European Parliament: electronics should be easy to repair or upgrade

The European Parliament wants consumers to be able to easily repair or upgrade electronics such as smartphones and laptops. In this way, Parliament wants to save the environment and, moreover, there should be more companies in Europe for repair and sale of second-hand electronics.

Parliament calls on the European Commission to legislate that users can easily repair and upgrade devices. Therefore, replacement parts should be available at reasonable prices and components such as batteries should be easy to replace.

The call is at odds with the trend in recent years in electronics to make batteries less replaceable, for example. For example, Microsoft’s Surface Laptop can hardly be opened without breaking it and many smartphones have a fragile glass back that is firmly glued to guarantee water resistance.

Parliament also asks the committee to think about labels for product packaging that make it clear how repairable a product is and how long a device is in terms of durability. Such labels are not a new idea: for example, energy labels have been used for many years on many product packaging.

It is unknown what the European Commission will do with Parliament’s advice. It would not be the first time that European politics exerts an influence on the tech industry. For example, it was a rule of the European Commission to reduce waste from phone chargers that led to smartphones almost all getting a micro-USB connection.