A few days ago, after almost seven years, I had to say goodbye to my Fairphone.
A couple of nasty drops had broken the motherboard – the only part of the famous Dutch phone, with its replaceable and repairable components, that couldn’t be ordered or repaired.

I won’t deny that I’d grown quite attached to it. For nearly seven years, my students had been intrigued to see its unusual pea-green case standing out on the teacher’s desk amidst their black, glittery pink or soccer team cases.

My wife, disconsolate, wondered what she’d done wrong to deserve a husband who not only threw money at unlikely tech purchases, not only embraced unrealistic environmental causes, but sometimes did both at once.

My friends had often asked me: “How are you getting on with it?” “Is it true that it’s reliable, or is that just marketing hype?” “Do you honestly think it’s worth the price?”

Well, they’ll soon find out the answer for themselves.

A long campaign

‘Modular design’ and the ‘right to repair’, which until yesterday had been nothing more than a fad amongst a niche group of ‘radical chic’ types who bought Fairphones, are now becoming law across the entire European Union (with the exception of Italy, which, in line with its finest national tradition, has not yet transposed the directive).
Put simply, we will witness the gradual ‘Fairphone-isation’ of every mobile phone, washing machine, dishwasher, fridge, vacuum cleaner, battery, screen, storage device or server sold in Europe by any company.

The legislation took a very long time to come into being. As early as the beginning of the century, scholarly terms such as ‘planned obsolescence’ had begun to circulate in academic circles, whilst technicians and workers were seeing first-hand how household appliances, mobile phones and even car electronics were being manufactured to be less and less durable than in the past.
It is hard not to think that this was a deliberate choice, designed to force consumers to replace the entire product more often – or perhaps, quite simply, to engage in a price war, not without some benefit for the less well-off.

In the 2010s, the ‘Right to Repair’ movements, starting in affluent and particular communities such as California or urban France, then spread like wildfire, and their demands became an integral part of the environmentalist canon just in time for the great ‘green craze’ of the first von der Leyen Commission (2019–2024).
It was in April 2024 that the directive was approved, giving each of the 27 Member States an unusually long deadline to transpose it: a deadline which has now, at last, expired.

All clear

Like many recent European Union regulations, this one too is characterised by a tension between two opposing strands.

On the one hand, there is the liberal spirit of its origins, which sees the Union as a force for removing barriers to competition, dismantling privileges and opening up new opportunities for citizens.
On the other hand, there is the interventionist and paternalistic strand, which has emerged as the Union has become more democratic and more representative of public sentiment, and which therefore tends more towards protection and control.

The Right to Repair Directive is undoubtedly a major step towards greater openness and liberalisation. Across the 11 categories of goods it covers, it seeks to remove all the bottlenecks that have, until now, made it more cost-effective – if not mandatory – to buy a replacement for a damaged product rather than repair it.
In effect, across Europe , any repairer – including independent ones – will have to be able to repair any product, including the latest iPhone model.

Sometimes this is prevented by physical barriers: the most classic examples are special screws that only the manufacturer can replace, or components glued in place so that they cannot be reassembled once dismantled.
At other times, the problem lies in the design: a non-modular phone – that is, one built as a single unit – can only be thrown away and replaced in its entirety.
On the software side, too, there is a practice of installing encrypted firmware on the device, which prevents it from switching on if it is tampered with by an unauthorised technician.
It also happens that tech companies do not make repair manuals available to third parties. This seems like a problem from a bygone era, one that might raise a smile in the age of the Internet, but it is one of the worst bottlenecks that the new law is attempting to resolve.

Then there are the limitations of the warranty system. Anyone repairing a device whose warranty has expired has no incentive to repair it properly, given that any further repairs will in any case be at the customer’s expense. In this regard, the directive stipulates that the warranty is extended for a further 12 months after each repair.

Finally, perhaps the most forward-looking aspect is the complete liberalisation of repairs using 3D-printed spare parts.

Inflation on the horizon

Alongside these changes, there are others that raise a few eyebrows.
The most striking is the requirement to carry out repairs ‘at a reasonable and proportionate price’ relative to the cost of buying a new product, estimated at around ‘30–40%’.
Now, if there is one thing that has never worked throughout history, it is a political cap on prices.
It is true that each Member State will devise its own approach – more or less strict – to applying this principle, but the spiral of distortions to which it may lead is potentially endless.
Sellers, for example, could increase the cost of the new product, justifying this by citing the obligation to make it proportionate to the cost of repairs. Or they could withdraw from the market those products whose repair would cost more than 40% and would breach the regulations (triggering a fall in supply and, consequently, a rise in prices). 

A similar argument applies to the requirement to keep spare parts for the device sold in stock for at least seven years.
As one might imagine, complying with such a requirement entails significant costs for companies: Apple warns that iPhones could end up costing an extra 100 euros, whilst the US-based Information Technology & Innovation Foundation notes that PC and smartphone manufacturers, accustomed to launching a new model every 12–18 months, would have to stockpile spare parts for five or six models at a time, passing on the surge in costs to the end customer.

Some in the industry fear that these requirements will give Asian manufacturers of low-cost electronics yet another competitive advantage. And this is precisely where the real stakes lie.

Breaking the Chinese siege

Let’s not kid ourselves: judging these measures on the basis of their environmental impact is naive. A reduction of 35 million tonnes of waste in little old Europe isn’t going to save the planet.
The real question is another: will these environmental restrictions stem or exacerbate the flood of Chinese goods into our market?

Every day, Europe’s trade deficit with China increases by a further billion euros. Sectors that were once our pride and joy, such as the automotive and chemical industries, are being dismantled by Chinese competition at a staggering rate.

Let us be clear: behind this onslaught there is not, as Beijing’s propaganda would have us believe, a ‘country living in the future’; there is a regime that has sacrificed the purchasing power of its subjects in favour of the international leverage of its leaders.

30% of the Chinese population is still employed in manufacturing, on wages far lower than those they would earn in the service sector and with the most gruelling working hours on the planet. Chinese cars are flooding into Europe not only because they are cheap, but above all because the Chinese are too poor to buy them (and at the same time are forced by the government not to cut back on production).

In short, China is turning us into its rubbish tip.
So, will stricter rules on repairability shut Chinese companies out of our market?
Will they at least slow down their market penetration?

Estimates suggest so: adapting to ‘modular design’ and other requirements involves significant time and cost.
But how long can this umpteenth, small dam hold out before it is overwhelmed?