Changes from plenary report to adopted text

Recital 91: (91) Priorities for market surveillance under this Regulation should be identified based on objective criteria such as the levels of non-compliance observed or the environmental impacts resulting from non-compliance or the number of complaints received. The activities planned to address those priorities should in turn be proportionate to the facts leading to their prioritisation. In order to ensure uniform conditions for the implementation of this Regulation, implementing powers should be conferred on the Commission to determine products and requirements that Member States should consider as priorities for market surveillance in the context of their action plans identifying priorities for market surveillance under this Regulation and activities planned to reduce non-compliance.

Recital 92: (92) Where problematic levels of non-compliance with ecodesign requirements are observed despite the enhanced planning, coordination and support laid down by this Regulation, the Commission should be able to intervene promptly and efficiently to ensure that market surveillance authorities perform checks on an adequate scale. Therefore, in order to safeguard the effective enforcement of ecodesign requirements, the power to adopt acts in accordance with Article 290 TFEU should be delegated to the Commission to lay down a minimum number of checks to be performed on specific products or requirements. This empowerment should be additional to the empowerment in Article 11(4) of Regulation (EU) 2019/1020.

Recital 94: (94) To further strengthen coordination of market surveillance authorities, the administrative cooperation group (‘ADCO’) set up pursuant to Regulation (EU) 2019/1020 should, for the purposes of identifying the products or requirements identified as priorities for market surveillance under this Regulation and the activities planned to reduce or bring to an end non-compliance is Regulation, meet at regular intervals and identify common priorities for market surveillance to be taken into account in Member States’ action plans, priorities for the provision of Union support, and ecodesign requirements that are interpreted differently leading to market distortion.

Recital 95: (95) To support Member States in their efforts to ensure sufficient action is taken to prevent non-compliance with ecodesign requirements, the Commission should, where relevant, make use of the support measures provided for in Regulation (EU) 2019/1020. The Commission should organise and, where appropriate finance, joint market surveillance and testing projects in areas of common interest, joint investments in market surveillance capacities and common trainings for the staff of market surveillance authorities, notifying authorities and notified bodies. In addition, the Commission should draw up guidelines on how to apply and enforce ecodesign requirements to ensure their harmonised application.

Recital 101: (101) To enhance trust in products placed on the market, in particular as regards the fact that they comply with ecodesign requirements, the public needs to be sure that economic operators placing non-compliant products on the market will be subject to penalties. It is therefore necessary that Member States lay down effective, proportionate and dissuasive penalties in national law for failure to comply with this Regulation. To facilitate more consistent application of penalties, common non-exhaustive criteria should be established for determining the types and levels of penalties to be imposed in the event of infringements of this Regulation. Such criteria should include, inter alia, the nature and gravity of the infringement and the economic benefits derived from and the environmental damage caused by the infringement, insofar as these can be determined.

Article 1 – paragraph 1 – subparagraph 1 – introductory part: This Regulation establishes a framework to improve the environmental sustainability of products in order to make sustainable products the norm and to reduce their overall environmental footprint over their lifecycle, and to ensure free movement in the internal market by setting ecodesign requirements that products shall fulfil to be placed on the market or put into service. Those ecodesign requirements, which shall be further elaborated by the Commission in delegated acts, relate to:

Article 1 – paragraph 1 – subparagraph 1 – point g: (g) product remanufacturing;

Article 1 – paragraph 1 – subparagraph 1 – point g a (new): (ga) product recycling;

Article 2 – paragraph 1 – point 13: (13) ‘end-of-life’ means the life cycle stage that begins when a product is discarded and ends when the waste material of the product is returned to nature or enters another product’s life cycle;

Article 2 – paragraph 1 – point 15: (15) ‘class of performance’ means a range of performance levels in relation to one or more product parameters referred to in Annex I, based on a common methodology for the product or product group, ordered into successive steps to allow for product differentiation;

Article 2 – paragraph 1 – point 16: (16) ‘remanufacturing’ means an industrial process in which a product is produced from objects that are waste, products or components and in which at least one change is made to the product that significantly affects the safety or performance, or affects the purpose or type of the product typically placed on the market with a commercial guarantee;

Article 2 – paragraph 1 – point 17: (17) ‘upgrading’ means enhancing the functionality, performance, capacity, safety or aesthetics of a product;

Article 2 – paragraph 1 – point 18: (18) ‘refurbishment’ means testing, maintaining or repairing an object that is a product or waste to restore its performance or functionality within the intended use originally conceived at the design stage, with the result of making a fully functional product;

Article 2 – paragraph 1 – point 20 a (new): (20a) 'premature obsolescence' means making available on the market a product with a feature which limits its foreseeable lifetime;

Article 2 – paragraph 1 – point 21: (21) ‘durability’ means the ability of a product to function and maintain for a certain period of time its required function and performance under normal conditions of use, maintenance and repair until a limiting event prevents the product from functioning;

Article 2 – paragraph 1 – point 22: (22) ‘reliability’ means the high probability that a product functions as required under given conditions for a given duration without a limiting event;

Article 2 – paragraph 1 – point 23: (23) ‘environmental footprint’ means a quantification of product life cycle’s environmental impacts, whether in relation to a single environmental impact category or an aggregated set of impact categories based on the Product Environmental Footprint method or other scientific methods developed by international organisations and widely tested in collaboration with different industry sectors and recognised by the Commission;

Article 2 – paragraph 1 – point 25 a (new): (25a) 'material footprint' means the quantification of the materials needed for a product system as the sum of biomass, fossil fuels, metal ores and non-metallic minerals consumed;

Article 2 – paragraph 1 – point 28 – point a: (a) meets the criteria laid down in Article 57 of Regulation (EC) No 1907/2006; or

Article 2 – paragraph 1 – point 28 – point b – indent 9 a (new): - substances regulated under Regulation (EU) No 2019/1021 of the European Parliament and of the Council1a; / 1a Regulation (EU) 2019/1021 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 20 June 2019 on persistent organic pollutants (OJ L 169, 25.6.2019, p. 45).

Article 2 – paragraph 1 – point 28 – point b – indent 9 b (new): - specific restricted substances listed in Annex XVII of Regulation (EC) No 1907/2006.

Article 2 – paragraph 1 – point 35: (35) ‘ destruction’ means the intentional damaging or discarding of a product as waste with the exception of discarding for the only purpose of delivering a product for preparing for re-use, refurbishing or remanufacturing operations;

Article 2 – paragraph 1 – point 37: (37) ‘unsold consumer product’ means any consumer product fit for consumption or sale that has not been sold including surplus, excessive inventory, overstock and deadstock, including products returned by a consumer in view of their right of withdrawal in accordance with Article 9 of Directive (EU) 2011/83/EU;

Article 2 – paragraph 1 – point 46 a (new): (46a) ‘independent operator’ means a natural or legal person who is independent from the manufacturer and is directly or indirectly involved in the refurbishment, repair, maintenance or repurposing of the product, and includes waste management operators, refurbishers, repairers, manufacturers or distributors of repair equipment, tools or spare parts, as well as publishers of technical information, operators offering inspection and testing services and operators offering training for installers, manufacturers and repairers of equipment;

Article 2 – paragraph 1 – point 46 b (new): (46b) ‘professional repairer’ means a natural or legal person who provides repair or maintenance services for a product, irrespective of whether that person acts within the manufacturer’s distribution system or independently;

Article 2 – paragraph 1 – point 55: (55) ‘online marketplace’ means a provider of an intermediary service using an online interface which allows customers to conclude distance contracts with economic operators for the sale of products covered by delegated acts adopted pursuant to Article 4;

Article 2 – paragraph 3 a (new): The definition of ‘electrical and electronic equipment’ or ‘EEE’ in Article 3, point (1)(a) of Directive 2012/19/EU of the European Parliament and of the Council shall apply1a. / 1a Directive 2012/19/EU of the European Parliament and of the Council of 4 July 2012 on waste electrical and electronic equipment (WEEE) (OJ L 197, 24.7.2012, p. 38).

Article 2 – paragraph 4 a (new): The definitions of ‘supplier of a substance or a mixture’ and ‘supplier of an article’ in Article 3, points (32) and (33), respectively, of Regulation (EC) 1907/2006 shall apply.

Article 4 – paragraph 1: The Commission is empowered to adopt delegated acts in accordance with Article 66 to supplement this Regulation by establishing ecodesign requirements for, or in relation to, products to improve their environmental sustainability. Those requirements shall include the elements listed in Annex VI and shall be established in accordance with Articles 5, 6 and 7 and Chapter III. The empowerment to adopt ecodesign requirements includes the power to establish that no performance requirements, no information requirements or that in exceptional cases neither performance nor information requirements are necessary for certain specified product parameters referred to in Annex I.

Article 4 – paragraph 1 – subparagraph 1 a (new): The empowerment to adopt ecodesign requirements shall include the power to establish that no ecodesign requirements apply for imported second-hand products or product groups, for a limited period of time, where on the basis of the impact assessment conducted under Article 5(4)(b) the Commission concludes that: / (a) it is relevant to exempt a given imported second-hand product or product group on account of the substantial share that it represents on the relevant Union second-hand product market and the genuine consumer demand that it responds to; and / (b) such an exemption would not undermine the achievement of the objectives of this Regulation and the broader application of ecodesign requirements on the relevant Union product market; and / (c) the resource savings due to the placing on the market of the imported second-hand product or product group outweigh the benefits of the ecodesign requirements for new products or product groups.

Article 4 – paragraph 2: When establishing ecodesign requirements in delegated acts referred to in the first subparagraph, the Commission shall provide economic operators with sufficient time to adjust to the new requirements, particularly taking into consideration the needs of micro enterprises and SMEs. The Commission shall also supplement this Regulation by specifying the applicable conformity assessment procedures from among the modules set out in Annex IV to this Regulation and Annex II to Decision No 768/2008/EC, with the adaptations necessary in view of the product or ecodesign requirements concerned, in accordance with Article 36.

Article 4 – paragraph 3 – point c a (new): (ca) specifying the methodology to assess the reparability of a product, define the classes of performance to be displayed by the reparability score, and define the product categories to which the reparability score shall apply;

Article 5 – paragraph 1 – point g: (g) presence of substances of concern in products;

Article 5 – paragraph 1 – point k: (k) possibility of remanufacturing;

Article 5 – paragraph 1 – point k a (new): (ka) possibility of recycling;

Article 5 – paragraph 2 – subparagraph 2: Where two or more product groups display technical similarities allowing a product aspect referred to in paragraph 1 to be improved based on a common requirement, ecodesign requirements may be established horizontally for those product groups. Those horizontal requirements may be further specified through the establishment of ecodesign requirements for a specific product group covered by a horizontal ecodesign requirement.

Article 5 – paragraph 4 – introductory part: 4. When preparing ecodesign requirements, the Commission shall ensure consistency and avoid conflicting requirements with other Union legislation and shall:

Article 5 – paragraph 4 – point a – point i: (i) Union objectives concerning: / - the climate, in particular the objective to achieve climate neutrality at the latest by 2050 as set out in Regulation (EU) 2021/1119; / - the environment, including biodiversity, resource efficiency and security and reduction of the environmental, material and consumption footprints, and staying within the planetary boundaries as set out in the 8th Environmental Action Programme; / - non-toxicity; / - energy efficiency; and / - other related Union objectives;

Article 5 – paragraph 4 – point a – point ii: (ii) relevant Union legislation, including the extent to which it addresses the relevant product aspects listed in paragraph 1 and the do no significant harm principle within the meaning of Article 17 of Regulation (EU) 2020/852;

Article 5 – paragraph 4 – point a – point ii a (new): (iia) relevant international agreements;

Article 5 – paragraph 4 – point a – point v a (new): (va) prioritisation of measures in accordance with the waste hierarchy laid down in Directive 2008/98/EC;

Article 5 – paragraph 4 – point b: (b) carry out an impact assessment based on best available evidence and analyses, and as appropriate on additional studies and research results produced under European funding programmes. The establishment of ecodesign requirements on the product aspects listed in paragraph 1 shall not be unduly delayed by uncertainties regarding the possibility to establish ecodesign requirements to improve other aspects of that product. In the impact assessments, the Commission shall: / (i) ensure that all the product aspects listed in paragraph 1 are analysed and that the depth of analysis of the product aspects listed in paragraph 1 is proportionate to their significance; / (ii) ensure that trade-offs between the different product aspects listed in paragraph 1 are analysed; / (iii) provide an assessment of the expected reduction of the environmental, carbon and material footprints by the new ecodesign requirements; / (iv) provide an assessment of the fulfilment of criteria established in Article 4, second paragraph, on imported second-hand products, where relevant; / (v) provide an assessment of any relevant impacts on human health; / (vi) provide an assessment of the minimum level of performance of a product or a product group, that needs to be potentially attained in the future in order for that product or product group to be in line with the Union’s objectives as listed in paragraph 4, point (a)(i); / Where appropriate, the impact assessment shall also be used to support the setting of…

Article 5 – paragraph 4 – point c a (new): (ca) take into consideration the protection of confidential business information;

Article 5 – paragraph 4 – point c b (new): (cb) take into consideration any feedback provided by public consultations;

Article 5 – paragraph 5 – point a: (a) there shall be no significant negative impact on the functionality or safety of the product, from the perspective of the user;

Article 5 – paragraph 5 – point c: (c) there shall be no significant negative impact on consumers in terms of the affordability of relevant products, also taking into account access to second-hand products, including imported second-hand products, durability and the life cycle cost of products;

Article 5 – paragraph 5 – point d: (d) there shall be no disproportionate negative impact on the competitiveness of economic actors, in particular of micro-enterprises and SMEs;

Article 5 – paragraph 5 – point f: (f) there shall be no disproportionate administrative burden on manufacturers or other economic actors, in particular for micro-enterprises and SMEs;

Article 5 – paragraph 5 – point f a (new): (fa) there shall be sufficient time given to manufacturers or other economic actors to adjust to the new requirements, particularly taking into consideration the needs of micro-enterprises and SMEs.

Article 5 – paragraph 8: 8. The Commission shall publish relevant studies and analyses once available, including the impact assessments referred to in paragraph 4, point (b), used in the establishment of ecodesign requirements in accordance with this Regulation.

Article 5 a (new): Article 5a / Durability and reparability of products / 1. When setting the ecodesign requirements pursuant to Article 5(1), the Commission shall ensure that manufacturers do not limit the durability of a product making it prematurely obsolete, in particular as a result of the design of a specific feature, the use of consumables, spare parts, or non-provision of software updates or accessories within an appropriate period of time. / 2. When setting the ecodesign requirements pursuant to Article 5(1), the Commission shall ensure that manufacturers do not limit the reparability of products by impeding the disassembly of key components or limiting access to repair information and spare parts exclusively to authorised repairers.

Article 6 – paragraph 2 – introductory part: 2. Performance requirements referred to in paragraph 1 shall be based on the relevant product parameters referred to in Annex I and shall, as appropriate, include:

Article 6 – paragraph 3: 3. Performance requirements based on the product parameter set out in Annex I, point (f), shall not restrict the presence of substances in products for reasons relating primarily to chemical safety, unless there is an unacceptable risk to human health or the environment, arising from the use of a substance present in the product or product component when it is placed on the market or during the subsequent stages of its lifecycle.

Article 7 – paragraph 2 – point b – paragraph 1 – point ii: (ii) clear and easily understandable information for consumers and other end-users on how to install, use, maintain and repair the product in order to minimise its impact on the environment and to ensure optimum durability, as well as on how to return or dispose of the product at end-of-life;

Article 7 – paragraph 2 – point b – paragraph 1 – point ii a (new): (iia) clear and easily understandable information for consumers and other end-users, on how to install third-party operating systems;

Article 7 – paragraph 2 – point b – paragraph 1 – point ii b (new): (iib) relevant information for providers of repair and refurbishment services and operators involved in preparing for reuse, reuse, repair and disassembly;

Article 7 – paragraph 4 – subparagraph 2: Those classes of performance shall correspond to statistically significant improvements in performance levels and shall use as the minimum level the minimum performance requirements established pursuant to Article 6.

Article 7 – paragraph 4 a (new): 4a. Where appropriate, based on the evidence provided in the impact assessment referred to in Article 5(4), point (b), information requirements on the performance of the product related to reparability shall take the form of a reparability score to enable end-users to easily compare the performance of products. The methodology to assess the reparability of products shall be developed according to the specificities of product categories and laid down in the relevant delegated act adopted under Article 4. That delegated act shall also define the content and layout of the label containing the reparability score, as appropriate, in accordance with Article 14, using clear and easy-to-understand language and pictograms, to avoid overload of information for consumers. / When available, the methodology to assess the reparability of products may include other relevant aspects of a product, such as durability, reliability or robustness, and be further specified in the relevant delegated act taking into account specificities of the product category.

Article 7 – paragraph 5 – subparagraph 1 – introductory part: The information requirements referred to in paragraph 1 shall enable the tracking of all substances of concern present in the product as placed on the market, in accordance with a threshold-based approach, throughout the life cycle of products, unless such tracking is already enabled by another delegated act adopted pursuant to Article 4 covering the products concerned, and shall include at least the following: