetic products on the European market are safe.
To meet their obligations under the Directive, companies fulfil specific duties before placing a product on the market. These include a safety assessment, provision of product information and compliance with ingredient and labelling rules.
The Directive requires cosmetics to cause no damage to human health when applied under either normal or reasonably foreseeable conditions of use.