On December 10, 2025, alongside the presentation of its “Environmental Omnibus,” the European Commission published its updated estimate of the costs associated with urban wastewater treatment under Directive (EU) 2024/3019. Cosmetics Europe said it was “profoundly disappointed.”
The Environment Omnibus presented by the Commission is a package of measures to simplify environmental legislation in the areas of industrial emissions, circular economy, environmental assessments and geospatial data.
It consists of six legislative proposals, which, according to the Commission, should save businesses around €1 billion per year.
However, this will likely not be the case for all sectors.
At the same time, the JRC also published its updated estimate of water treatment costs resulting from the recast of the Urban Waste Water Treatment Directive, published in 2024, which provides for an EPR system based solely on the pharmaceutical and cosmetics industries.
And the Commission says it itself: “The updated study shows that costs are expected to be similar to estimates in the 2022 impact assessment, taking into account inflation, new data on costs and the differences between the final Directive and the original Commission proposal.”
This is despite numerous studies that have since shown that this study greatly underestimated the additional costs of wastewater treatment and equally greatly overestimated the contribution of the cosmetics sector to water pollution.
Reaction from Cosmetics Europe: “Cosmetics Europe is profoundly disappointed that the European Commission has once again overlooked the …
