Last night, Jessika Roswall responded to the European Parliament’s questions regarding her candidacy as the first dedicated Circular Economy Commissioner. Over the past five years, the EU has made some promising, yet clearly insufficient steps to promote a more circular economy. In fact, the EU’s Circular Material Use Rate has essentially stagnated, increasing only marginally from 10.7% in 2010 to 11.5% in 2022, highlighting the need to address gaps and to align strategies to the waste hierarchy. (1)

Cristina Ganapini, Coordinator of the Right to Repair Europe coalition, said: ‘The new mandate must move beyond the current tunnel vision on recycling to actually address waste prevention via product lifespan extension, concretely by promoting reuse and repair.’

From an environmental perspective, reuse and repair activities directly conserve the value of products and their materials at their highest level for as long as possible, minimising both waste generation and resource and energy consumption. Recycling is necessary at the very end of life only, but is counterproductive if it occurs too early, as it is energy intensive and often only a small number of minerals are extracted. Reuse and repair also lead to greater job creation with lower capital investment requirements. A focus on reuse and repair would therefore constitute a more cost-effective public policy strategy. (2) 

Finally, reuse and repair sectors substitute foreign economic activities from the linear economy with local reuse and repair activities. Thereby making the European economy more resilient and less dependent on international supply chains. (3)

Here’s why current repair and reuse measures fall short

During the past mandate, the Right to Repair Europe coalition fought hard and obtained an EU Right to Repair Directive and some progress on Ecodesign legislation. Does this mean EU citizens now have a right to repair their products? Not quite. 

The approach followed so far in adopting Ecodesign regulations separately for each product category translates into just a few product categories covered by repairability requirements. As of 2024, this amounts to just a dozen product types. For all other products out there, there are no design or repair requirements. The same painfully limited scope and slow process apply to the Right to Repair Directive. (4)

The scope is limited, but ambition is often lacking too. Looking at the Right to Repair Directive, pressure on manufacturers and retailers to actually repair products remains limited. Within guarantee, retailers are free to replace products instead of repairing them. Beyond guarantee, manufacturers are only required to repair a few parts in those few products that are covered by repairability requirements – again, currently a dozen.

Measures to level the playing field in the product lifespan extension market also remain drastically insufficient. Independent repairers and refurbishers, who make up the majority of the repair and reuse market, will continue to face anti-repair practices still legally permitted through various exceptions. Lastly, and equally crucial, provisions to ensure that repair is affordable are vague and thus legally weak. Member States are also not required to adopt a financial measure to incentivise repair, but can opt for a non-financial one. A ban on the destruction of unsold electronics is also missing from the current ESPR framework.

The right to self-repair is even more limited. (5) Lastly, EU repair scores don’t take into account spare parts prices, a crucial criterion to enable consumers to choose products that are actually repairable.

The products people own and want to repair are covered by different pieces of EU legislation. What this means is that EU right to repair differs across product categories, making it often confusing for consumers to really understand how repairable their items are. We just launched a webpage and product overview table to clarify which products are covered (and which ones are not) by which regulations, and what is in the pipeline at EU level. We want to see this list expand and turn from red to green:

Access the webpage and product overview table here

The new circular economy Commissioner must prioritise (waste) prevention over cure

• The new Circular Economy Act must set a vision coherent with the waste hierarchy. Extended Producer Responsibility schemes need to be reformed, shifting their focus from mere waste management towards waste prevention. Eco-modulation should be sufficiently high to incentivise product design changes, and EPR revenues should be earmarked to support the accessibility and affordability of repair and reuse.
• The WEEE revision must establish quantitative targets for reuse, provide the basis for substantial and eco-modulated EPR fees and avoid conflicts of interest in the governance of EPR schemes. 
• Horizontal Ecodesign requirements directly applying to a wide scope of products are needed to concretise the objectives set by the ESPR. The level of ambition must be high – providing broad and affordable access to spare parts and repair information, closing existing loopholes around anti-repair practices such as part-pairing. The new Commissioner must increase human and financial resources dedicated to ESPR development and implementation.
• The scope of the Right to Repair Directive must be expanded and a ‘reasonable price’ for spare parts must be defined with clear thresholds. (6)
• The EU needs to introduce a scoring system on repairability for all energy-related products, taking into account the affordability of repair as well as its availability.
• The EU must promote the repair and refurbishment sectors as key European industries, through political, economic and fair competition support.

Read our full policy paper “Current State of EU Right to Repair” 

Contact 
Cristina Ganapini, Coordinator of Right to Repair Europe (Brussels-based)
Mail: info@repair.eu 

ENDS

Notes to editors: 

(1) According to the EU Waste Hierarchy as per Waste Framework Directive:  preventing waste is the preferred option, and sending waste to recycling and landfills should be the last resort.

(2) LLorente and Vence, 2020 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0921344920303505?fr=RR-2&ref=pdf_download&rr=8d05fc7ad986b708 

(3) von Kolpinski and Kratzer, 2024
https://circulareconomyjournal.org/articles/zooming-out-circular-economy-development-in-the-european-union-and-its-implications-on-the-economy-and-society/ 

(4) The Right to Repair Directive applies only to the extent to which products are covered by repairability requirements under EU law, the slow process of setting these requirements under Ecodesign limits the scope and delays the application of repair rules to more products.

(5) Ecodesign regulations distinguish between consumers’ and professional repairers’ right to access to spare parts and information. A consumer does not have the right to obtain any key internal part of any product. Independent repairers can often obtain spare parts and information, but crucial actors such as refurbishers are not considered a group having this right to access.

(6) Deloitte quoted 30% for French consumers and 30-40% for Swedish consumers (presentation from Expert workshop towards increased repair of household EEE (Brussels, 2017), p. 48-49). This may be a high estimate: according to Sahra Svensson-Hoglund ea., Barriers, enablers and market governance: A review of the policy landscape for repair of consumer electronics in the EU and the U.S. (2021), “generally, the willingness to pay for repairs of small electronics has been estimated to be 20% of the replacement cost” (p. 6, citing McCollough (2007)). See also the European Commission’s Behavioural Study on Consumers’ Engagement in the Circular Economy (October 2018).

Extensive article with evidence of prohibitive spare part prices: https://repair.eu/news/the-price-is-not-right/