On cosmetics and chemicals, the EU must put science back into policy
Brussels, BE/May 28, 2026 – Consumer Choice Center calls on the European Commission to enshrine risk-based assessment in revised cosmetics and REACH frameworks — and reject the hazard-classification approach that has blocked safe ingredients for years. Keeping consumer choice and evidence-based policy should remain the focus, says Consumer Choice Center’s Senior Policy Analyst Bill Wirtz :
“We are calling on policymakers to seize this once-in-a-decade opportunity to replace the EU’s hazard-based regulatory model with a science-driven, risk-based framework — one that considers actual consumer exposure, not theoretical worst-case scenarios. For too long, EU chemicals and cosmetics policy has operated on a flawed premise: that a substance which can cause harm will cause harm, regardless of dose or exposure.”
“The practical consequences of the EU’s hazard-first logic are stark: hundreds of cosmetic ingredients have been restricted or banned not because they posed a demonstrated risk to consumers, but because they triggered a classification threshold disconnected from real-world use. The result is fewer product choices, higher prices, and innovation pipelines rerouted outside Europe, where there is zero EU regulatory oversight.”
“The Commission’s current simplification exercise – part of the broader competitiveness agenda following the Draghi report – presents a genuine legislative opening to hardwire risk-based assessment into EU law before the next regulatory cycle locks in the status quo. In the upcoming trilogue negotiations, institutions should push for risk-based assessment as the norm, require risk exposure data as a mandatory component of any restrictions proposal, and avoid the European Union being a region of the OECD that is hostile to innovation”, concludes Wirtz