Scientific Committee on Consumer Safety (SCCS)
EU agencyEuropean Commission scientific committee advising on non-food consumer products, including cosmetics · European Union
Visit the source site · Audited 2026-10-14
Who pays for it
No SCCS-only annual budget was identified; under 2024 Commission rules, members receive up to €450 per full working day from Commission funds, plus travel and subsistence.
Status: Supporting
SCCS experts are Commission-funded and publish conflict declarations, with no product-company funding identified. Opinions may rely on applicant dossiers, so they are cited for the specific assessed use and checked against a source with a different owner.
How SafeMomma uses it
We use SCCS opinions for the cosmetic ingredient and proposed use they assessed, with a separate check of exposure and pregnancy or breastfeeding relevance.
The audit
- Who controls it
- The Commission appoints SCCS members after a public call, based on expertise and independence from conflicts. Committee members and external experts contribute to opinions on health risks from non-food consumer products, including cosmetics.
- Money
- No SCCS-only annual budget was identified. Members receive a Commission-funded allowance capped at €450 per full working day, with travel and subsistence reimbursed; this is public compensation, not a product-company fee.
- Conflict rules
- Commission rules require declarations before appointment, each year, when circumstances change, and at each meeting. Declarations and committee documents are published subject to privacy and confidentiality limits.
- Method
- SCCS publishes opinions on specific questions based on submitted and available evidence. Preliminary opinions are open for comments, generally for at least eight weeks, but the comment period is not a new evidence-dossier process.
- Dates on its pages
- SCCS opinions show dates and draft, preliminary, or final status, but no portfolio-wide median age was verified.
- Political exposure
- SCCS works within Commission mandates and EU cosmetics law. In materials reviewed for 2015 to 2026, no political order to change an opinion or remove a sampled opinion was identified; the September 2026 cosmetics-law text reviewed was a draft, not an enacted ban.
- Money exposure
- Opinions can rely on applicant dossiers supplied by industry or Member State authorities, so applicants have a stake in the assessment. In the sampled prostaglandin opinion, SCCS considered comments and said its conclusions remained unchanged; this is not proof of applicant control.
- Track record
- In the sampled final opinion on three prostaglandin analogues, SCCS found the evidence insufficient to rule out harm to reproductive or developmental health from the proposed eyelash and eyebrow cosmetic use. The public comment record said the conclusions remained unchanged, and this review identified no SCCS-wide correction or retraction record or pregnancy- or breastfeeding-specific major error.
Where this comes from
Incentive exposure describes pressure from money or politics, not whether the source is right. Funding alone does not show influence.