Whilst America is at loggerheads, Europe is making progress on the right to redress

From today, the European directive on the right to repair must be transposed into national law in all Member States. This is not the date on which the directive comes into force – which is 2024 – but the deadline by which governments must transpose it into applicable national legislation. The principle is binding and the same across all twenty-seven countries: washing machines, vacuum cleaners, electric bicycles, smartphones... if a product is technically repairable, the manufacturer is obliged to repair it, even if it is no longer under warranty. The price must remain ‘reasonable’, as must the turnaround time. Manufacturers will have to make original spare parts and manuals available even outside their own service network, opening up access to independent repair shops. A single regulation, applicable immediately across the whole continent – at least on paper.

A comparison with the United States gives an idea of what this means. There, the same principle is advancing without central coordination, through a series of antitrust cases, state by state. New York led the way in 2022 with the Digital Fair Repair Act, but this was limited to digital electronics, so household appliances are excluded. California followed suit in 2023 with SB 244, which came into force the following year and was even supported by Apple; it features a price threshold of $50 below which the obligation does not apply, and contains no rules on ‘parts pairing’ – the practice of using software to link a spare part to a single device, preventing non-original components from functioning. Colorado has only introduced legislation this year, but with a more stringent law that explicitly prohibits such linking, albeit with exceptions for medical and safety equipment. Minnesota and Oregon are following their own paths, with differing implementation timelines. In short, there is no federal law in the US. The point of reference remains the Federal Trade Commission, which, since 2021, through its report “Nixing the Fix”, has been documenting manufacturers’ restrictive practices, without, however, ever having introduced any actual regulation. The most significant action has been through the courts: John Deere settled for $99 million with farmers who were claiming the right to repair their own tractors, and remains under investigation by the FTC. A quarter of the US population now lives in a state with a repair law in force. The other three-quarters do not, and the rules change when moving from one state to another.

At least this time, the tortoise has beaten Achilles. Europe, the continent that often portrays itself as the realm of cumbersome and stifling bureaucracy, has, in this instance, beaten the home of the free market to the punch. Not so much for ideological reasons, of course, but because a single directive avoids twenty-seven separate local negotiations, twenty-seven lobbying battles and twenty-seven different compromises on the same principle.

The most practical aspect of the directive concerns competition amongst repairers. Until now, manufacturers have kept independent repair shops out of the after-sales service market by using software to block unauthorised repairs – for example, through the serialisation of components, which links a spare part to a single device and disables functions or reports a fault if the component is not ‘paired’ with proprietary software – or by denying access to original spare parts. This vertical control over the entire product lifecycle kept the cost of repairs close to that of buying a new unit. “We used to be on the sidelines of the process; now we are finally at the heart of the after-sales service,” Mattia Borghi, president of the CNA Association of Household Appliance Repairers, explained to Vanity Fair. A statement that can be interpreted as a sigh of relief for the sector, but also as confirmation that a cartel is beginning to crumble. 

There remains a margin of doubt regarding implementation. The text states that repairs must be carried out ‘free of charge or at a reasonable price’ and ‘within a reasonable time’: vague definitions, left largely to the competitive pressures of the market. Experience suggests that multinationals will know how to use this vagueness to their advantage, perhaps by selling extended warranty packages before the original warranty expires. The real test will come in a year’s time: by 31 July 2027, the European Commission must launch a single platform to connect consumers, independent repairers, sellers of refurbished goods and participatory repair initiatives such as Repair Cafés.

Furthermore, Italy is already behind schedule on a deadline that wasn’t even the first available: the directive dates back to 2024, and member states had two years to prepare, yet here the legislative decree transposing it has nevertheless been extended by a further three months. Altroconsumo, in a statement by its head of external relations, Federico Cavallo, confirms that the Italian parliamentary process will be postponed until the end of August. The association also highlights two shortcomings: the government has not provided any financial incentives for repairs – unlike, for example, France with its vouchers – and the new rules will still have a transitional period of around one year before they have any tangible impact for consumers.