Brussels, 12/12/2007 (Agence Europe) - On Wednesday 12 December, the European Parliament adopted the report by Klaus-Heiner Lehne (EPP-ED, Germany) on the draft directive removing automobile manufacturers' monopoly on spare parts, in the 17 member states where it still exists (see EUROPE 8785). It authorised the member states which protect spare part designs to keep this protection in place for five years after the directive comes into force, despite there being no such provision in the Commission proposal. This five-year transition period was a compromise which should help the Council find a rapid solution, Lehne said in a press release. He expected the Council would go for a longer transition period, rather than a shorter one. Stating that the completion of the internal market in this sector was the single reason behind the vote, he nonetheless challenged the argument that liberalisation would necessarily lead to a fall in prices for consumers. On the liberalised British market, spare parts cost more than in Germany, he said.
At the vote, MEPs rejected the amendment brought forward by Jean -Paul Gauzès (EPP-ED, France), who wanted a longer transition period of eight years. Nor did they accept his amendment calling on the Commission to produce a report three years after the directive was implemented analysing the effects for the industry, consumers, competition and the operation of the internal market. Gauzès and Jacques Toubon, very unhappy with the outcome of the vote, leapt to the defence of their position. The Commission claims that it will allow other companies to manufacture the spare parts and lower the cost of parts and insurance, they say in a joint press release. But, they go on, nothing has shown that these benefits for the consumer will be achieved. They believe that this proposal, which belongs to another age, runs completely counter to EU economic and trade strategy, and amounts to opening the gates to counterfeiting, by giving dangerous competitors, like China and India, the opportunity to begin frantic production of these materials.
On the previous day, during the plenary debate, Internal Market Commissioner Charlie McCreevy argued for the draft directive which dates from 2004. “Currently, there is a situation of different, opposed regimes of design production, where 10 member states have liberalised and 17 member states extend design protection to spare parts,” he said. He felt the situation in the automobile sector was “entirely unsatisfactory for the internal market”, in that “there is a single market for cars but no single market for their spare parts”. This situation “leads to distortion of prices and obstacles to trade,” he argued.
ECAR, the European Campaign for the Freedom of Automotive Parts and Repair Market, believes that the EP vote “strikes a fair balance between intellectual property protection and the need for free competition”. “Today's vote sends a strong signal to the Council of Ministers” to find a solution on this issue, said ECAR Chairman Louis Shakinivsky. Nevertheless, he rejects the idea of any transition period, which will allow car manufacturers to “litigate competition to death” and make the Repairs Clause ineffective. The car industry did not share this view. On the ACEA (European Automobile Manufacturers Association) website, it says it wants the retention, or the reintroduction of design protection throughout the EU for at least 10 years. The EP's five-year time scale cannot, it says, be a “feasible compromise”. “At a time when the EU is rightly fighting counterfeit products from other parts of the world, it is inconsistent to allow copying of car parts in the EU itself,” it says.
The draft directive relates to parts that are identical to the originals used to repair the visible parts of damaged cars: bumpers, doors, bonnets, headlamps, mudguards and windscreens. It is a market worth an estimated €10 million. The 17 member states which still protect the spares market are: Austria, Bulgaria, Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Lithuania, Malta, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia and Sweden. Belgium, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Luxemburg, the Netherlands, Spain and the United Kingdom have all liberalised their markets. Greece offers time-limited protection. Also covered by the draft directive are spare parts for household and health electrical equipment, two-wheeled vehicles and clock and watch parts. Technically, the removal of the monopoly will take place through the amendment of directive 98/71/EC on the legal protection of designs. (M.B.)