Beauty and personal care companies must push product essentiality and industry competitiveness in 2025 as the European Union braces for regulatory changes set to impact the sector, says John Chave, Director-General of Cosmetics Europe.

The European Union (EU) kickstarted a new five-year regulatory cycle last year, with the formation of a new European Parliament in June 2024 and a new European Commission taking office in December 2024 —both set to run until 2029. So, as industries and citizens across the European Union settle into this next chapter, how exactly might the next few years impact beauty and personal care businesses operating in the region?

“Like any industry, it's important we reach out to stakeholders and MEPs [Members of the European Parliament] as a new regulatory cycle starts, to make sure our voice counts,” says John Chave, Director-General of European trade association Cosmetics Europe.

“One of the issues our industry has faced over the years is that cosmetics are seen as superficial or 'not essential,' to use the buzzword in European circles,” Chave tells Beauty Matter. And based on Cosmetics Europe research, he says this is just not true—“we know cosmetics are extremely important” in both general and mental well-being terms.

Cosmetics—A Power Beyond the Surface

Between January 13 and January 16 of this year, therefore, with an evening held for policy makers on January 15, the trade association unveiled a “very significant” exhibition in European Parliament containing data, research, and video interviews with European citizens explaining what cosmetics mean to them.

The goal behind the "Beyond the Surface" exhibition, Chave says, was to raise the profile of the beauty and personal care industry as the European Union enters its new regulatory cycle, demonstrating “very clearly” to stakeholders how important cosmetic, beauty, and personal care products are in people's lives.

The response was positive, he says, as stakeholders saw the depth and breadth of industry's reach Registration, Evaluation, Authorisation, and Restriction of Chemicals [REACH] Regulation"—not only in product terms but value terms. “Often, there's this perception that [cosmetics] is all makeup and skincare and nothing else, and that's very important to dispel.”

“... We wanted to begin the year in 2025 by majoring on this topic,” Chave says, not only because it's the first full year under the new EU regulatory cycle but also because of imminent regulatory change.

EU Cosmetic Products Regulation and REACH Regulation Revisions

The revision of the EU Cosmetic Products Regulation [Regulation (EC) 1223/2009], for example, remains ongoing, the director-general says, following initial calls to amend the regulation made back in 2022. The previous European Commission conducted an inception impact assessment and public consultation but nothing was ever published.

“Since then, there has been a degree of rethink,” Chave says, with the new Commission pledging to consider what does and doesn't work within the existing framework and consider possible revisions. The Commission will start asking stakeholders what they think in 2025, he says. “It's not certain there will be a revision after this exercise,” he notes, “though I generally think there will be, but it's not an absolute certainty.”

In addition to this review, he says there will be also a revision published of the EU Registration, Evaluation, Authorisation and Restriction of Chemicals [REACH] Regulation [Regulation (EC) 1907/2006]—likely towards the end of the year.

“When I started off in the cosmetics industry ten years ago, REACH was not really a central concern for our industry, and that's no longer true,” Chave says. Now, REACH is “much more a part of our menu of issues,” so Cosmetics Europe and wider industry is “gearing up” to advocate around changes here too, he says.

Concerns for industry relating to changes in these two regulations, he says, mainly center around the potential shrinking of ingredients available for use. “The common understanding within our industry is that regulation coming from the European Union is getting more restrictive with regards to ingredients … More and more ingredients are being classified on a hazards basis, not on the basis of exposure to cosmetic consumers.” This is problematic, he says, because it can translate to automatic bans or restrictions of substances, which are safe in cosmetics. The "poster child" of this problem in 2025, Chave says, is ethanol—an ingredient currently being discussed for classification of use in cosmetics.

“There are a number of these potential classifications coming through, and the opportunity to defend the ingredient, even if the ingredients are safe—and we wouldn't attempt to defend it if it wasn't—under the current regulatory framework are really quite limited.”

So, as industry gears up to defend potential ingredient restrictions or bans and braces for changes to EU regulations, Chave says it will be even more important to push conversation around competitiveness.

Maintaining Competitiveness on a Global Stage

“We correctly view ourselves as a European flagship industry—globally competitive, a significant innovator, and so forth. But it's also fair to say the tough regulatory environment has not been hitherto supportive of our international competitiveness. It's not just us, of course; it's European industry in general,” he says.

Historically, EU regulation has always been viewed as a "benchmark" or "gold standard" worldwide, he says, but as the next five-year cycle kicks in, it will be important to push for “more proportionality” and “a little bit more listening to the voice of industry,”  to ensure any changes or updates don't impact competitiveness too much.

“In a sense, that's an opportunity for our industry as well. We're an archetypal competitive European industry, and if we're going to have a regulatory environment in the EU that will be more supportive, then ours is an industry that needs to be taken into account and whose voice needs to be heard.”

“... I think it will be easier to raise our voice and raise awareness where competitiveness now is finally being taken seriously,” Chave says.

Looking ahead at 2025, therefore, it will be important that companies in the beauty and personal care sector, both large and small, are reassured about the importance of the category in the eyes of consumers, as well as how competitive industry remains at a global level. “Let's be a little bit optimistic going forward and particularly thankful that, finally, these arguments around competitiveness seem to be taken seriously.”