Foundations · France

Parapharmacy in France

France preserves one of Europe's most strictly bounded pharmacy monopolies. The French parapharmacie is a retail outlet — increasingly a supermarket aisle or a dedicated chain — that sells cosmetics, food supplements and medical devices, but no medicines of any kind.

Legal definition

French law does not define "parapharmacie" as a single legal status; the term denotes, in practice, any retail outlet that sells health-adjacent products without being a pharmacy. The legal anchor of the category is therefore negative: a parapharmacy is whatever sells health-related products that fall outside the products reserved to pharmacies by the Code de la santé publique.

The reservation itself is set by Article L.4211-1 of the Code de la santé publique, which enumerates the acts and products reserved to pharmacists. The structural consequence is that the boundary of parapharmacy in France is read off the boundary of the pharmacy monopoly: anything not listed in L.4211-1 (and the related provisions) may, in principle, be sold by non-pharmacists.

The pharmacist's monopoly

Article L.4211-1 reserves to pharmacists, among other things:

• The preparation of medicinal products for human use.
• The wholesale and retail sale of medicinal products for human use.
• The retail sale of certain other categories listed in the article, including some plants and parts of plants in the official pharmacopoeia, certain bandages and surgical materials in specific cases, and certain other products that have been added by legislation over time.

The definition of a medicinal product (médicament) follows Article L.5111-1 of the same Code, which transposes the EU definition under Directive 2001/83/EC. Both prescription and non-prescription medicines are within the monopoly: France does not permit non-prescription medicines to be sold in supermarkets or in non-pharmacy outlets. This is the central difference between the French regime and, for example, the Italian and Portuguese regimes.

The pharmacist's monopoly is enforced criminally under Articles L.4223-1 and following of the Code de la santé publique, which create the offence of unlawful exercise of pharmacy (exercice illégal de la pharmacie).

What a parapharmacy may sell

A French parapharmacy may sell any product that is not within the pharmacist's monopoly. The principal categories are:

• Cosmetic products as defined in Regulation (EC) No 1223/2009, including dermocosmetics, sun protection, hair and body care, oral hygiene cosmetics and infant cosmetics.
• Food supplements within the meaning of Directive 2002/46/EC as transposed by Décret n° 2006-352 of 20 March 2006.
• Medical devices bearing the CE mark under Regulation (EU) 2017/745, where they are not subject to specific national restrictions limiting their sale to pharmacies.
• Infant nutrition, subject to the specific rules on infant formula and follow-on formula.
• Herbal teas and traditional plant preparations, where the plants are not on the list of plants reserved to pharmacists or are sold under one of the regulatory derogations.
• Personal-care and oral-hygiene products that fall under the cosmetic regulation.

Some plants of the French pharmacopoeia may be sold outside pharmacies because they are listed in Décret n° 2008-841 of 22 August 2008, which removed a number of plants from the pharmacy monopoly for sale in their crude state under certain conditions.

What a parapharmacy may not sell

• Any medicinal product, whether prescription or non-prescription. This includes oral analgesics such as paracetamol and ibuprofen, which in France are reserved to pharmacies.
• Compounded preparations made to a prescription or a magistral formula.
• Plants of the pharmacopoeia reserved to pharmacists under the relevant decrees.
• Certain medical devices specifically restricted to pharmacy sale by national rule, such as certain serological and diagnostic tests.

The line between a cosmetic and a medicinal product is decided product-by-product on the basis of presentation and function. French case law and ANSM positions have repeatedly held that a product claiming a therapeutic effect on a disease is a medicinal product even if it is presented as a cosmetic, and falls within the monopoly accordingly.

Personnel and ownership

A French parapharmacy may be operated by a non-pharmacist. It is not subject to the geographical density rules or to the ownership restrictions that apply to pharmacies (which under Article L.5125-17 of the Code must be owned by pharmacists). This is a fundamental commercial difference: a supermarket group may open and operate a parapharmacy, but cannot own a pharmacy.

Staff working in a parapharmacy are not required to be pharmacists. Some chains employ pharmacists or trained beauty advisors, but this is a commercial choice rather than a legal requirement. The result is that the advice given in a French parapharmacy is, formally, commercial advice — not a regulated pharmaceutical act.

Online sales

Cosmetics, food supplements and medical devices may be sold online from France without a medicines-specific authorisation, subject to the usual product rules: cosmetic product notification through the EU CPNP, declaration of food supplements to the Direction générale de la concurrence, de la consommation et de la répression des fraudes (DGCCRF), and CE marking and post-market obligations for medical devices.

Online sale of non-prescription medicines is permitted in France but only by holders of a community pharmacy (officine), under a regime established by Ordonnance n° 2012-1427 of 19 December 2012. A parapharmacy may not obtain such an authorisation, because its operator is not a pharmacist and the outlet is not a pharmacy.

Market context

Modern French parapharmacy has been shaped by two structural facts: the breadth of the pharmacist's monopoly, which gives pharmacies a captive market for non-prescription medicines, and the post-1980s growth of dermocosmetics, which created a high-margin category that did not need to be sold through a pharmacy and could be presented in dedicated retail formats. Large food retailers and beauty chains have built parapharmacy aisles around this category. The pharmaceutical regulator, the Agence nationale de sécurité du médicament et des produits de santé (ANSM), supervises medicinal products and certain other health products; parapharmacy products are otherwise supervised by the DGCCRF for consumer protection and by ANSES for nutrition-related safety. The Ordre national des pharmaciens publishes regularly on the boundary of the monopoly and on the interpretation of L.4211-1.

Last reviewed: May 2026.