The Customs Union Commission has adopted new technical regulations for the 'Safety of Cosmetic Products' which will be issued to every Russian registered company to simplify access to the market by reducing the number of required documents and ultimately place responsibility for safety and quality solely with the manufacturer.
How it works
The Declaration of Conformity to Technical Regulations (DOC TR) is an effort to get the countries of the Customs Union to fall more in line with European rules from the manufacturing process right down to product labeling.
Its structure and content are based on both the European Directive 76/768/EEC and the European Regulations 1223/2009 [2] where the definition of cosmetics and the lists of regulated ingredients are almost identical.
Going forward, perfumes and cosmetics which conform to the updated technical regulations and which have undergone conformity assessment to these regulations under Article 6 must now bear the EAC conformity mark (for Eurasian Conformity) of the Customs Union, and no longer the Russian Gost-R mark.
Moreover, this marking must be done prior to the release of products onto the market and applied to each unit destined for sale in CU states. However, anything issued prior to the 1st of July is said not to require new marking.
In addition to the old documentation and sample requirements, a General Production Quality Control Flowchart, indicating the stages at which quality control takes place is required.
Beneficial
The new regulation is said to be beneficial for cosmetic manufacturers as it has the double advantage of harmonizing Russian regulation with EU regulation, ultimately abolishing the dual system for achieving compliance.
Compared to the previous regulation in Russia, this text also has the advantage of grouping all categories of cosmetic products in a single document. However, certain product categories will continue to be subject to registration as a single document such as; tanning products, skin whitening, personal hygiene; cosmetics for children; hair dyes; products containing nano-components, and depilatory products.