The European Parliament’s negotiating group, represented by Alex Saliba (S&D, Malta), and the French Presidency of the EU Council have reached a provisional agreement extending the scope of the directive on radio equipment and a common charger for electronic devices.
“It is a historic day for the Internal Market Committee and also for the European Parliament, because basically we have been pushing for this (a revision of the directive) for more than 10 years (see EUROPE 10931/22)”, the rapporteur Alex Saliba told a press briefing, saying the agreement should save consumers around €250 million a year and avoid the unnecessary purchase of up to 14,000 tonnes of chargers per year.
The rapporteur immediately clarified one point: the revision does not only concern smartphones, but 15 types of electronic devices. Thus, the scope includes mobile phones and similar devices, such as tablets, digital cameras, headphones and earphones, portable video game consoles and portable speakers, all of which will eventually need to be rechargeable via a USB Type-C wired cable, regardless of the brand of the device. Laptops, e-readers, headsets, keyboards, computer mice and portable navigation devices have been added by the co-legislators.
The implementation period is 24 months in total (12 months after the end of the transposition of the Directive), except for computers, which is 40 months. “This is the biggest compromise, yes, compared to our initial position”, acknowledged the rapporteur to EUROPE, recalling that the Parliament’s initial position was 15 months. “We did not want to risk not closing under the French Presidency (of the EU Council), because we would have lost an additional six months waiting for the Czech Presidency”, he justified.
For wireless charging technologies, the European Commission is obliged to ask the standardisation bodies for a period of 24 months after the entry into force of the directive to develop standards. Originally, the European Commission did not put any time limit in its proposal (see EUROPE 12797/1).
Another important point is the decoupling of the sale of the device, the charger and the cable in the agreement. For the time being, this decoupling will be done on a voluntary basis. For mandatory decoupling, the issue will have to be decided within four years by the European Commission, we were told.
Apple and US government interference
At the press conference, the Commissioner for the Internal Market, Thierry Breton, clarified the situation for the US manufacturer Apple, which has always been very critical of this proposal (see EUROPE 12836/26). “Of course, the rule applies to everyone! It is not against anyone”, he said.
“If I were a European company, I don’t think I would allow myself to say to the White House office: This is exactly the regulation you have to do, because it is in my interest to do it”, he clarified, hoping that European companies would not do the same in the US.
Responding to EUROPE, the Commissioner paid lip service to the fact that there had been attempts to influence the text directly by the US authorities. “Have there been any attempts (...)? Yes, perhaps, but in the end, we explained ourselves very clearly. These attempts, even if at the beginning there may have been some hesitation, were very quickly reduced”.
On fears of stifling innovation, the Commissioner assured that the rules would stimulate innovation and he was confident that Apple and other industries would innovate too.
The agreement is expected to be submitted “shortly” to the Committee of Permanent Representatives (Coreper I), we were told by the French Presidency of the EU Council.
In 2020, about 420 million mobile phones and other portable electronic devices were sold in the EU, the institution said in a press release published the same day.
More than a third of consumers say they have experienced problems, while spending around €2.4 billion a year on chargers. At the same time, discarded and unused chargers contribute to the generation of around 11,000 tonnes of e-waste each year, according to the Commission.
The voluntary approach proposed in the 2009 directive (see EUROPE 9931/7) has reduced the types of mobile phone chargers from 30 to 3 over a decade, but has not achieved full harmonisation, says the EU institution. (Original version in French by Pascal Hansens)