The European court of justice, instead of resolving the impasse, has made matters worse with its recent decision that confirmed the validity of the food supplements directive. The judgement justifies the use of lists limiting ingredients in supplements by the need for precaution (as quoted by Hanekamp):

"In those circumstances and in view of the need for the Community legislature to take account of the precautionary principle when it adopts, in the context of the policy on the internal market, measures intended to protect human health … the authors of Directive 2002/46 could reasonably take the view that an appropriate way of reconciling the objective of the internal market, on the one hand, with that relating to the protection of human health, on the other, was for entitlement to free movement to be reserved for food supplements containing substances about which, at the time when the directive was adopted, the competent European scientific authorities had available adequate and appropriate scientific data capable of providing them with the basis for a favourable opinion, whilst giving scope, in Article 4(5) of the directive, for obtaining a modification of the positive lists by reference to scientific and technological developments."

Probatio Diabolica - Misuse of the Precautionary Principle to Preempt Prevention

For all our science and the legal mumbo-jumbo that justifies bad legislation, we forget to protect human health (abundant availablility of nutrients is certainly a positive factor) in order to protect ... human health! Talk about insanity.

Hanekamp puts this into more formal language:

"This central quote of the ruling shows a number of things. First, precaution is only regarded within the context of the internal market and the protection of human health, where of course human health should prevail over economy. However, this view on micronutrients and the presumed risks involved a priori selects for scientific knowledge in league with the precautionary principle with its institutionalised mistrust and secondary risk management tendencies. More importantly, it ignores one of the basic tenets of European regulation, which in the case of micronutrients seems all the more ironic: ‘a high level of protection for human life and health’. As micronutrients cannot be characterized other than by way of a two-sided symmetrical benefits–risks profile (risk and benefits are on both sides of the micronutrients equation), the benefits of micronutrients must be an integral factor in the regulatory equation.

Secondly, the subsidiary and paradoxical role and functioning of science is highlighted in this quote. On the one hand, science should give definitive answers in relation to the issues of safety when a (new) micronutrient food supplement is brought to market. How this could be done when the precautionary principle is one of the basic principles is quite obscure. Indeed, how safe is safe enough, and what scientific results would be deemed sufficient? As said, and this cannot be emphasised enough, it can never be proven that
micronutrient food supplements do not pose any risks to any consumers. As it is possible to prove that a particular risk exists, yet impossible to prove that any and all possible risks are absent, the precautionary principle is prone to generate a probatio diabolica, which is impossible and thereby unlawful." (Added emphasis is mine)