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In a new Special Edition of Ambient Legal’s “Around Latin America” newsletter, Melissa Owen rounds up the year’s regulatory highlights in Mexico, emphasizing that these new regulations have made it more difficult to enter the Mexican market, but are playing a crucial role in “building a legal framework for producer responsibility and (perhaps) chemical management.” Rather than focusing solely on getting products through customs and obtaining permits, companies must now consider compliance requirements across the entire lifecycle of a product.
These new regulations include increased scrutiny on customs declarations for chemical imports, an expansion of the powers of COFEPRIS (Mexico’s FDA analog), and a move to a cumbersome electronic valuation declaration system. Meanwhile, for products already on the market, COFEPRIS is taking steps that are “making regulatory processes easier while making noncompliance harder to hide,” by expanding its digital advertising surveillance program, consolidating administrative processes, and reforming regulations for novel pesticides.
Mexico enacted its first Circular Economy Law in January, which focuses heavily on producer responsibility. If the new law’s regulations are implemented, producers, importers, exporters, and distributors will now be obligated to design, register, and execute a plan covering the entire post-consumer lifecycle for covered products, which include used lubricants and solvents, catalytic converters, batteries, lamps, certain additives, pharmaceuticals, and pesticides with residues in their containers.
In a surprising move, Mexico, which has been the main outlier in the region when it comes to adopting chemical management frameworks that resemble EU REACH, has revived a draft chemical framework law that has been in development since 2019. The country has also introduced a draft standard that would add 36 substances to the hazardous-substance reporting list under NOM-165 and define carcinogenicity, mutagenicity and teratogenicity as separate criteria with specific thresholds. Another draft standard posted for public comment would cap total lead in paints and related products at 90 ppm and require GHS-based labels for thinners, varnishes, enamels, primers, lacquers, pigments, sealers, printing inks and more. This would mark the first instance of Mexico requiring GHS labeling for products used outside of the workplace.
Click here to read “Mexico Special Edition: 2026 Regulatory Highlights”.
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