New legislation on abbreviations, pictograms and small packaging

Commission Implementing Regulation (EU) 2024/875 on the list of abbreviations and pictograms, allows replacing the information on the immediate and outer packaging with the approved abbreviations or pictograms listed in this Regulation for existing and new products. Furthermore, it gives a transitional period for the replacing of existing abbreviations or pictograms on the immediate or outer packaging that are not compliant with the new approved ones. No other substitutions of label text are permissible other than using the pictograms/abbreviations in the Implementing Regulation.

According to Commission Implementing Regulation (EU) 2024/878 on uniform rules on the size of small immediate packaging units, marketing authorisation holders with packages larger than 50 ml currently labelled according to the small immediate packaging requirements, must align with the labelling requirements defined in the newly adopted Regulation within the timeline of the transitional period, unless they meet the derogation criteria.

To facilitate any changes resulting from the above two legal acts, the European Commission also adopted an update of the list of variations not requiring assessment (consolisated version of Commission Implementing Regulation (EU) 2021/17 establishing a list of variations not requiring assessment). The two new VNRAs are expected to be available in the UPD shortly.