Are cosmetics firms being unfairly targeted by the EU’s micropollutant rules?

Key takeaways on cosmetics industry & EU’s micropollutant rules

• Cosmetics Europe and FEBEA say the EU’s Urban Wastewater Treatment Directive unfairly targets the cosmetics and pharmaceuticals industries and ignores the contribution of other sectors.
• Industry leaders claim the EC’s impact assessment contains major errors, including misattributed chemicals.
• Several parties, including trade body Cosmetics Europe and the Polish government, have launched legal action.
• The sector argues cosmetics contribute less than 2% of micropollutants, not 26% as stated.
• Industry bodies support the polluter pays principle but call for fairness, corrections and a pause in implementation to ensure the initiative achieves its end goal of cleaning up water supplies.

In December 2025, the European Commission presented its Environmental Omnibus package, which was designed to simplify EU environmental legislation.

While there have been numerous criticisms of the package, the cosmetics industry, alongside the pharmaceutical industry, has been deeply concerned about the Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) obligations under the Urban Wastewater Treatment Directive (UWWTD).

Both industries argue that the directive disproportionately targets cosmetics and pharma companies and fails to consider other contributors to micropollutants in water, such as the chemical industry and agriculture. They say that many other industries will not be paying their fair share, while cosmetics and pharmaceuticals will be left to shoulder the costs.

Industry backlash over micropollutant cost allocations

The European trade body Cosmetics Europe and French trade body FEBEA have both argued that the estimations and costs are inaccurate and unjust.

While the organisations support the end goal of cleaning up urban water supplies and are fully prepared to participate in an EPR dedicated to micropollutants and a ‘polluter pays principle’, they are contesting why this is being based solely on the cosmetics and pharmaceutical sectors.

The issue has become so serious that Brussels-based Cosmetics Europe, along with the pharmaceutical trade association EFPIA, and the Polish government, have all taken legal action against the European Commission. They are currently awaiting the court case and expect it to be heard this year.

In response to CosmeticsDesign-Europe’s questions in December, the EC’s press office said that while the Commission will not comment on details of ongoing court cases, it could offer a general statement on the issue.

“The introduction of an Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) system under the revised Urban Wastewater Directive is in line with the Polluter-Pays-Principle, as enshrined in the Treaties,” read the statement.

“This system is proportionate and aims at reducing administrative burden. It will exclusively cover the costs of the quaternary treatment and foresees exemptions for products not generating micro-pollutants (eg rapidly biodegradable products) and for small and medium producers placing small quantities of products on the EU market,” it continued.

“On the two sectors concerned, cosmetic and pharmaceutical residues represent the main sources of persistent micropollutants, mainly stemming from households, found in urban wastewater. Without the residues of these two sectors, there would not be a need for additional, quaternary treatment in urban wastewater facilities.”

However, Cosmetics Europe says it has “irrefutable evidence” that the original impact assessment on which the EC is basing this was not well founded.

“For example, the impact assessment assigns a biocide to the cosmetic sector, which is clearly not a cosmetic ingredient and is not used in cosmetics products,” said Director-General at Cosmetics Europe, John Chave. “This is a fundamental error.”

Cosmetics Europe & FEBEA dispute impact assessment data

Chave continued to say that based on these various errors, the Commission has assumed that the sector’s contribution is around 15 times higher than it really is.

He explained that Cosmetics Europe made a Freedom of Information request to the European Commission asking it to disclose the basis of the substance analysis used to determine that cosmetics contributed 26%. It was through this information, received from the Commission itself, that the organisation found substances had been attributed to the cosmetics industry that were either banned from cosmetics formulations under the EU’s own regulations or not actually cosmetic ingredients at all.

“One of these was permethrin, which is a biocide used for example to kill fleas on dogs,” said Chave. “Or substances more commonly found in food such as fatty acids, yet the Commission continues to insist, despite our having pointed out these manifest errors, that the impact assessment is correct.”

“You need to look at the definition of a cosmetic under EU legislation to determine whether this is the case, and clearly a biocide is not a cosmetic,” Chave pointed out.

Meanwhile the General Secretary for the French cosmetics industry trade body FEBEA, Emmanuel Guichard, also weighed in on the issue in December. “To think that the effort to clean up urban water pollution is limited to just two sectors is not only simplistic, but it jeopardises the very achievement of this legitimate objective,” he said. “We call on national authorities to mobilise in support of robust legislation and an industry that is a strong contributor and committed to the transition.”

FEBEA also pointed out the attribution of substances that are not used in cosmetics formulations, such as permethrin, as well as prohibited substances in cosmetics such as nonylphenol diethoxylate, and substances that are only marginally used in cosmetics such as caffeine or palmitic acid (found in butter or olive oil).

Cosmetics Europe has launched its legal action on the basis that based on this evidence, the directive does not really comply with the ‘polluter pays principle’.

“By misattributing substances to the cosmetics sector, under the terms of the extended producer responsibility scheme in the directive, our sector will be obliged to pay for micro pollutants emitted by other sectors,” explained Chave. “This is clearly not aligned with the ‘polluter pays’ principle.”

Legal challenges and uncertainties ahead for EPR rollout

The court case itself will be a landmark case, as normally trade associations cannot bring legal action against the EC. “We are in fact challenging that principle itself – that trade associations cannot, under normal circumstances, bring legal actions against the European institutions,” explained Chave.

However, if the case is not heard then Cosmetics Europe is confident that the case of the Polish government will certainly need to be heard.

Going forward, Cosmetics Europe hopes that given there is an ongoing legal case and that errors have been identified in the directive, the EU will pause the implementation and introduce a ‘stop the clock’ so that time can be taken to properly get the extended producer responsibility scheme right.

“I want to stress to readers of Cosmetics Design that we are not opposed to the overall objectives of the directive, and we are not opposed to the EPR scheme, we simply think that it should be based on the polluter pays principle, and currently it is emphatically not,” he said.

“If you attribute substances to our industry which we do not put into wastewater, that cannot, by any reasonable measure, be considered fair.”

“The Commission takes the view that the cosmetic and pharmaceutical industries together are responsible for most micro pollutants. They even state that without those two industries it would not be necessary to introduce the scheme, whereas our calculation – based on the Commission’s own figures – is that the cosmetics industry’s contribution is less than 2%,” he stated.

“We cannot realistically move forward if we are being asked to pay for the emissions of other sectors.”

There will be ‘no incentive to stop’ for other industries

Chave also points out that one of the fundamental flaws of this approach is incentivisation. “If industries that emit micro pollutants into wastewater are not being asked to pay, they have no incentive to stop. Even on its own terms, the current structure of the EPR does not make sense,” he said.

He also added that it’s important to bear in mind that the implementation of the directive is extraordinarily complicated. Firstly, because it is a directive, it will be implemented separately in each Member State, potentially with variations, which means conflicting approaches in neighbouring countries would be problematic.

Secondly, Chave said that before any payments are made, producer responsibility organisations need to be set up at national level. “There are also likely to be many unresolved questions, such as how biodegradability is defined, given that biodegradable substances are excluded,” he said. “This means that the beginning of payments is still some way off for businesses.”