On Tuesday night, Council and Parliament negotiators reached a political agreement on the Commission’s “omnibus VI” package to simplify provisions relating to cosmetics products, the classification, packaging, and labelling of chemicals (CLP), and fertilising products.

Cosmetics

The co-legislators agreed to phase out cosmetics containing prohibited CMR (carcinogenic, mutagenic and reprotoxic) substances faster than the Commission had proposed. Where a substance is not defended for continued use, companies will have — once the ban takes effect — 6 months to stop placing affected products on the market and 12 months before they can no longer be made available — as opposed to the Commission’s 12 and 24 months, though still longer than the current rules, which set no staggered transition.

Companies wanting to keep using a substance will have up to 12 months from its new classification to request a derogation, and the phase-out clock starts only once that request is…