Commission Opens Consultation on Rules to Make Products Easier to Fix

On 3 November, the European Commission opened an open public consultation and a call for evidence to prepare future ecodesign rules aimed at making products easier to repair. The evidence-gathering exercise is designed to assemble market and technical feedback to support the Commission's impact assessment work for a potential delegated act. The initiative targets a broad spectrum of products sold across the EU internal market, focusing on design choices that currently prevent items from being easily disassembled, serviced, or restored to working order.

For consumers who have watched a household device turn into an expensive paperweight because an inaccessible component failed, ecodesign rules are where that daily frustration meets EU policy. When goods are difficult or impossible to mend, buying a replacement becomes the only practical option, driving up household expenses and generating tonnes of avoidable waste. By establishing common repairability standards across the single market, Brussels aims to set baseline rules that require manufacturers to factor longevity and serviceability into product development, preventing companies from facing a patchwork of divergent national requirements across Europe.

In the Brussels machinery, a call for evidence and public consultation is the formal overture to rulemaking. Before proposing binding measures, the Commission is required to run an impact assessment—an exhaustive evaluation designed to quantify whether the costs to manufacturers match the environmental and economic benefits to society. The choice of instrument also matters: rather than pitching a completely new law into years of political sparring between MEPs and member state diplomats, preparing a delegated act allows the Commission to establish technical specifications under existing legal powers. Parliament and Council still retain a veto over the final text, ensuring the Berlaymont cannot write product rules entirely in a vacuum.

The public consultation and evidence-gathering phase will remain open to collect input from citizens, manufacturers, independent repairers, and consumer organisations. Commission officials will then analyse the submissions and finalise the impact assessment. If the findings support EU-level intervention, the executive will prepare a draft delegated act setting out the specific repairability requirements, which will then face institutional scrutiny from national governments and the European Parliament.