Cosmetics in France: DGCCRF, ANSES and what they publish

• Since 1 January 2024 the cosmetics authority in France is no longer ANSM: the DGCCRF (Ministry of the Economy) runs market surveillance, labelling, claims and establishment declarations; ANSES runs cosmetovigilance and risk assessment.
• The European Commission's official list of competent authorities still names ANSM and does not mention ANSES. Rely on that document alone and you write to the wrong body.
• Recalls are published on RappelConso, a legally mandatory portal with continuously updated open data; the DGCCRF publishes the results of its inspection campaigns and ANSES an annual cosmetovigilance report in July. This guide links every official source.

Quotations from French legislation and official documents are our own translation; the links point to the French originals.

1. Who supervises cosmetics in France? (and why it is no longer ANSM)

For more than a decade the answer was ANSM (Agence nationale de sécurité du médicament et des produits de santé). Its founding law, loi n° 2011-2012, explicitly gave it the assessment of "produits à finalité cosmétique". That ended on 1 January 2024.

Décret n° 2023-1113, adopted under the 2023 budget law (loi n° 2022-1726, art. 205), designates ANSES and the "autorité administrative chargée de la concurrence et de la consommation" — that is, the DGCCRF — as the competent authorities for cosmetic and tattoo products, in force from 1 January 2024. The split is written into Article L5131-3 of the Code de la santé publique (CSP), inside the cosmetics chapter (L5131-1 to L5131-8):

ANSM says so itself in its transfer notice: since 1 January 2024 the DGCCRF is the sole competent authority for controlling cosmetics manufacturing and packaging establishments, a task they previously shared. What ANSM keeps is narrow: verifying good laboratory practice (GLP) compliance of non-clinical studies — the only CSP article that still names it for cosmetics is L5131-4 — and authorising clinical trials on cosmetic products. Its current founding article, L5311-1, no longer contains the word "cosmétique".

In practice ANSM has stopped being a source: its cosmetics pages no longer exist, its listing of health-policing decisions on "other products" carries no cosmetics decision since 21 December 2023, and its cosmetics safety alerts listing stops on 27 October 2023. Zero in 2024, 2025 and 2026. If you need to revisit the European framework these authorities apply, we have a complete guide to Regulation 1223/2009.

Why reading the Commission's official document is not enough

Article 34 of Regulation 1223/2009 requires Member States to designate their competent authorities and the Commission to keep a public list. That list of competent authorities and poison centres, in its 4 February 2025 version (folder modified 22 April 2026), still names ANSM for France as the Article 34 authority and as the body responsible for serious undesirable effects, with an ANSM email address. ANSES appears in no column at all. In other words, the document the Commission makes available to the public lags French law by more than two years. Anyone sending a serious-effect notification to the address shown there is writing to an agency that no longer holds that competence.

2. What does the DGCCRF do with cosmetics?

The Direction générale de la concurrence, de la consommation et de la répression des fraudes is, in its own words, a directorate of the Ministry of the Economy, Finance and Industrial and Digital Sovereignty. It is not a health agency: it is the competition and consumer administration, and it approaches cosmetics from there.

Its general remit matches what a cosmetic product needs someone to watch: information provided to consumers, compliance with labelling rules and fairness of commercial practices — price, name, characteristics and composition, truthfulness of claims and advertising. And it has emergency powers: "Elle prend des mesures d'urgence en cas de risque pour la santé ou la sécurité des consommateurs : saisies, consignations, retraits et rappels de produits dangereux, suspension de commercialisation, interdiction." — seizures, withdrawals and recalls of dangerous products, suspension of marketing, bans. The basis of its sanctioning powers is Article L522-1 of the Code de la consommation, which designates it as the authority competent to impose administrative fines.

For cosmetics specifically, the DGCCRF keeps a practical guide on cosmetic products (updated 4 December 2025) listing the national texts it applies alongside the EU Regulation: the Code de la consommation (unfair commercial practices, Articles L.121-1 et seq.; deception, L.441-1) and the Code de la santé publique (L.5131-1 to L.5131-8 and R.5131-1 to R.5131-15). It also says where it looks: "La DGCCRF est particulièrement attentive au respect des dispositions sur les allégations et des enquêtes sont régulièrement diligentées à cet effet." — claims, and regular inspection campaigns. Section 4 shows what those look like.

3. What does ANSES do with cosmetics?

The Agence nationale de sécurité sanitaire de l'alimentation, de l'environnement et du travail inherited cosmetovigilance and risk assessment from ANSM. The DGCCRF sums it up in its note on the reform: since 2024 it alone controls products and establishments, while ANSES takes over cosmetovigilance and the risk-assessment tasks previously carried out by ANSM.

The two authorities work in a loop. ANSES receives undesirable-effect reports, assesses them and, when it finds a deviation from the rules, passes it to the DGCCRF; its 2025 activity report puts it plainly: "L'Anses signale à la DGCCRF, autorité réglementaire de ces produits, ces écarts à la norme." The DGCCRF inspects, orders measures and can go as far as withdrawal from the market. In the other direction, Article R5131-13 of the CSP obliges the DGCCRF to pass on to ANSES any cosmetovigilance-relevant elements it collects during market surveillance.

One detail that matters if you sell in several countries: once a serious effect is confirmed, ANSES notifies the responsible person and posts it on ICSMS, the EU portal through which authorities communicate across Member States. ANSM itself routes enquiries accordingly on its contact form: cosmetovigilance or risk assessment, to ANSES; market surveillance, measures or GMP export certificates, to the DGCCRF.

4. What do they publish, and how often?

This is the practical difference from Spain, where AEMPS concentrates everything on one site. In France the cosmetics information is spread across three bodies and four surfaces, each with its own cadence:

Three rows deserve detail.

RappelConso: the surface that matters

It is the official site for dangerous-product alerts, fed by four directorates-general; for cosmetics, the DGCCRF. On 10 September 2026 its category tree held 343 notices under "Hygiène-Beauté", 293 of them under "Cosmétiques". Recent reasons give a sense of what gets recalled in France: butylphenyl methylpropional (Lilial) in an eau de toilette, mercury, a CMIT/MIT mixture, microbiological contamination. Each with a notice, batches and a date.

What sets it apart from every other national source we have reviewed is the open dataset. The data.economie.gouv.fr catalogue exposes the V2 version (V1 has been retired) with the DGCCRF as publisher, "continuous" periodicity and an open licence. A regulatory team can query it by category without scraping HTML.

The DGCCRF inspection campaigns

The campaign published on 2 February 2026 checked 147 cosmetics establishments, targeting very small businesses new to the sector. Just over 200 product information files (DIP) were examined: 26 companies could produce complete or near-complete files, and 26 had none at all. The safety report (RSPC) was missing or incomplete in nearly half of the companies checked. Outcome: 60 establishments subject to administrative enforcement and/or criminal proceedings and 56 warnings. The DGCCRF adds that it repeated its checks on product information files in 2025. If your file is not up to date, the PIF guide explains what inspectors expect to find.

For historical scale, the campaign published in 2017 counted 1,674 visits to 1,332 establishments and 5,600 products checked, with one in five control actions finding an anomaly.

The ANSES annual cosmetovigilance report

The 2025 report (legal deposit July 2026) records 385 reports received between 1 January and 31 December 2025, of which 88% (339) fall within cosmetovigilance; nearly half (47%, 159) were classified as serious undesirable effects. More than half of the reports arrived through the reporting portal (59%), the rest by email. There was one alert: eyelash-growth serums, for a risk of eye colour change. Unlike the AEMPS report, the ANSES report does go down to named substances. The investigation of the serum alert showed the product contained isopropyl cloprostenate, a prostaglandin analogue; ANSES passed the case to the SCCS, whose final opinion of February 2026 concludes that none of the three analogues assessed can be considered safe in cosmetics. The report also documents acute kidney injury after hair-straightening treatments containing glyoxylic acid — in some products without it being declared on the label — and cases involving formaldehyde and isothiazolinones, together with the measures DGCCRF took, including notification to Safety Gate.

5. How do you report an undesirable effect in France?

Article R5131-8 of the CSP defines who makes up the national cosmetovigilance system: ANSES, the DGCCRF, the responsible person and distributors, healthcare professionals, and professional users and consumers. Each with a different obligation:

The ANSES cosmetovigilance page brings the two channels together and cites the legal frame: Article 23 of the Regulation and Articles L.5131-5, L.5431-8 and R.5131-6 to R.5131-15 of the CSP. If you are the Responsible Person, Article 23 is one more of your obligations; they are all in the Responsible Person checklist.

6. How do you know whether a cosmetic has been recalled in France?

In France there is a single answer: RappelConso. It is not a communication choice, it is a legal duty. Article L423-3 of the Code de la consommation provides that economic operators carrying out a product recall declare it electronically on a dedicated site made available to the public by the administration. That site was created by an arrêté published in the JORF on 23 January 2021 — "Il est créé à la direction générale de la concurrence, de la consommation et de la répression des fraudes (DGCCRF) un traitement de données dénommé « RappelConso »" — in force since 1 April 2021, with the rule that every recall notice approved by the authority is published on the public site.

You therefore have two surfaces:

1. The French surface: the Cosmétiques category on RappelConso, and for anyone who wants to automate, the open dataset.
2. The European surface: the Safety Gate alerts search, with filters by product category and notifying country. ANSES documents the route in its report: product recall on RappelConso and Safety Gate notification submitted to the European Commission. We have a complete guide to Safety Gate for cosmetics.

And a third thing that is not a recall surface: the CPNP. The Cosmetic Product Notification Portal is run by the Commission, is free of charge and, once a product is notified, no further notification at national level is needed within the EU. The DGCCRF confirmed that the 2024 reform changed nothing about the CPNP. For the detail, see our CPNP guide.

7. Which French obligations come on top of Regulation 1223/2009?

Establishment declaration to the DGCCRF. Article L5131-2 of the CSP makes the opening and operation of any cosmetics manufacturing or packaging establishment, even as an ancillary activity, subject to a declaration to the competition and consumer authority. Article R5131-1 adds that the authority is informed without delay of any change and of cessation of activity. The arrêté of 11 December 2023 sets the content (twelve data items, from the SIRET to the CPNP identifier and the tonnage band) and the channel: an online procedure on démarches-simplifiées, whose direct form is processed by the DGCCRF. It is free — "Tout comme pour les déclarations sur le portail CPNP, ces démarches sont entièrement gratuites." — and any erroneous or incomplete declaration is refused. Anyone who had already declared to ANSM before 1 January 2024 does not need to do it again.

French-language labelling. Article R5131-4 III of the CSP, in the version applicable from 1 July 2025, requires the particulars in points b, c, d and f of Article 19(1) of the Regulation to be written in French, other languages being allowed in addition. It applies Article 19(5) of the Regulation, which leaves the language to each Member State's legislation, and rests on Article 2 of the loi Toubon, which makes French mandatory in the designation, offer, presentation and instructions for use of a product.

GMP export certificates. Since 1 March 2025 they are issued by the DGCCRF, not ANSM, under décret n° 2024-1250; according to the DGCCRF note, the certificate is valid for three years.

Information requests on substances. Article L5131-6 of the CSP allows a formal notice to carry a periodic penalty of up to €500 per day of delay.

Poison centres. There is no longer a national transmission of formulas: the former Article L5131-7 was repealed, and it is Article 13(6) of the Regulation that requires the Commission to make CPNP information available to poison centres. The DGCCRF guide confirms it: CPNP data is made available to the competent authorities for market surveillance and to poison centres for medical treatment.

Two further obligations — the R-Nano nanomaterials register and the PFAS ban — are covered in our guide to selling cosmetics in France; here we focus on the authorities and on what they publish.

8. How BD-API handles this

Let us be clear: BD-API does not monitor RappelConso, the DGCCRF or ANSES today. What we do is watch the European sources where national actions end up landing. A French recall notified to the rest of the EU appears in Safety Gate, and Safety Gate is one of the sources BD-API follows continuously alongside SCCS, EUR-Lex, ECHA, IFRA and ePing. Each source is described on our Regulatory Watch page.

For the strictly French layer, the guide you have just read is, for now, your tool: RappelConso, the DGCCRF campaigns and the ANSES annual report, at the official URLs above. And we are preparing something more: a bulletin with the measures published by national authorities — the DGCCRF, AEMPS and their EU counterparts. If you want it when it is out, leave your email here.

9. Frequently asked questions

Does ANSM regulate cosmetics in France? Not any more. Since 1 January 2024 (décret n° 2023-1113) the DGCCRF runs market surveillance and establishment declarations, and ANSES runs cosmetovigilance and risk assessment. ANSM keeps only good laboratory practice and clinical trials.

What is the DGCCRF? The Direction générale de la concurrence, de la consommation et de la répression des fraudes, a directorate of the Ministry of the Economy. For cosmetics it is the competent authority for market surveillance, labelling, claims, establishment declarations and emergency measures, including recalls.

What is ANSES? The Agence nationale de sécurité sanitaire de l'alimentation, de l'environnement et du travail. Since 2024 it runs French cosmetovigilance: it receives and assesses undesirable-effect reports, publishes an annual report and passes non-compliances to the DGCCRF.

Do you have to register a cosmetic in France? Not the product: it is notified in the CPNP, which covers the whole EU. What is declared to the DGCCRF is the manufacturing or packaging establishment, before opening, through the démarches-simplifiées online procedure.

How much does the establishment declaration cost? Nothing. The DGCCRF states that, like CPNP notification, the procedure is entirely free.

Where can I see cosmetics recalls in France? On RappelConso, Cosmétiques category. Operators are obliged by Article L423-3 of the Code de la consommation to declare every recall there. Recalls notified to the EU also appear in Safety Gate.

What is RappelConso? The official French dangerous-product alert site, created by arrêté in 2021 and run by the DGCCRF. It publishes every recall as a notice and offers the data openly on data.economie.gouv.fr, with continuous updates.

Does the label have to be in French? Yes. Article R5131-4 III of the CSP requires the particulars in points b, c, d and f of Article 19(1) of Regulation 1223/2009 in French, with other languages allowed in addition.

When does ANSES publish its cosmetovigilance report? The 2025 report carries a legal deposit of July 2026; with a single year published under ANSES, there is no fixed cadence to cite yet.

10. In short

If your reference for France is still "ANSM", you have a 2024 problem. Today the authority that can pull your cosmetic off the French market is the DGCCRF; the one that receives your serious-effect notifications is ANSES; and the place where a recall is made public — by law — is RappelConso, with open data updated continuously. The Commission's list will not tell you: it still points to ANSM.

What lands in Safety Gate, BD-API watches for you. What stays in France, you now know where it is, who publishes it and how often.