Joint Call for a clear, unequivocal and immediately applicable EU Repair Clause

13/04/2023

On 13 April 2023, six European professional federations (AIRC, CLEPA, ECAR, FIGIEFA, Insurance Europe, SME United) have signed a Joint Call for a clear, unequivocal and immediately applicable EU Repair Clause in the revised design legislation, in view of enabling the right to repair for all consumers.

The Joint Call follows the European Commission’s proposals to revise the EU Design Directive (COM(2022) 667) and the EU Design Regulation (COM(2022) 666), dated from 28 November 2022, and now pending adoption in the European Parliament and the Council.

The repair clause is a crucial pre-condition to enable consumers’ right to affordable repairs, in particular (but not only) in the automotive sector. As reported in the explanatory memorandum of the Commission’s proposal, the impact assessment has emphasized the large benefits to society that could be delivered by a full repair clause (applying both to existing and new designs), with more than 500 million EUR of annual savings for consumers, thanks to increased price competition in repair services and spare parts.

However, such benefits will be seriously hampered in the proposed legislation, which imposes a compulsory 10-year transition period on existing designs for the Member States that do not have yet a national repair clause in place. In other words: all existing products (such as vehicles) will simply be excluded from the scope of the EU Repair Clause in almost half of Europe, for 10 more years.

We urgently call on the European Parliament and the Council to agree on a shorter and flexible transition period, leaving to Member States the choice to apply the EU Repair Clause on all designs in advance, and no longer than 3 years after entry into force. This would leave sufficient time for proper transposition, in line with the usual practice for Directives.

We also call on the European Parliament and the Council to improve clarity and legal certainty in the wording of the repair clause, by removing the undue restriction to “form-dependent component parts”, and the unclear and redudant information requirements.

Read the Joint Call and recommendations here