In April 2023, the European Commission published its proposal for a new regulation on detergents and surfactants to replace the previous Detergents Regulation (EC) No. 648/2004.
Among other things, it provides for a so-called product passport to be created for each detergent and published on the Internet. The product passport is to contain a ‘unique identifier’ for the product and the economic operator (e.g. the manufacturer or importer). So-called ‘data carriers’ (e.g. QR codes) that lead to the product passport are to be attached to the detergent packaging.
These planned new requirements for detergents call for a comparison with a regulation that is already in force: Based on Regulation (EC) No. 1272/2008 on classification, labelling and packaging, more than 90 percent of detergents and cleaning agents must bear a so-called unique formula identifier (‘UFI’) on their packaging from 2021. Assigning the UFI, affixing it to the packaging and updating it even in the event of minor formula changes is very labour-intensive and costly. It is to be feared that two further ‘unique identifiers’ based on the Detergents Regulation and the associated affixing of the ‘data carrier’ to the packaging will involve at least as much effort. It is

therefore all the more astonishing that the European Commission has not commissioned an assessment of the costs for manufacturers and the benefits for supervisory authorities and the public. The fact that some provisions of the product passport refer to provisions of the Ecodesign Regulation for sustainable products makes the regulations even more complicated for users. At least the Swedish Chemicals Agency has the same concerns here as IKW. It informed the European Commission in summer 2023 that it rejects the product passport for detergents because it only increases the administrative burden, especially for small and medium-sized companies, without providing any new essential information.
The European Commission has proposed detailed regulations for so-called ‘microbial detergents’, which are often referred to as ‘probiotic detergents’ in German-speaking countries.
The first reading in the European Parliament (EP) was completed in February 2024. Among other things, the EP is calling for the deletion of the obligation provided for in the Commission's proposal, according to which CE labelling would have been mandatory for all detergent packaging. IKW very much welcomes the fact that the EP has rejected this additional labelling for detergents.
With regard to the biodegradability of non-surfactant organic ingredients, the EP demands that they should be inherently biodegradable and thus achieve the second-best level of biodegradability (see table below). For surfactants, the best level of biodegradability remains mandatory, i.e. they must be readily biodegradable.

In addition, the EP is in favour of lowering the permissible limits for phosphorus-containing ingredients in laundry detergents and dishwasher detergents and setting limits for other cleaning agents.
It is currently expected that deliberations in the Council, the legislative body of the member states of the European Union, will continue until at least autumn 2024, meaning that the new regulation will not come into force until 2025 at the earliest.