DGCCRF Cosmetics Enforcement: What France's Market Surveillance Findings Mean for EU Brands in 2025

France’s DGCCRF ran over 50 targeted market surveillance investigations across consumer product sectors in 2023 alone — and cosmetics remain one of its most consistently scrutinised categories. The non-conformity rates they publish are not abstract statistics: they represent real products pulled from shelves, real corrective orders served to brands, and real reputational damage to companies that assumed a CPNP notification or a supplier’s certificate of analysis was enough to constitute compliance.

If you’re formulating, manufacturing, or placing cosmetics on the French market — or if France is even one territory in a broader EU distribution strategy — understanding how the DGCCRF operates is not a nice-to-have. It’s the difference between a smooth inspection and a multi-month corrective action process that can stall your entire seasonal launch calendar.

How the DGCCRF Enforces Regulation (EC) No 1223/2009 in Practice

The DGCCRF (Direction Générale de la Concurrence, de la Consommation et de la Répression des Fraudes) is France’s primary authority for enforcing cosmetics compliance under Regulation (EC) No 1223/2009, which has applied across all EU member states in full since July 2013. It operates alongside the ANSM (Agence nationale de sécurité du médicament et des produits de santé), which manages serious adverse event signals through the cosmétovigilance system. The two agencies have distinct but overlapping jurisdictions — ANSM handles immediate safety risks and pharmacovigilance, while the DGCCRF focuses on market compliance, labelling accuracy, claims, and the integrity of Product Information Files.

Each year, the DGCCRF selects targeted investigation themes. In recent cycles, these have included cosmetics marketed with therapeutic or medicinal-adjacent claims, products sold through online marketplaces where the supply chain often bypasses traditional distribution controls, and products marketed toward vulnerable populations — specifically those positioned for infants or during pregnancy.

During an investigation, DGCCRF inspectors (“enquêteurs”) can conduct unannounced visits to retail premises, warehouses, and manufacturing sites. They take product samples for laboratory analysis — typically at accredited third-party laboratories — and issue formal requests for the Product Information File (PIF) under Article 11 of Regulation 1223/2009. You have 10 business days to provide that file upon request. If it’s incomplete, unavailable, or drafted in a language the inspectors can’t work with, that alone constitutes a violation — independent of whether the product itself is safe.

The Violations DGCCRF Investigations Actually Uncover

Looking at publicly available DGCCRF enquête reports over the past four years, a clear pattern emerges. Label non-conformities dominate — but not always the ones brands expect.

Article 19 of Regulation (EC) No 1223/2009 mandates specific labelling elements: the Responsible Person’s name and address, the nominal content at time of packaging, the date of minimum durability or period after opening (PAO), precautions for use, the batch reference number, the country of origin for imported products, and the full ingredient list using INCI nomenclature. In DGCCRF surveys, labelling failures most commonly involve:

Missing or illegible batch codes. Brands printing batch references in 4-point type on dark packaging, or using embossed codes that wear away after retail handling, routinely fail this requirement. This isn’t a minor administrative slip — traceability is the enforcement mechanism that makes product recalls operationally possible, and inspectors treat illegible batch codes as a substantive non-conformity, not a cosmetic one.

Ingredients listed with non-INCI names. Despite the INCI system being internationally standardised and freely accessible, some manufacturers — particularly smaller EU producers adapting products across markets — list common or trade names instead of INCI nomenclature, or partially translate ingredient lists into local languages. Even partially, this fails Article 19(1)(g).

Claims that straddle the cosmetic-medicinal borderline. The DGCCRF has become notably more active on this over the past two years. Claims like “strengthens the skin barrier” are generally acceptable within the cosmetic definition in Article 2(1)(a) of Regulation 1223/2009. “Heals eczema” or “treats rosacea” triggers the medicinal product definition under Directive 2001/83/EC — placing the product outside the cosmetics framework entirely. We’ve seen brands receive formal corrective orders for social media copy that their legal teams had signed off on for print materials. Online content counts equally. The channel doesn’t change the regulatory classification.

Prohibited or restricted substance violations. Annex II of Regulation 1223/2009 currently lists over 1,300 prohibited substances. Annex III covers restricted substances with specific maximum concentrations and conditions of use. When the DGCCRF samples a product and sends it for analysis, they check against both annexes. Heavy metal contaminants — lead, cadmium, arsenic — frequently appear in pigment-heavy formulations, particularly pressed powders and eyeshadows. Concentrations above the limits derived from SCCS (Scientific Committee on Consumer Safety) opinions trigger immediate market restriction orders.

One recurring pattern in the published enforcement data deserves particular attention: brands that passed their initial Cosmetic Product Safety Report (CPSR) assessment years ago and haven’t revisited it since. The SCCS updates its scientific opinions regularly — it published revised or new opinions on several UV filters, preservatives, and fragrance allergens between 2021 and 2024. A safety assessment that was valid in 2018 may not account for those revisions. The DGCCRF doesn’t audit CPSRs directly in the first instance, but if laboratory analysis reveals a substance at a concentration the updated SCCS opinion now considers problematic, the brand’s CPSR becomes the document they’re immediately required to defend.

Online Marketplaces: The DGCCRF’s Fastest-Growing Enforcement Focus

This is the area where European brands most often get caught off-guard — and where non-EU brands attempting to enter the French market through digital channels are most exposed.

Between 2021 and 2024, the DGCCRF ran multiple successive investigations specifically targeting cosmetics sold through e-commerce platforms: Amazon.fr, Cdiscount, and social commerce channels including influencer-led direct-to-consumer operations. Their findings were significant. In some marketplace-focused enquêtes, non-conformity rates exceeded 60% for third-party seller listings, with the highest rates among products shipped directly from non-EU warehouses.

The structural issue is the Responsible Person designation under Article 4 of Regulation (EC) No 1223/2009. Any cosmetic product placed on the EU market must have a designated Responsible Person — an EU-established legal entity or individual who formally accepts regulatory accountability for that product. For EU-manufactured products, the manufacturer typically serves as the RP. For imported products, an EU-established importer or a formally appointed EU representative must take on that role.

When products arrive in France via third-party marketplace logistics from outside the EU without a valid EU Responsible Person on record, the Regulation’s foundational requirements haven’t been met — regardless of how compliant the product may be under the standards of its country of origin. The DGCCRF is increasingly using platform accountability provisions under the EU Digital Services Act to demand that marketplaces delist non-compliant products at scale. In practice, this means that brands whose French market strategy depends on marketplace listings without proper RP designation are one DGCCRF sampling exercise away from losing their entire French distribution channel overnight. We’ve seen that scenario play out, and recovery takes longer than brands expect.

What to Expect if the DGCCRF Contacts You — and How to Prepare

A formal DGCCRF contact does not automatically mean criminal proceedings. The agency operates a graduated response framework, and understanding it lets you respond proportionately:

1. Avertissement — An informal warning, typically the first step for minor labelling issues where no safety risk is identified. No formal regulatory record in most cases, but the clock starts on any corrective action discussed.
2. Injonction — A mandatory corrective order with a stated compliance deadline, typically 30 to 60 days. This is the most common formal outcome for labelling and documentation failures. Non-compliance after the deadline escalates the matter to the next level.
3. Procès-verbal — A formal violation notice transmitted to the Public Prosecutor. This can lead to administrative fines or criminal referral. Under French law (Articles L.5131-6 et seq. of the Code de la santé publique), penalties for serious cosmetics violations can reach €300,000, with additional criminal penalties applicable for deliberate or repeated non-compliance.
4. Saisie / Retrait — Product seizure or mandatory market withdrawal, ordered when an immediate consumer safety risk is identified.

The single most important thing to do if contacted by the DGCCRF is to produce the PIF immediately and completely. Inspectors are not looking for perfection — they’re assessing whether you have a functioning compliance system. A well-organised PIF with a thorough CPSR, complete safety data, confirmed CPNP notification records, and clear labelling rationale demonstrates good faith. It typically results in far less adversarial outcomes than a delayed or incomplete response.

If your PIF is not current, not available in French or another major EU language, or hasn’t been reviewed since the product’s initial launch, stop reading here and address that first. Everything else is secondary.

Three Actions Worth Taking This Quarter

The DGCCRF’s investigation themes for 2025 have continued to include claims compliance for cosmetics marketed with wellness and naturalness positioning, and ongoing e-commerce channel surveillance. If your brand uses language like “detoxifying”, “hormonal balancing”, or “microbiome-restoring” anywhere — on pack, in advertising, or in social media content — and you haven’t had legal review of those claims against both Regulation 1223/2009 and Commission Regulation (EU) No 655/2013 on common criteria for cosmetic claims, you’re carrying active regulatory risk that a single DGCCRF sample could expose.

Three concrete actions worth prioritising before the end of the quarter:

Audit your CPSR currency. Check whether your Cosmetic Product Safety Report was drafted or substantively reviewed after the SCCS issued any opinion relevant to your formula’s actives or preservative system. The SCCS published updated opinions on multiple UV filters, preservatives, and fragrance allergens between 2021 and 2024 alone.

Verify your CPNP notifications. Log into the CPNP portal and confirm that every product currently on the French market has an active, accurate notification with the correct Responsible Person designation and current formulation data. An outdated CPNP notification for a reformulated product is a separate violation from the formulation change itself.

Map your claims to the regulatory framework. Document every claim used across all channels — on-pack, in advertising, on social media — against the Commission’s technical document supporting Regulation (EU) No 655/2013. The DGCCRF has cited this document explicitly in recent enforcement actions. If you can’t substantiate a claim against the six common criteria (legality, truthfulness, evidential support, honesty, fairness, and informed decision-making), it’s a liability, not a marketing asset.

None of this requires months. But it does need to happen before a DGCCRF enquêteur picks your product off a shelf in Paris.

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Written by Nour Abochama, Quality & Regulatory Advisor, Care Europe | VP Operations, Qalitex. Learn more about our team

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