Foundations

What is parapharmacy

Parapharmacy is a European retail and regulatory category for health-adjacent and personal-care products that fall outside the pharmacist's monopoly on medicines. It exists, with country-specific definitions, in France, Italy, Spain, Portugal and Belgium, and is not directly recognised at the level of European Union law.

Etymology and origin

The word parapharmacy is built from the Greek prefix para-, meaning "alongside" or "beside", and pharmacy. The intended sense is products and outlets that sit beside pharmacy proper — close to it in commercial and cultural terms, but distinct from it in legal terms. The corresponding nouns in continental European languages are parapharmacie in French, parafarmacia in Italian and Spanish, and parafarmácia in Portuguese. These terms designate both an aisle of products and, in several countries, a specific kind of shop.

English has no native equivalent. American "drugstore" is a different concept — historically a pharmacy that also sells general merchandise — and British "chemist" refers to the pharmacy itself. As a result, English-language sources tend to borrow the continental terms or describe the category by paraphrase. This site adopts parapharmacy as a loanword.

A national category, not a European one

There is no European Union definition of "parapharmacy". EU law regulates the products sold in parapharmacies — cosmetics, food supplements, medical devices, biocides — through dedicated instruments such as Regulation (EC) No 1223/2009 on cosmetic products, Regulation (EU) 2017/745 on medical devices, and Directive 2002/46/EC on food supplements. But the question of who may sell those products, and through what kind of outlet, is left to national law.

Member States have answered this question differently. France, Italy, Spain, Belgium and Portugal each recognise a parapharmacy retail format that is legally distinct from the licensed pharmacy. Germany, by contrast, has no equivalent retail category: the Drogerie chains that sell cosmetics and food supplements are simply ordinary retailers, while medicines are confined to Apotheken. The United Kingdom historically allowed certain medicines to be sold in general retail (the "GSL" — General Sale List — category) without any intermediate "para" tier.

The practical consequence is that the boundary between what a parapharmacy may sell and what is reserved to pharmacies varies from country to country. A non-prescription analgesic that can be sold by a supermarket in Italy may be reserved to a pharmacy in France. A page-by-page comparison of these national frameworks is provided in the country entries on France, Italy, Spain, Belgium and Portugal.

Products typically sold

While the precise list varies by jurisdiction, the categories of product habitually associated with parapharmacy across Europe are:

• Dermocosmetics — cosmetic products positioned for the care of skin with particular characteristics (sensitive, atopic-prone, oily, mature, photo-aged). Regulated as cosmetics under Regulation (EC) No 1223/2009, not as medicines.
• Sun protection — sunscreens are classified as cosmetic products in the EU and are listed in Annex VI of the Cosmetic Regulation when they contain authorised UV filters.
• Food supplements — vitamins, minerals and other substances with nutritional or physiological effect, presented in dose form. Governed by Directive 2002/46/EC and national implementing law.
• Oral hygiene — toothpastes, mouthwashes, interdental products. Most are cosmetics; some with specific claims may be medical devices or medicines.
• Infant and maternity care — formula milks (regulated separately as foods for specific groups), nappy creams, soothing preparations.
• Low-risk medical devices — wound dressings, plasters, thermometers, certain saline solutions, compression hosiery. Governed by Regulation (EU) 2017/745 and bearing the CE mark.
• Herbal preparations — depending on presentation and claim, these are sold as food supplements, cosmetics, or — when classified as traditional herbal medicinal products — as medicines, which would remove them from parapharmacy in most jurisdictions.
• Hygiene and personal care — shampoos, body washes, deodorants, intimate hygiene products. All cosmetics, often overlapping with supermarket retail.

What unites these categories is regulatory: none of them is, by definition, a medicinal product. They do not need a marketing authorisation from the European Medicines Agency or a national medicines authority, and they are not subject to the dispensation rules that govern medicines.

The boundary with the pharmacy monopoly

In most EU Member States, the dispensing of medicinal products is reserved to pharmacies. A "medicinal product" is defined at EU level in Directive 2001/83/EC (the Community code relating to medicinal products for human use) by reference to two criteria: the product is presented as having properties for treating or preventing disease, or it is administered with a view to restoring, correcting or modifying physiological functions by exerting a pharmacological, immunological or metabolic action. Anything meeting either criterion is a medicinal product, regardless of how the maker labels it.

This definition is decisive for parapharmacy. A cream marketed as moisturising is a cosmetic; the same cream, marketed as treating a dermatological condition, would be a medicinal product and could not be sold in a parapharmacy. The legal category of a product is determined by its presentation and its function, not by the retailer's preference.

National laws then divide the medicinal-product world further. Some EU countries reserve all medicines — prescription and non-prescription alike — to pharmacies. Others (Italy and Portugal, for example) allow non-prescription medicines to be sold outside pharmacies, subject to conditions including the presence of a registered pharmacist on the retail premises. This split is the principal source of cross-border variation in what a parapharmacy may stock. The dedicated page on parapharmacy vs. pharmacy sets out the comparison in detail.

Retail formats

Parapharmacy as a retail format takes several shapes:

• Standalone parapharmacies, typically located outside hospital and clinical districts and oriented towards dermocosmetics, supplements and personal care. Common in France, Italy and Spain.
• Parapharmacy aisles within hyper- and supermarkets. In France, large-format grocery retailers operate dedicated parapharmacy sections.
• Parapharmacy chains and franchised networks, sometimes integrated with a separately licensed pharmacy in the same building.
• Online parapharmacies, which in some jurisdictions are subject to authorisation regimes similar to those governing online pharmacies.

The retail format does not by itself change the legal classification of the products on the shelf: a moisturiser is a cosmetic whether it is sold by a chemist, a parapharmacist or a supermarket. The format does, however, determine which non-cosmetic categories can be added, and under what conditions of personnel and premises.

Which rules apply to which products

A parapharmacy is, from a regulatory point of view, a retailer of products spanning several EU regimes. The principal regimes are summarised on this site:

• Cosmetic products — Regulation (EC) No 1223/2009.
• Medical devices — Regulation (EU) 2017/745 (MDR).
• Food supplements — Directive 2002/46/EC, implemented through national law.
• Nutrition and health claims on foods, including supplements — Regulation (EC) No 1924/2006.
• Biocidal products (some disinfectants and insect repellents) — Regulation (EU) No 528/2012.

Enforcement is the role of national authorities: ANSM in France, AIFA in Italy, AEMPS in Spain, INFARMED in Portugal, FAMHP in Belgium, BfArM and BVL in Germany, and the MHRA in the United Kingdom. Each supervises some combination of medicinal products, medical devices, cosmetics and food supplements according to its national mandate.

Online sales

Online sale of parapharmacy products is generally permitted under EU free-movement rules, but several conditions attach. Online sale of non-prescription medicines from a Member State that allows it (such as Italy or Portugal) is subject to a national authorisation regime and to display of the EU common logo for legal online pharmacies, established under Directive 2011/62/EU (the Falsified Medicines Directive). Pure parapharmacy products — cosmetics, food supplements, low-risk medical devices — can usually be sold online without a specific licence, although the seller remains responsible for compliance with the relevant product regulations: notification of the cosmetic to the EU Cosmetic Products Notification Portal (CPNP), authorised health claims on supplements, CE marking on devices.

Last reviewed: May 2026.