What we want
Stand up for your universal Right to Repair!
What do we expect from policy makers?
A lot of things. We do have high expectations. After all, it’s the future of the planet we are talking about! In this page there are our main key points! If instead you are looking for the detailed positions that we have released, you’ll find them here!
Good design
Products should not only be designed to perform, but also to last and to be repaired whenever needed. In order to make products which are easy to repair we need design practices which support ease of disassembly.
Our short term goal: EU legislation sets horizontal minimum design requirements to ensure easy disassembly and replacement of key components in all products.
Universal and fair access to spare parts, repair manuals & diagnostic tools
Repair should be accessible, affordable and mainstream. This means repairing a product shouldn’t cost more than buying a new one. Legal barriers shouldn’t prevent individuals, independent repairers and community repair groups from repairing broken products. We want a universal Right to repair: everyone to access spare parts and repair manuals for the entire lifetime of a product.
Our short term goal: the EU legal framework gives access to spare parts, repair information & diagnostic tools to anyone who wants to repair, for all product categories.
Informed consumers
Citizens want to know if their products are built to be repaired or destined to be disposable when breaking. Information on product repairability should be made available at the point of purchase to citizens as well as repairers.
Our short term goal: EU to introduce a Scoring System on Repairability as part of the existing energy label for all energy-consuming products
Affordability and transparency of repair
With soaring living costs and years of citizen calls for fairer access to the repair of electronics, tackling the affordability of repair is a burning issue. Affordable access to repair would render it a more attractive, or in fact viable, option for consumers. Specifically, we need access to spare parts within a reasonable time and at a reasonable cost, for a period corresponding to at least the expected lifespan of the product.
Our short term goal: EU legislation guarantees a competitive repair market, including the use of secondhand and third party spare parts, making spare parts affordable, and makes price a criterion of the EU repair index.
EU institutions could further ensure the affordability of repair by providing financial incentives to reduce prices. We wrote extensively here on the European success stories from Member States who chose to incentivize repair with financial measures.
Ban on a wide range of anti-repair practices
Techniques preventing or limiting repair beyond the networks authorised by manufacturers must be banned. This especially includes designs where the OEM has to remotely authorise a part replacement before full functionality is restored (part pairing/serialisation).
Our short term goal: Ban of contractual, hardware, firmware or software based anti-repair practices within the EU market.