Amid discussions on new EU repair rules and in celebration of International Repair Day we organised a game-stunt in front of the European Parliament. Watch the 5-min video summary and sign our letter to policymakers!
Did you know that consumers tend to replace a product if the price of a repair is more than 30%-40% of a device’s price? And did you know that many spare parts cost much more than that? How can we expect #RepairForEveryone when the price of repair is so high? We cannot! We need to reduce the cost of repair and of spare parts to encourage repair over replacement.
Ahead of the vote of the Internal Market and Consumer Protection Committee (IMCO) of the EU Parliament on new repair rules we organised a mock game of « The Price is Right – Repair Edition » to show EU politicians the absurd prices of spare parts.
Despite heavy rain, several EU politicians and representatives from environmental youth organisations joined us to try and estimate the price of spare parts for actual products. They were shocked to find out the unfair reality of spare part prices.
Also thanks to our pressure, the IMCO vote resulted in the approval of several useful provisions to tackle the high cost of repair, such as the promotion of an open repair ecosystem and the ban of anti-repair practices. Even if still too few products would be covered by these rules, this is a huge win for our campaign and we should celebrate it together! We expect that this will result in the whole Parliament adopting this position in plenary in November.
Despite the good news, we won’t be able to rest yet, because without the support of the Council, aka our national authorities, all this progress will be lost. Influencing Member States and ultimately the Council position is vital as the whole process will culminate in « trilogues » where the EU Parliament, Comission and Council will have to agree on a final text.
Member States will make a decision on their position by the end of November, and this is where you come in: use the tool below to ask your national representatives to vote for truly game-changing legislation – in just a few clicks. If you can, please add something in your native language, as it will be sent to EU representatives from your country.