On 30 July, the EU swaps the reference dictionary every cosmetics label is written against — and a product's ingredient list can go from compliant to illegal with the formula completely unchanged

What actually changes on 30 July

The European Commission adopted Implementing Decision (EU) 2025/1175 on 16 June 2025 and published it in the Official Journal on 10 July 2025. It supersedes the previous version of the Glossary of Common Ingredient Names, Implementing Decision (EU) 2022/677, issued under Article 33 of the Cosmetic Products Regulation (EC) No 1223/2009 — the legal text that requires cosmetic ingredients to be listed using standardised International Nomenclature of Cosmetic Ingredients (INCI) names. The new decision entered into force 20 days after publication and opened a 12-month transitional period, running to 29 July 2026, during which brands could adopt the revised glossary voluntarily while the old one remained usable. From 30 July 2026, that option ends: the updated glossary is the only legally recognised reference for INCI names on cosmetic labels placed on the EU market. Separately, and under a different article of the same regulation — Article 19(1)(g) — the decision also makes CI (Colour Index) nomenclature the required way to name colorants other than hair-dye colorants, where a CI number exists for that colorant.

The numbers behind the glossary

One figure is the scale of what changed. One is the size of the reference set every label has to be checked against. The third is how long brands actually had to act — which is what makes 30 July a deadline, not a surprise.

The real subject: the glossary is a reference layer, not a checklist

An INCI name is not marketing copy — it is the identifier a brand's label-management system, a customs authority, and an EU market-surveillance inspector all use to agree on what is actually in a product. Treat the glossary as a static checklist and a 30 July update reads as 'add 348 rows.' Treat it as the reference layer every existing label is mapped against, and the same update reads differently: any SKU whose colorant is currently named by a trade term instead of its CI number, or whose ingredient name is one the Commission corrected in this revision, is now pointing at a reference that no longer matches — with the formula inside the bottle completely unchanged. That gap is invisible from the product itself; it only shows up when someone re-checks every affected SKU's label text against the new glossary entry by entry, ingredient by ingredient, market by market.

Why it matters for brands

Retail, consumer-goods and luxury brands with cosmetics, personal-care or fragrance lines in their EU portfolio are directly in scope, whatever else they sell. A brand's exposure here is not about reformulating anything — it is about whether its label-management data can answer, at the SKU level and on demand, which products list a colorant by a non-CI name and which reference an ingredient name the Commission has since revised. Brands that manage INCI names as structured, versioned data — tied to the specific glossary edition each label was checked against — can run that check as a query and clear it before 30 July. Brands that manage ingredient names as static text on a packaging file have to re-open every affected SKU by hand, market by market, against a moving reference document, with five days left before the old glossary stops being usable.

Two ways to read 30 July