Over the past decade, cosmetic regulatory enforcement across the European Union has shifted decisively towards a more proactive, surveillance‑led approach.
Non‑compliant cosmetic products are increasingly identified through routine inspections, documentation audits, ingredient screening, product testing and systematic online market monitoring conducted by national authorities, rather than being detected only after consumer safety incidents occur.
As regulators expand their use of automated and artificial intelligence (AI)‑enabled screening tools, alongside structured risk‑targeting within online surveillance activities, the capacity to review product platform listings, claims and technical documentation at scale has grown.
This development is expected to lead to further increases in the identification of cosmetic non‑compliance, particularly within online sales channels, as detection becomes broader, faster and less dependent on complaints or manual intervention.
Analysis of weekly previous alerts published by the European Commission through the EU Safety Gate system indicates that the majority of cosmetic alerts arise from non‑compliance with established requirements under Regulation (EC) No 1223/2009, rather than from newly identified or emerging safety concerns.
In the United Kingdom, following Brexit, responsibility for cosmetic enforcement rests with the Office for Product Safety and Standards (OPSS), working alongside local Trading Standards authorities.
These bodies actively monitor both physical retail and online marketplaces and take action to remove non‑compliant cosmetic products from the UK market in order to protect public health.
Taken together, these developments reflect a regulatory environment in which outdated operating models and informal or inadequately resourced compliance frameworks are no longer considered acceptable.
What Is driving cosmetic safety alerts?
Since Regulation (EC) No 1223/2009 became fully applicable in 2013, the cosmetics sector has experienced almost continuous regulatory change, including new ingredient prohibitions, revised restrictions, updated labelling and claims requirements, strengthened obligations around undesirable effect reporting, along with progressively expanded market surveillance.
A review of EU Safety Gate cosmetic non‑compliance alerts over the past decade identifies distinct enforcement phases.
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