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As of mid-2026, despite a surge of applications following the 2019 ruling, not a single CBD product has successfully completed the full Novel Food authorization process and received final approval from the European Commission for sale as a food supplement across all member states. While a small number of applications have advanced to the risk assessment stage with EFSA, the overwhelming majority have been terminated, withdrawn, or rejected outright. The most notable example occurred in early 2025 when EFSA officially closed the applications of a prominent Israeli CBD producer, citing the company’s failure to address critical data gaps regarding the product’s stability, its precise chemical identity, and the presence of process-induced contaminants. Other applications have been withdrawn voluntarily by companies that realized they could not meet the prohibitive costs of the required long-term animal studies or who were unable to source CBD isolates with sufficient purity to satisfy EFSA’s exacting standards. This approval vacuum has created a peculiar legal grey area across Europe. While individual member states have proceeded to regulate CBD under their own national food supplement frameworks, the lack of an EU-wide authorization means that no product can legally benefit from the mutual recognition principle that normally allows goods to circulate freely between member states. Consequently, the European market is currently dominated by CBD oils sold as “cosmetics” or by vaporization products, which fall under different regulatory regimes, and by ingestible products that are legally compliant in some countries but technically unapproved at the European level, exposing importers and retailers to significant legal uncertainty and the risk of product seizures by national enforcement authorities.