EU Shipping Update: PPWR & Where We Can Currently Ship

An important update for our EU customers

If you've visited VE Cosmetics recently and noticed that your country has disappeared from our shipping options, firstly: we're sorry. We haven't decided that we don't want to send makeup to you anymore. 🖤

From 12 August 2026, the EU's new Packaging and Packaging Waste Regulation (PPWR) begins to apply, bringing new requirements for businesses placing packaged goods onto the EU market.

As a small independent UK business shipping directly to customers across Europe, this means we have had to review where we can continue shipping while making sure that we're properly compliant.

Where can VE Cosmetics currently ship in the EU?

At the moment, EU shipping remains available to:

🇩🇪 Germany
🇮🇪 Ireland
🇳🇱 The Netherlands

For Germany, VE Cosmetics is registered with LUCID, with our packaging compliance handled through Reclay.

Shipping to all other EU destinations has temporarily been removed from our website.

Why have you stopped shipping to other EU countries?

We haven't taken this decision lightly.VE Cosmetics has shipped internationally for many years, and we absolutely adore seeing our products travelling around the world.

However, the new PPWR framework, alongside Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) requirements, means businesses selling packaged products into EU markets need to make sure they meet the relevant packaging, registration and reporting requirements. For a huge multinational company with an entire legal and compliance department, that's one thing.For a small independent brand, navigating multiple registrations, schemes, reporting systems and requirements across different countries is a rather different beast.

And although we'd love to simply switch every country back on and work everything out later, that's not how we operate.If we're going to sell somewhere, we want to know we're doing it properly.

Is this permanent?

We certainly hope not.

We're continuing to investigate the requirements for individual EU destinations and will look at restoring shipping wherever it is practical and financially possible for a small business like ours to remain compliant.As we complete the necessary requirements for additional countries, we'll update our shipping options accordingly.

So if your country has disappeared from checkout, please don't take it personally, we still love you. The paperwork and costs have temporarily defeated us.

Why is this so difficult for a small business?

Environmental responsibility is incredibly important to us.

VE Cosmetics has always taken its ethical responsibilities seriously we therefore support the aim of reducing packaging waste and making businesses responsible for the packaging they place onto the market.

The difficulty for small independent businesses isn't necessarily the principle behind these regulations, it's the practical and financial burden of understanding, registering for and administering compliance across numerous individual markets. VE Cosmetics isn't backed by a multinational corporation. We're an independent, female, disabled and vegan-owned UK business, and behind the gothic packaging and slightly questionable number of black lipsticks is a genuinely very small operation. That means sometimes we have to take a little longer to navigate changes of this scale.

What about customers outside the EU?

International shipping remains available to many destinations outside the European Union.Our website will show the currently available shipping destinations at checkout.

Thank you 🖤

To everyone in Europe who has supported VE Cosmetics over the years: thank you.

Some of you have been ordering from us for an incredibly long time, so having to temporarily remove your country from our shipping list genuinely isn't something we wanted to do.We'll keep working through the new requirements and, where we're able to reopen shipping responsibly, we will.

In the meantime, shipping remains open to Germany, Ireland and the Netherlands, alongside the UK and our other available international destinations.

Thank you for bearing with a very small business while we navigate some very large regulations.

Stay strange. Stay kind. Stay rebellious.

🖤
VE Cosmetics