EU battery rules link replacement rights to spare parts and software

The EU Council gave final approval to new battery rules on July 10, completing the adoption procedure after Parliament’s June 14 vote. The regulation combines consumer access to replacement batteries with obligations to collect discarded batteries and recover their materials.

File photo: European flags. © Håkan Dahlström, Spain, 2010. Original photograph, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons. Resized and cropped.

The practical repair protection goes further than opening a device. The text approved by legislators also requires spare-battery availability and bars software from obstructing compatible replacements. Together, those provisions address three separate ways a repair can fail: getting the battery out, finding its replacement and making the device accept it.

What owners will be able to replace

Article 11 generally requires portable batteries incorporated into products to be removable and replaceable by end-users throughout the product’s life. Commercially available tools are allowed. Specialised tools must come free with the product; proprietary tools, heat and solvents can’t be required for disassembly. It isn’t a universal promise of a tool-free, snap-off back cover.

Spare batteries must remain available at reasonable, non-discriminatory prices for at least five years after the last unit of an equipment model is placed on the market. That clock starts with the last unit, rather than the model’s launch. Software can’t impede replacement with a compatible battery or key component.

There are exceptions. Appliances designed primarily for regularly wet environments and intended to be washed or rinsed may use professional-only replacement where necessary for user and appliance safety. Professional medical imaging and radiotherapy devices, and in vitro diagnostic devices, also qualify for independent-professional replacement. A separate exception covers necessary continuous power and a permanent battery connection for safety, or data integrity in products whose main function is collecting and supplying data. A water-resistance rating alone doesn’t establish all those conditions.

Batteries for light transport, such as e-bikes, follow a different rule: independent professionals must be able to replace both the battery and its individual cells. The portable-battery obligation concerns whole batteries.

Smartphones also face separate ecodesign rules, an overlap The Verge examined in June. Article 11 preserves specific EU provisions that give stronger environmental and health protection for end-user battery removal and replacement; it doesn’t grant a blanket smartphone exemption. The battery text calls for Commission implementation guidelines. Right to Repair Europe welcomed the provisions while warning that affordability and exemptions would need scrutiny.

Repair and recycling run on different clocks

The Council says signature and Official Journal publication come next, with entry into force 20 days after publication. General application follows six months later, but Article 11 waits 42 months after entry into force, putting consumer replacement requirements on a 2027 timetable. The July 10 adoption doesn’t make them immediately enforceable.

The waste-management chapter applies 24 months after entry into force. Producers’ portable-battery collection targets rise to 63% by the end of 2027 and 73% by the end of 2030. Lithium recovery targets are separately set at 50% by the end of 2027 and 80% by the end of 2031: collecting a battery and recovering its material are distinct requirements.

Minimum recycled-content requirements are narrower still. Eight years after entry into force, industrial batteries above 2kWh other than those with exclusively external storage, EV batteries and starting, lighting and ignition batteries containing the relevant materials must meet initial recycled shares of 16% cobalt, 85% lead, 6% lithium and 6% nickel. Those percentages concern each material, rather than the battery’s total weight: cobalt, lithium and nickel in active materials, and lead in the battery. These aren’t recycled-content quotas for every phone battery.

Supply-chain due diligence begins 24 months after entry into force, including independent verification. The exclusion covers operators with net turnover below €40 million in the financial year before the last one, provided they aren’t part of a group exceeding €40 million on a consolidated basis.

The material requirements sit alongside the EU’s March Critical Raw Materials Act proposal, which addresses extraction, processing and recycling capacity. The battery regulation adds product-specific obligations: a device can become easier to repair well before manufacturers must meet its initial recycled-content minimums.