At the opening of the information meeting organised by the FEBEA on 16 January 2019 on claims, Loïc Armand, President of Cosmetics Europe and ARPP Director, recalled the role of professional self-regulation and the positive results it can boast of in terms of advertising. With one main message: a well integrated domestic law is better than a binding law, and responsibility and sincerity are the only options available to industry today to maintain consumer confidence.
Speech of Loïc Armand
I’ll tell you the true story.
I could have actually repeated here the speech I made in October 2012 to the FEBEA members to present the European Charter for Responsible Communication, which had been adopted in June of that year by Cosmetics Europe, and was to be included in the national charters of the associations of the various member countries.
And for once, I suggest that you judge the relevance of our actions, not by our certainties, but by the results obtained.
Where did we come from?
The oldest among you will certainly remember it: at the end of the 2000s, our business was hit one after the other, several times a year, by sanctions and the “Name and Shame” of the British system in particular, with the scrapping by the British regulator ASA, relayed by the tabloids and the press there. Each time, it was a penknife blow in the contract of trust that binds our brands to their consumers. Not to mention the takeover by the European media, including in France, when it was not American or Chinese media. I remember very well some cases where there was a publication in London one day, …