It is high time that the European Union adopted legislation to guarantee consumers a real right to repair products and to enable them to move towards sustainable consumption by offering them the possibility of choosing more sustainable products, MEPs insisted on Thursday 7 April in Strasbourg.
The resolution tabled by Anna Cavazzini (Greens/EFA, Germany) to formalise their long-standing demands was adopted by an overwhelming majority (509 votes in favour, 3 against, 13 abstentions) to provide the Commission with a concrete and ambitious roadmap ahead of its legislative proposal, which has been delayed for several months.
An effective right to repair must include the design of sustainable products that can be repaired, better consumer information labelling and extended warranty rights, say MEPs.
The Parliament calls for measures to encourage consumers to choose repair rather than replacement, free access to repair and maintenance information for repairers - especially independent repairers - and consumers.
It calls for better consumer access to affordable spare parts, harmonised rules on consumer information, including repair rates, estimated lifetime, spare parts and availability of software updates.
It also requires that software updates should not impair the performance of digital products.
The resolution takes up in full the position of the Parliament’s Committee on the Internal Market and Consumer Protection (IMCO) (see EUROPE 12912/17). The two amendments of the ECR group asking to avoid too many burdens for industry and distributors were rejected.
The topical debate that preceded the vote gave MEPs the opportunity to question the Commission on its intentions, beyond the 30 March proposal for a regulation on the ecodesign of sustainable products (see EUROPE 12922/1) and the corollary initiative on transparency and reliability of consumer information (see EUROPE 12922/4).
These are promising proposals for ‘a sustainable Single Market', Anna Cavazzini hopes, “but they are not enough” to put an end to the “throwaway society” and its trail of waste, in favour of a more resource-efficient and clean circular economy.
Commission Vice-President Věra Jourová said her institution was considering an initiative on extending product guarantees.
“Our services are doing the groundwork”, she said. The public consultation ended on 5 April and will feed into an impact assessment.
After the debate, Ms Jourová welcomed the fact that the Parliament and the Commission were “on the same wavelength”.
“We all want more sustainable consumption”, she said, adding that a right to repair is a holistic approach, requiring “coordinated measures in different sectors to reconcile all aspects of the issue”: ensuring sustainable consumption and the interests of industry, manufacturers, distributors and repairers.
All this while avoiding disproportionate costs and high prices for consumers. “It has to be a win-win situation”, she summarised.
She said she was counting on the support of the European Parliament for the proposals already on the table and for the one to come.
See the resolution: https://aeur.eu/f/16f (Original version in English by Aminata Niang)