Right to repair

The initiative is linked to the Sustainable Consumption Initiative promoting the so-called reuse and repair, the new draft Ecodesign for Sustainable Product Regulation (ESPR) published on 30 March 2022, and a new draft directive on empowering consumers for the green transition, also announced on 30 March 2022.

According to a 2020 Eurobarometer consumer survey, an average of 31% of consumers across the EU27 had their broken appliance repaired rather than replaced in the 6 months prior to the survey.

A survey conducted by APPLiA Hungary – GFK Hungária in 2019 showed the result that 88% of households in Hungary will have a defect repaired if the cost of the repair is not too high.

The APPLiA Hungary – GFK Hungária 2021 survey sought to find out, inter alia, which appliance features are considered the most important by domestic households when buying a new washing machine. The figure below shows the results:

We can see that the top five most important features are, in order: durability, energy consumption, repairability, price and service facilities.

APPLiA Hungary’s repairman program aims to address the increasingly acute shortage of repairmen over the past decades, and to provide a career model and opportunity for the new generation.

And the Let’s Live Smarter campaign, launched in 2022, provides households with advice on what repairs and/or maintenance operations they can safely carry out at home, and what breakdown symptoms require absolutely professional help. The campaign, which puts under scrutiny each appliance in a Trend FM radio interview every month, also places great emphasis on helping people understand how our appliances work in our household systems.

In this interview, Fanni Mészáros, company manager of APPLiA Hungary, talked about the Right to repair initiative with András Érczfalvi, host of Trend FM.

The related summary of the European Parliament  can be downloaded here.