The European Directive on Common Rules Promoting the Repair of Goods. A Critical Assessment of its Drafting Process

The European Commission has recently launched a proposal for a Directive to promote repair. In this paper we critically analyse the drafting process in order to understand the resulting policy options. We consider that although the ambition of the Directive was low from the beginning given the limited policy options, it became even worse during the consultation period. The selection of barriers to repair was limited, and manufacturers pushed for a narrow and closed form of Right-to-Repair (R2R) that transferred all control over the potentially emerging repair market to them. Some information measures were proposed so as to increase transparency, potentially increasing the administrative burden on independent repairers, along with measures to encourage repair when under legal guarantee. This Directive fails to promote repair or help independent repairers overcome access barriers, nor does it allow member states to go beyond the limits imposed in the Directive itself.