this post was submitted on 07 Oct 2025
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Right to Repair

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Whether it be electronics, automobiles or medical equipment, the manufacturers should not be able to horde “oem” parts, render your stuff useless if you repair it with aftermarket parts, or hide schematics of their products.

I Fix It Repair Manifesto

Summary article from I Fix It

Summary video by Marques Brownlee

Great channel covering and advocating right to repair, Lewis Rossman

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Why a good-samaritan forward-thinking EU member state cannot give people a right to repair (lemmy.dbzer0.com)
submitted 1 month ago by diyrebel@lemmy.dbzer0.com to c/right2repair@discuss.tchncs.de
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cross-posted from: https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/55008223

The EU’s ecodesign law (reg 2024/1781) has “Article 3 - Free movement” which has paragraphs like this:

  1. Member States shall not prohibit, restrict or impede the placing on the market or putting into service of products that comply with the performance requirements set out in delegated acts adopted pursuant to Article 4 for reasons of non-compliance with national performance requirements relating to product parameters referred to in Annex I covered by performance requirements included in such delegated acts.

So suppose Beko complies with the ecodesign rules, and they also have kill switches the force early obsolescence (which sadly does not violate the ecodesign rules for washing machines). If Germany were to quite sensibly say: “we respect a right to repair, so no kill switches.. kill switches can fuck off.” IIUC, Germany would be violating EU law with such a ban.

The kill switches block our right to repair. And at the same time, every single member state must allow washing machines with kill switches in their marketplace. Or am I misreading something?

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[–] davitz@lemmy.ca 3 points 1 month ago

Ah, yes in that case it does indeed seem to suggest that an individual member state would be unable to unilaterally apply a stricter right-to-repair standard than what is specified elsewhere in this law.

While that does take some tools off the table for individual states to strengthen right to repair, the intention here does not seem to be a desire to prevent these measures, but to keep them standardized to keep trade between members smooth. Based on other EU legislation I'm aware of I suspect that the repairability standards they've laid out are far better than what I would find anywhere on my continent, and member states always have the option to work together to further strengthen these provisions across the Union.