“Repairing is too expensive”. Most of us have heard or said this at least once when dealing with a broken product or appliance. Costly repairs and spare parts act as a major barrier to repair and waste prevention, often pushing consumers towards early replacement (1). Our coalition already investigated and denounced this issue, monitoring spare parts prices over the years for a variety of products and finding outrageously high variations, often leading to spare parts costing just as much or more than the product itself off the shelf (2).
Clearly, this leaves little room for repair scenarios if a product breaks down. And even in less extreme cases, spare parts prices may still act as a barrier to repair. Research shows that consumers generally choose to replace rather than repair a product if the cost of repair is over 30% of the price of a new product (3). Considering that repair costs are composed of spare parts, labour costs and/or transportation, it’s clear that it is necessary for spare parts prices to be well below 30% of a new product not to hinder repair. Otherwise, what’s the point of having products that are technically repairable but are too costly to actually get repaired?
(Un)reasonable prices
Years of campaigning, including numerous written contributions pushing for measures aimed at prohibitive spare parts prices, and even hosting our very own version of “the price is (not) right” game with EU policymakers in 2023, we have started to see this issue increasingly referenced in EU legislation and in current policy debates. As you might have guessed already, however, the progress achieved so far is nowhere near sufficient.
While the Common Rules Promoting the Repair of Goods and the Batteries Regulation both reference and mandate “reasonable” and “non-discriminatory” spare parts prices, these lack clear criteria for implementation (4). If the interpretation of what is a reasonable price is left to national courts, as would be the case if no guidelines are provided by the Commission, risks of fragmentation of the EU market are significant. Heterogeneous interpretations might coexist in the internal market, and result in non-harmonised price criteria, increasing complexity and legal risks for manufacturers and retailers, inexorably leading to longer legal cases, ultimately leaving consumers unable to benefit from reasonable spare parts prices. Harmonised requirements on spare parts prices would thus be beneficial to the functioning of the EU internal market.
Under the framework of the Ecodesign for Sustainable Products Regulation (ESPR), the Commission envisioned potential repairability requirements to be applied horizontally, to more products at once. This means we now have a unique chance to finally address barriers to repair across the board and more efficiently, but it is crucial for the price of spare parts to be seriously considered among them, and addressed horizontally. These horizontal repairability requirements were also discussed in the first Ecodesign Forum meeting in February 2025, and our coalition sent feedback specifically on their inclusion in the first ESPR Working Plan, their scope and ambition, and the importance of addressing prohibitive spare parts prices.
Let’s fix this: our proposal
The issue of high spare parts prices can be fixed with regulation or through (fair) competition. Ideally, one needs both to work together, requiring manufacturers to offer spare parts at truly reasonable and non-discriminatory prices, and ensuring transparency for consumers and a level playing field for the use of new original parts, aftermarket parts and used parts (5). Seeing as today none of these two scenarios reflect reality, this was precisely the starting point of our own proposal to address spare parts prices, outlined in our latest white paper.
- Binding information requirements: manufacturers should, at the very least, be required to commit to the pre-tax spare parts prices they declare and share with consumers (as they are already required to do for products and spare parts covered by Ecodesign regulations). In other words, the declared price of spare parts should not simply be indicative, but a binding commitment. Manufacturers would be free to declare a higher price, but would then be required not to overshoot it (6). The price list could be updated annually to account for inflation, and penalties should be in place for non-compliance.
- Inclusion of price in repairability scores: repairability scores across the EU should take into account the price of spare parts as a scoring criterion (7), and introduce a limiting factors approach. Only then they will be representative of the true repairability of a product for consumers. Our proposal contains a methodology to make this possible, taking the 30% threshold as the limit for the minimum sub-score, and assigning a proportionate weight to the price criterion. In spite of past claims that price volatility complicates regulation and scoring (8), making the declared price a binding information requirement for manufacturers would allow for this solution.
Both of these measures are necessary to really allow consumers to make informed decisions when purchasing a product, and to enable them to actually repair it when it breaks down, avoiding scenarios where a technically repairable product still ends up being disposed of because of prohibitive spare parts prices. This approach and methodology is supported by various stakeholders like Fnac Darty, Leroy Merlin, and the European Consumer Electronics Retail Council, reflecting its economic significance. Fair spare parts pricing is essential and strategic to protect consumer purchasing power, enable repair and products lifespan extension, support European SMEs and promote local reuse and repair jobs, strengthening Europe’s circular economy and strategic autonomy. To achieve this, however, a horizontal and harmonised approach is needed and must be followed at EU level.
Read more in our white paper!
- The price of spare parts was the most frequently cited barrier in a 2019 study by ADEME, by 68% of consumers. The repair price was also identified as the most decisive factor influencing consumer’s decisions to repair in Fnac’s Baromètre SAV (2022). In 2024, a report by the Open Repair Alliance also found the price of spare parts to be a top factor in determining failures to repair products brought to community repair events.
- See examples we gathered for vacuum cleaner batteries, washing machine circuit boards, grass trimmer motors, laptop chargers, dishwasher baskets, oven glass doors, in our previous blogpost. Independent appliance repair technicians have also reported that parts prices have made many appliances “too expensive to fix,” with some mentioning manufacturers marking up parts prices by 3x or more, see Right to Repair Coalition, Investigation of Barriers to Appliance Service Information Access (2023), p.64.
- In its 2025 study Étude sur les pièces détachées pour la réparation, ADEME found that for a product to be repaired, the cost of repair must not exceed 30% of the product’s purchase price. Their survey study from 2019 (see previous note) showed that when the repair cost exceeds 25%, half of the respondents will opt for replacement. The Impact Assessment Study for the Common Rules Promoting the Repair of Goods found that the limit of an acceptable repair price is on average around 20% of the product purchase price (see Impact Assessment Report, p. 17). This threshold is also proposed by Florent Curel et al., Rendre la réparation accessible (2023).
- The obligation to provide spare parts at a reasonable price will be applicable from July 2026 onwards for products covered by repairability requirements under Ecodesign (by virtue of Directive (EU) 2024/1799 on common rules promoting the repair of goods) and from February 2027 onwards for products containing portable batteries (by virtue of Regulation (EU) 2023/1542 concerning batteries and waste batteries).
- Our coalition has long denounced anti-repair practices such as parts pairing which restrict the use of aftermarket and used spare parts, reinforcing a monopolistic position of the manufacturer and often contributing to high price variations for original spare parts.
- It is sometimes suggested that an obligation to commit to certain prices would be at odds with a free internal market. In this context, Regulation 2015/2120 on electronic communication networks represents a precedent, already requiring providers to offer the same rates for roaming customers across the EU as they charge locally. Mobile providers are free to set their prices as they like, however are required to then stick to them and offer the same rates across the EU – exactly the sort of commitment that we propose for spare parts prices.
- The French Indice de Reparabilité already includes the price of spare parts as a criterion, as shown in their scoring methodology.
- This argument was presented by JRC staff in a 2024 stakeholder meeting on repairability scoring for computers, and later included in a wider JRC product relevance scoping study for repairability scoring in 2025.