Debate: Right to repair
Date: THURSDAY, 7 APRIL 2022
Speaker: Anna Cavazzini
Country: Netherlands
Language: EN

All smart phones together in Europe are responsible for 40 million tonnes of emissions each year. This is more than the carbon budget of Latvia.  Yet most of us throw this precious device away after not even three years, and the result of this is 4 billion tonnes of electronic waste per year in the EU alone and the fastest growing waste stream in the world.  This can no longer go on; the linear economy has to come to an end. We have to start thinking and producing in circles. After years of just talking about it and some cosmetic reforms, we finally need a true circular economy. Last week, the European Commission presented the ecodesign for sustainable products regulation. Mandatory sustainability criteria for all products in the single market  – this can be the end of the throwaway society. The digital product passport and better information for consumers will create transparency along the supply chains and improve consumer choice. Future products made in the EU will be longer-lasting and recyclable, and innovative businesses will have new market chances. I highly welcome these overdue steps, and I think we really can come to a proper, sustainable single market with that. But it is not enough. If you have already tried to have your broken coffee machine repaired, you might have experienced that the shop does not take it back or the repair shop of your choice is not licensed to do it. It doesn’t have the spare parts, or the manual. And if you were lucky to find a repairer able to do it, it would be very costly and affect your legal guarantee. Another example: a few months ago, a tiny plastic handle broke off from my fridge. I called the shop and the only option they offered me was to replace the entire fridge – the entire fridge because of a tiny little plastic device.  We want to put an end to this. Today, the European Parliament demands a proper right to repair for consumers. We want to enable consumers to make a sustainable choice. We want to give consumers the right to choose to repair their products. We want to empower them to play their part in the green transition. And do you know what? Seventy—nine percent of EU citizens want the right to repair. Today the European Parliament lives up to these expectations. There is a proper repair culture emerging all over Europe, or should I say, re—emerging because the older generations know repair much better than I would probably do. For me, it is beautiful to see, when I visit repair shops all over Germany that older retired citizens are showing young people how to repair electric devices or how hackerspaces collect old computers and make them fit again. In our resolution today, we ask the Commission to present a right to repair for exactly all of those people, all of those EU citizens who want to repair. All actors in the repair sector and consumers must have access to spare parts, to manuals and to software updates at a reasonable cost. Consumers must be able to recognise a product’s durability and repairability on easily readable labels while standing in the shop and wondering what to buy. Consumers need more incentives under the Sales of Goods Directive to actually choose repair over replacement and a longer legal guarantee for certain products. We also demand to take a look at enhanced producer liability because, in the end, producers must be responsible for the product.  So, more sustainable products and more rights to consumers have to go hand in hand. Consumers must become the driving force of the green transition of the sustainable single market. I thank all the colleagues in the IMCO Committee very much for the very good cooperation and hope we have a strong majority today for our resolution.