Deal on new ‘ecodesign’ rules to make EU products greener, easier to repair

9 months ago 31

The European Parliament and the Council of EU member states reached a provisional deal on Monday (4 December) on new ‘ecodesign’ rules to make products easier to repair and recycle while fighting planned obsolescence and banning the destruction of unsold textiles.

At the heart of the new regulation are “digital product passports” that will provide consumers and repair shops with information about almost every product placed on the EU market – from dishwashers to television sets, smartphones or textiles.

“The first element that makes a product green is the brain that designs it,” said Jordi Hereu i Boher, the Spanish minister for industry and tourism who represented the Council of the EU in the negotiations with Parliament.

“With the agreement reached today, we want to make sure that all the sustainable dimensions of product manufacturing are taken into consideration from the very first stage of its conception,” he said in a statement on behalf of the Spanish EU presidency.

The political agreement reached between the Parliament and Council will now be written into law and sent back to each institution for formal adoption, a move that is usually a rubber-stamping exercise.

Ban on destroying unsold textiles

In a first, the EU’s new ecodesign regulation also introduces a ban on destroying unsold clothing and footwear, a move initially pushed by France and Germany during talks in May with other EU member states.

The ban will start applying two years after the entry into force of the new rules but leaves out small businesses while medium-sized companies will benefit from a 6-year exemption, the Council said in a statement.

For other products, companies would have to report annually on the quantities they discarded and their reasons why, the Parliament said. Member states will determine themselves which penalties should be imposed in case of infringement.

In another groundbreaking move, the new regulation empowers the European Commission to adopt specific ecodesign rules for individual product categories to improve their environmental performance.

So-called delegated acts will adopt these product-specific rules, a fast-track procedure where Parliament and Council can only reject the proposed rules put forward by the Commission but cannot amend them.

Products to be addressed in priority include iron, steel, aluminium, textiles – notably garments and footwear – as well as furniture, tyres, detergents, paints, lubricants and chemicals, the Parliament said.

“It is time to end the model of ‘take, make, dispose’ that is so harmful to our planet, our health and our economy,” said Alessandra Moretti, an Italian lawmaker from the socialists and democrats group who was the European Parliament lead speaker on the proposal.

It was not immediately clear whether online sales would be exempted from the new rules, as requested by Parliament in its July plenary vote.