European Commission and Directorate-General for Internal Market, Industry, Entrepreneurship and SMEs 1 June 2026, COMMISSION STAFF WORKING DOCUMENT Accompanying the document Communication from the Commission Roadmap towards phasing out animal testing for chemical safety assessments

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This Staff Working Document accompanies the European Commission's Communication establishing a roadmap to phase out animal testing for chemical safety assessments across 15 identified EU legislative areas, responding to the European Citizens' Initiative 'Save Cruelty-Free Cosmetics' and calls from the European Parliament for a strategic plan. The document sets out concrete short-, medium-, and long-term actions for replacing, reducing, and refining animal use across human health and environmental safety assessment endpoints, including the development of a Next-Generation Risk Assessment (NGRA) framework based on non-animal approaches such as in silico, in vitro, and physiologically-based kinetic modelling methods. Implementation is to be coordinated through inter-agency collaboration among ECHA, EFSA, and EMA, supported by dedicated organisational structures, validation and standardisation processes, and progress indicators to manage the transition to animal-free chemical safety assessment.AI