EU BPR data protection now formally extended till end 2030

Article 95(5) of Regulation (EU) No 528/2012 (the Biocidal Products Regulation, or BPR) ensures that data owners are compensated for the data they bring to support the assessment and approval of biocidal actives. However, as the active review program was expected to be finished by end 2025, this compensation was set only till 31 December 2025. The review program deadline was postponed till end 2030, however article 95(5) was not updated accordingly.
On 16 December 2025 the European Commission published a targeted legislative proposal 
under its Food and Feed Safety Simplification Omnibus. One of its most relevant elements for 
the biocides sector was a proposed amendment to Article 95(5) of the BPR extending certain  data protection periods for active substances still undergoing review. 

However, as no legislative act was put in place before the data protection ended by 1 January 2026, this created a window of opportunity for new active substance  manufacturers for entering the EU biocides market. 

A couple of weeks ago, a draft legislative act announced the closing of this window 
and an end to the uncertainty of all companies that had provided data. The data protection gap is closed: the extended data protection regulation EC 2026/1126 entered into force on Monday 15 June 2026. The biocides industry looks now for the dust to settle. First of all, there is a data protection start date (7 June 2018) introduced next to the end date of 31 December 2030. And of course a lot of (non-EU based) parties have managed to enter  the Article 95 list based on the no longer protected data.

Quantifying the impact

Between January and mid-June 2026, over 300 a.s./PT entries have been added to the Art. 95 list to date, covering 60 unique active substances.  When we take a closer look, over 35% of these new entries have been initiated on behalf of Chinese biocidal active substance suppliers.  Almost one third of the new entries come from companies based in Germany. Together with the  new entries from biocidal active suppliers based in Spain and Austria, 85% of the new entries are accounted for. The other 15% comes from 8 other EU countries, South Korea, Switzerland, UK and the USA. 

When we analyse this data from another angle, we see that over 35 unique companies have been made new notifications since the previous data protection deadline lapsed.  And more than 53% of the new a.s./PT combination notifications have been made for Main Group 2 (Preservation) uses with disinfectant (Main Group 1) uses covering  roughly 40% of the new Art 95 listings. 

In summary, despite of legal uncertainty about data protection lasting less than half a year, these additional parties might shake up the European biocides market considerably because these new Article 95 notification have been made without compensating for the underlying safety assessment data. 

Retro-active payment?

Well, the short answer is that you’d better hire a chemical management expert lawyer to get your money…  

 Although the legislative text mentions that data owners have a retroactive right to be  compensated by 3rd parties that referred to their data for the purpose of Art. 95-Listing during the period of expired Data Protection, we understood from several  legal sources that this might seem easier said than done. It is even not clear if the data  compensation has to be paid pro-actively to keep the listing on Article 95 or that data  owners need to claim their rights under national (or European?) law. 

So although from an authority point of view, the data protection might be restored, it will take a lot of effort to get a fair compensation for your investments as a data owner.  

Please reach out if you like a detailed report tailored to your situation on the impact of these new Article 95 notifications.