Recent ATPs and the 8th Amendment

By: David Steinberg, Steinberg & Associates

Posted: January 29, 2010, from the February 2010 issue of C&T Magazine.

In March 2009, the 8th Amendment to the Cosmetic Directive was approved by the European Parliament and the EU Council of Ministers. This approval is called a recast, as it changes the directive to a regulation. A directive must be incorporated into member state legislation in order to become a regulation, at which point it becomes binding as law in Europe. Since the amendment was approved, several presentations have been made on the regulation, which have raised a number of questions. However, to quote Yogi Berra, “It ain’t over ‘til it’s over.”

The 8th Amendment is not official until it is published in the Official Journal of the European Union and as of this writing, it has not. Reasons for the delay include the time it takes to translate the amendment into 22 official languages; however, the length of time the EU has taken to publish the amendment raises this author’s suspicion, since the EU publishes approximately 3–5 changes in other industries per day, many occurring in a short period of time. Therefore, this author will not comment on the recast until it is official.

[Editor’s note: The official publication of the new Cosmetic Regulations for the EU was issued on Dec. 22, 2009. Future columns will focus on this regulation in greater detail].

On Nov. 25, 2009, the EU Council of Ministers gave its final approval of the amendment. During the approval, the major dissent was from Germany, which objected to the requirement for the word nano to appear in brackets in the ingredient declaration for materials smaller than 100 nanometers.

Why does the Cosmetic Directive need the 8th Amendment? Some feel it is necessary since the directive has been changed 55 times, including seven amendments and 48 Adaptations to Technical Progress (ATPs). While the industry waits to see what this new amendment will bring, more ATPs have been published, as are described here. Science moves on contrary to political wishes.