Is Melatonin legal in Cyprus?

Formal status

There is no EU-harmonised rule for melatonin. It sits outside the cannabinoid framework entirely and is governed nationally, member state by member state - limits range from 0.3 mg in Belgium to 2 mg in Spain, with several countries setting none at all. The one EU-level figure is the authorised health claim in Regulation (EU) 432/2012, which is conditional on 1 mg per quantified portion.

We identified no Cypriot national maximum for melatonin and no Cypriot decision reclassifying it as a medicine. Cyprus runs food supplements through a notification and licensing regime administered by the Ministry of Health's Public Health Services, under which a product already lawfully distributed as a food supplement in another EU member state ordinarily requires notification rather than a full licence. We found no national list of restricted other substances carrying maximum levels.

Cypriot retail practice matches that reading. Melatonin is stocked by Cypriot pharmacies and supplement retailers as an ordinary food supplement at 1 mg and at several multiples of it, sold without prescription.

Do we sell here?

Yes: Sleep spray, Sleep capsules.

We ship to Cyprus, and of the four ingredients we track, melatonin is the least complicated one here.

Cyprus sets no maximum dose for melatonin in food supplements and has taken no decision treating it as a medicine. Our 1 mg is also precisely the amount the EU's own authorised sleep claim is conditioned on, which makes it the standard dose rather than an unusual one.

That is not only a gap in the rulebook. Melatonin sits on Cypriot pharmacy shelves at 1 mg and at several times that, sold as an everyday supplement with no prescription involved - about as plain a signal as exists that our dose is unremarkable here.

This page used to be more guarded, because we had found no Cypriot rule and were unwilling to read a missing rule as permission. The positive evidence we were waiting for is now in hand.

Whether we can ship to Cyprus at all is settled by the CBD rules rather than by melatonin - our CBD page carries the fuller country picture.

Outlook

Nothing indicates Cyprus is preparing a melatonin rule in either direction. Were one to arrive, the likeliest shape is a national maximum of the kind several member states already set, and at 1 mg we would sit at or beneath almost every figure currently in use across the EU. We review this regularly.