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Mineral oils in packaging and prints: Isolated national lawmaking in Europe

As of January 1, 2025, in France the use of mineral oils in packaging and prints is banned. By Cornelia Tietz, Monika Wagner, EuPIA.

22.05.2025

EuPIA Legislation

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New Africa - stock.adobe.com The legislation regarding mineral oils in packaging and prints.

The legislation on mineral oils in packaging and prints was implemented in several steps involving different legal documents. The French Circular Economy Law (Agec) from February 2020 specifies in its article 112 that from 1st January 2022, the use of mineral oils in packaging is prohibited.

From 1st January 2025, it is prohibited to use mineral oils in prints for the general public. For unsolicited advertising leaflets and catalogues with commercial purposes, this prohibition has been applied since 1st January 2023.

Decree N° 2020-1725 from 29th December 2020 elaborates, in Articles D. 543-45-1 and D. 543-213 of the Environmental Code, that this ban applies to mineral oils containing substances that interfere with the recycling of packaging waste, or limit the use of recycled materials, due to the risks that these substances present for human health. An Order from the French Minister of the Environment was published in the French Official Journal on 3rd May 2022. This was necessary as Article 112 of the Agec and the Decree N° 2020-1725 neither defined what was meant by the term mineral oil, nor the substances of interest, nor which limit values would apply. Hence, the Order was supposed to contain technical details specifying the substances concerned by the ban on the use of mineral oils on packaging and printing intended for the public.

Precise provisions for mineral oils in inks from the French Order

Whereas the Agec covers all mineral oils on printed products and packaging, the French Order focuses only on printing ink mineral oil content. It defines limits (mass concentration in ink) of certain mineral oil constituents for inks used in the printed products mentioned in the Law.

The Order explains that “mineral oils” are defined as oils produced from feedstocks, derived from petroleum hydrocarbons, used in the manufacture of inks. The substances affected by the ban on the use of mineral oils are:

mineral oil aromatic hydrocarbons (MOAH) comprising 1 to 7 aromatic rings,
mineral oil saturated hydrocarbons (MOSH) with 16 to 35 carbon atoms.

Whilst until the end of 2024 a limit value applied only to MOAH, from January 2025, limit values for both MOSH and MOAH apply.

What is at stake?

In 2022 France submitted a TRIS notification on its intention to issue an “Order specifying the substances contained in mineral oils prohibited for use on packaging and for printed matter distributed to the public”. All concerned industry associations provided comments, stressing several overlying aspects:

the unwanted effects of such a law like creating a de-facto non-trade barrier to the common EU market specifically the free movement of printed products such as (food) packaging, books, magazines or newspapers within the EU internal market
the non enforceability due to lack of analytical methods.

The EU Commission warned France not to walk on an isolated national path and advised that the best approach to regulate mineral oils would be via a REACH restriction. ANSES (French Agency for Food, Environmental and Occupational Health & Safety) was tasked by the French government to examine the success of a REACH restriction (Demande n° 2023-REACH-0120). Its scientific and technical report from June 2024 states that following the recently published conclusion by the European Food Safety Agency (EFSA) an unacceptable risk of dietary exposure to MOSH seems unlikely. Hence, a proposal for a restriction on MOSH under REACH can’t be justified. The report also specified that further analytical methods are needed.

Over several months , exchanges took place on national level in France involving the main stakeholders: publishing houses, printers and printing ink manufacturers. But nothing could, at that stage, change the approach of the French government.

What are the practical implications and challenges?

Article 112 of the overarching Circular Economy Law clearly covers mineral oils on packaging and printed matter. However, the French Order only defines provisions for the inks, not for the printed product. As the printed products are also in scope of the regulation, it is unclear how to demonstrate or control compliance.

Both the French Decree and Order do not provide analytical guidance, meaning it is unclear how compliance with the limit values should be reliably demonstrated. A clear testing method standard still needs to be defined, hence analytically accurate quantification of MOSH/MOAH in printing inks is questionable. Additional complexity is added because a number of raw materials/substances legally allowed to be used in Food Contact Material applications can easily be mistaken for mineral oils. A prominent example is synthetic paraffin wax.

The current impasse lies in four points:
The lack of analytical guidance, more precisely of recognised and reliable analytical testing methods that would allow to detect the thresholds imposed from January 2025.
The fact that current testing can result in false positive findings, leading leading to an incorrect rejection in the supply chain of the affected material/formulation.
The failure to consider unintentionally impurities.
The lack of reliable alternatives for inks intended for certain applications, where a limited mineral oil content is unavoidable.

As a consequence, printing ink companies organised in EuPIA refrain from conducting inconclusive analytical testing on inks until a proven and recognised analytical testing procedure for mineral oils is available on a worldwide level.

Therefore, analytical results or test reports which suggest full compliance with all the requirements of the French decree should be taken with caution. No clear guarantee of non-intentionally added mineral oils can be given for the time being. Declarations from ink manufacturers on “mineral oil free” status, without a clear specification of the percentual boundaries of the declaration, should be considered with caution.

For all these reasons, EuPIA strongly recommends that for the time being compliance work should rely only on a best practice approach: open discussion with printing ink manufacturers, regulatory statements based on known composition data and statements of composition for food packaging applications. The impacts on the common EU market in what concerns the free movement of printed products will be analysed over the next months. What is clear at this point in time is that EuPIA members have to deal with a clear disruption in the market and unfair competition behaviour due to questionable test reports which are circulated. Our internal measures and assessments coupled with extensive discussions with the French authorities have not been able to solve the issue.

What’s next?

No quick solution is in sight, unfortunately. The French Printing Ink Manufacturers Association (AFEI) together with the main already involved stakeholders (printers, printing houses, raw material suppliers, packaging value chain) keep on interacting with the French authorities. Pending a way out of this regulatory impasse, the industry is organising itself to cope with the uncertainty. AFEI members supported by EuPIA have drafted statements explaining limits of providing declarations of conformity.