A year into Europe’s repair law, four in five phones still hide the instructions

One year after new European Union rules required smartphone and tablet manufacturers to publish repair information alongside every model they sell, more than four in five devices on the market still fail to provide it, according to a review published by the advocacy group Right to Repair Europe. The gap between what the law requires and what companies have actually posted is large enough that the campaign group is now questioning whether the rules, in their current form, are being enforced at all.

The requirement, part of the EU’s ecodesign regulations for smartphones and tablets, took effect in June 2025. It obliges manufacturers to self-report a repairability score and to publish a working link to spare-part prices and repair instructions inside a public registry maintained under the European Commission’s energy-labelling framework. The score and the repair link are meant to appear together on the energy-efficiency label shown to shoppers at the point of sale, whether they are buying in a physical store or online. A year on, the registry itself shows how thin that compliance has been.

The European Product Registry for Energy Labelling, One Year In

Right to Repair Europe based its findings on a review of the European Commission’s product registry for smartphones and tablets, the official database where manufacturers are required to list where they publish the mandated repair information. Every smartphone or tablet model placed on the EU market since June 2025 is supposed to have an entry there pointing to a working source of spare-part prices and repair documentation. The registry was meant to give regulators, repairers and shoppers a single place to check whether a device meets its legal repairability obligations before it reaches a shelf.

Of 2,334 Smartphone Records, Only 18 Per Cent Deliver

Of 2,334 smartphone model records added to the registry over the past year, Right to Repair Europe found that only about 18 per cent actually list a website where a shopper or independent repairer can find spare-part prices or repair instructions. The remainder are split between records that simply omit the required link and records that point somewhere that does not actually help. The group’s review treats this as the norm across the registry rather than an isolated edge case.

Blank Fields, Dead Links, and Directions to Temu

About half of the reviewed records left the URL field blank entirely, while another 19 per cent linked to a general product or support page that contained no relevant repair instructions or spare-part listings at all. In some cases, records pointed customers toward third-party marketplaces such as Temu or AliExpress for spare parts and repair guidance rather than to information published or endorsed by the manufacturer itself. Even among the smaller share of listings that technically comply, Right to Repair Europe says the link rarely offers a direct path to parts pricing; for major brands including Apple and Samsung, it can take considerable clicking around before the relevant page turns up. The campaign group also flags cases where the prices that are listed are so broad as to be close to meaningless, pointing to one replacement-battery entry that spans from 14 to 128 euros without specifying which handset or configuration that range is meant to cover.

Self-Graded Class A Scores on Non-Compliant Listings

Because the repairability score is self-reported, some manufacturers whose listings are missing the required repair link have nonetheless assigned themselves the top grade, a self-declared Class A for repairability, despite not meeting the documentation requirement that score is supposed to reflect. Right to Repair Europe argues this exposes a structural weakness in the system: nothing in the current process appears to check a manufacturer’s self-assessment against what it has actually published, and thousands of blank or unhelpful links have gone unflagged by any public authority.

A Coalition Spokesperson’s Case for Independent Verification

Thomas Opsomer, the EU policy spokesperson for iFixit, speaking on behalf of the Right to Repair Europe coalition, said the underlying obligation is a genuine step forward but needs stronger enforcement. He argued that manufacturers should be required to publish the full documentation behind their self-assigned repairability scores so anyone can check the homework, and that it should be made easier for consumers and independent repairers to flag non-compliance when they find it. iFixit, a repair-focused organisation that campaigns alongside device manufacturers and independent shops for stronger right-to-repair rules, is one of the members of the wider coalition publishing the registry review. The European Commission has been asked for a response to the findings.

A User-Replaceable Battery Mandate Follows in February

The registry gap arrives just before a second wave of EU repairability rules takes effect. Regulations due in February will require most new mobile devices sold in the bloc to have user-replaceable batteries, with some exceptions carved out for products such as wearables. That mandate will be harder to fudge on paper than a repair-information weblink, since it concerns the physical design of the device itself, but the registry review suggests that self-reported compliance alone is unlikely to guarantee manufacturers follow through without some form of independent check.

This article was produced with the assistance of AI and reviewed by Morning Overview editors prior to publication.

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