At the end of 2019, the newly appointed European Commission presented its Green Deal which, as its \u201cman on the moon moment\u201d, was supposed to steer every future policy towards sustainability and green ambitions. Of course, this news sparked a lot of enthusiasm across the continent including for us – as we knew this was a historic opportunity to bring the issue of repair as an essential component of a sustainable society into the front of the scene.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We kicked off the year by launching the #LongLiveMyPhone campaign to raise awareness about the many issues that prevent us from using smartphones for longer and repairing them, and what should policy makers do to fix the problem. Over 26,000 people signed our petition. We organised stunts in Belgium, Germany and the UK calling for our \u201cdisposable\u201d economy to end, while pushing behind the scenes for policy makers to set minimum requirements that would force manufacturers like Samsung, Huawei and Apple to design smartphones that can be easily disassembled and repaired.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In March, we received the big news that the European Commission was promising<\/a> a \u2018new right to repair\u2019 in its Circular Economy Action Plan (one of the foundations of the Green Deal), committing to making sustainable products the norm and putting the focus on electronics and ICT devices, starting with smartphones.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Since then, we\u2019ve participated in many consultations and talked to EU policy makers to ensure any future policies about repair are as ambitious as claimed and don\u2019t get watered down by the industry. For instance, we had to publicly call out<\/a> the industry when they asked the EU to delay already-agreed regulations using Covid as a reason.<\/p>\n\n\n\n More recently, we received the support of the European Parliament! MEPs were voting on a report on sustainable products which included elements on the premature obsolescence of devices and the mandatory labelling of products on repairability. After weeks of opposition where conservative and liberal parties tried to water down the original, more ambitious version of the report<\/a>, the final vote<\/a> was a clear signal from the Parliament that MEPs support Right to Repair and they\u2019re ready to stand by consumers and the environment in the fight against obsolescence!<\/p>\n\n\n\n And it\u2019s not just happening in Brussels! All across Europe<\/a>, measures are being developed and adopted towards making repair the norm! <\/p>\n\n\n\n![\"Right](\"https:\/\/repair.eu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/03\/SmartphoneCrimeScene-1024x416.jpg\")
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