EU-Ecodesign Regulation Now Legally Binding

With the publication of the so-called Ecodesign Regulation in the European Official Journal, it has now been officially confirmed: It will come into force in mid-July 2024. It is a regulation and will therefore be directly effective in all EU member states.

However, aspirations and feasibility are very far apart. The regulation appears to be a bureaucratic monster of an EU administration that wants to regulate everything without being able to commit itself. In 80 articles, divided into 13 chapters over 53 pages, an attempt is made to force the design of all types of products into a static sustainability model. The Commission wants to specify which performance requirements a product has to fulfil, all products are to receive a digital product passport (which ones exactly and in which order has yet to be determined), extensive information, disclosure and retention obligations have to be met, certain returning products may no longer be destroyed, public contracts are only to be awarded on an “environmentally oriented” basis and because it is obviously suspected that all these additional regulations will place an excessive burden on small and medium-sized enterprises in particular, they are to be subsidised by the state.

Anyone involved in the design, development, production and sale of products in practice knows that these requirements cannot be implemented in this way. Rather, the attempt to override the actual and decisive factors in product development, namely need, supply, demand, benefit and manufacturing costs, will damage the essential foundations of our economic order.

In addition, the regulation is currently completely vague. There is no real substantive core in the regulation that has now been published. This is to be gradually enacted in so-called delegated acts. For whom, what, when and how will become effective and binding remains completely uncertain and companies will be burdened with an uncertainty that will ultimately lead to further stagnation.

The legitimate concern to take greater account of sustainable aspects in product design is thus discredited, as such a master plan for product design is unrealistic and only has a symbolic political effect. And if it is actually brought to life, it will further reduce the competitiveness of the European economic area.

Effective efforts towards sustainability can only be successful in realistic and economically sensible perspectives!