The EU cosmetic annexes are not rewritten; they are amended. A Commission regulation adds a substance to Annex II, or moves one from Annex III to Annex II, or tightens the concentration at which it may be used, and the annexes carry on with that change folded in. The inventory records, against each entry, which act the entry's present wording comes from.

That makes a useful question answerable in reverse: given an act, which substances did it set? A formulator who has read that Regulation (EU) 2023/1545 changed fragrance allergen labelling wants the 62 Annex III entries it produced, not a legal text to read. A regulatory file that cites an act wants the same list.

The limit is worth being precise about, because it decides how every number here should be read. An entry names one act, and it is the most recent one to have set its text. If a 2019 regulation added a substance and a 2023 regulation changed its conditions, that entry now cites 2023 and appears only under 2023. So these pages describe the state of the annexes, not the work each act did: an act's page shows what still stands from it, and an act whose every change was later superseded would show nothing at all.

The largest group is the base regulation itself. Regulation (EC) 2009/1223 accounts for 1,574 entries, which is not a measure of its importance so much as of how much of the original annexes has never needed amending since 2009. The amending acts, by contrast, are small and specific — most touch fewer than thirty entries, and half touch fewer than five.