It was to come into force on January 1, 2024, it is now almost buried. The French sustainability index for smartphones has undergone a chaotic legislative journey and today has little chance of emerging unscathed from the Franco-European administrative limbo.
A little flashback. The anti-waste law for a circular economy (promulgated on February 10, 2020) introduced the reparability index now known to French consumers, but also prepared the ground for a sustainability index supposed to include “new criteria such as reliability and robustness of the product.” The law was broad, providing for implementation on January 1, 2024.
The EU rejects the French project
Unfortunately, in October 2023, the European Commission enters the dance and issues a “detailed opinion“which mechanically delayed the application of the measure by three months. The reason? The hexagonal text is “incompatible with harmonized EU rules“, due to dissonance with the one that Brussels is preparing on the sustainability of smartphones. Given the similar goal sought by the two indices, but the different methodologies used, the Commission feared that the measures would end up competing with each other and leading to there “confusion regarding information provided to consumers“.
The energy/sustainability label planned by the EU © European Commission
This European index aims to complete the energy label by adding an evaluation on the endurance of the battery, repairability, resistance to falls as well as the protection index against the penetration of water, sand, dust, etc. Its principle was adopted by the European Commission on June 16, 2023 and it should come into force in member countries by the end of 2025. To avoid the public being confronted with “two different smartphone repairability indicators, which will take into account similar parameters, but calculate them differently“, the Commission therefore sent the French government back to work.
But while a new consultation of the sector was to be organized to allow the government to bring its text in line with European principles, it seems that the French index of smartphone durability has simply been abandoned in the open countryside. In an article dated January 26, 2024, The world explain that “the ministry of ecological transition [a] paused smartphone durability index“. Three days later, the media Contexte drives home the point and affirms that “the decree is indeed abandoned in favor of the European energetic labeling mechanism“.
The fear of a downwardly revised index
If the sustainability index of washing machines and smartphones could escape unscathed, according to the ministry’s statements to World, that of smartphones, on the other hand, seems dead and buried, to the great dismay of many players in the sector. The European index would in fact be less restrictive than the one imagined in France, particularly on aspects such as the price of spare parts or software monitoring. Still under discussion, the European index could, according to the Stop Planned Obsolescence associationcreate “an opportunity for manufacturers to revise this index downwards“even though in France”the working groups made it possible to obtain ambitious criteria“.
The fear regarding the price of spare parts, which remains one of the most important obstacles to the repair culture, lies in the fact that the European text simply mentions a “reasonable and non-discriminatory cost” where the French text directly provided for bonuses for manufacturers who displayed acceptable prices. The definition adopted by Brussels could be too vague to be legally effective, denounce the defenders of repairability. The same goes for the battery usage meter, which would have made it compulsory to display a battery health status on all mobiles to replace it in the event of a problem: the criterion was not retained by the Commission.
The sustainability index on smartphones is therefore not likely to arrive anytime soon and could well be less ambitious than imagined. The text must still be validated by the European Council, which may also modify certain details.