All marketing departments dream about a ‘World’ claim that could be used the same way on all markets. And everyone knows how inaccessible this dream seems to be, and how delicate it is to choose the right words that will stick to a cosmetic product everywhere it is exported. To avoid getting trapped, the 2017 Cosmed International Congress offered a world tour of claims – with a stopover in Russia and the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU) countries.
Olga Ivanovskaya is a Regulatory Consultant for health products and cosmetics at the Pravsky Consulting agency. She is specialized in the EAEU (Eurasian Economic Union), a region comprising Russia, Kazakhstan, and Belarus, the three founding members, later joined by Armenia and Kirghizia. At the congress, she provided an overview of the regulatory requirements in force in the EAEU in terms of cosmetics claims.
Supervisory authorities
If the management of regulations – at least general principles – is centralized, every country has their own regulatory authorities as regards claims:
• Russia: as far as advertizing claims (TV, press, Internet) are concerned, it it FAS (Federal Anti-monopoly Service) that is competent, while RosPotrebNadzor (Federal Consumer Protection and Human Welfare Service) takes care of everything that is affixed on products (labelling, packaging, instructions…)
• Kazakhstan: only one authority, which depends on the Ministry of Economy, KREM&ZK (Committee for the Regulation of Natural Monopolies, Protection of Competition and Consumer Rights), supervises all types of claims on all types of products
• Belarus: again, only one authority is responsible for these issues – the Department of Consumer Protection and Supervision of Advertising is attached to the Ministry of Commerce
Cosmetics regulations
Regulations on claims mainly …