Right to repair: Directive 2024/1799 now applies

Author Hugues Orgitello Last updated 22 August 2026 ~7 min read

News · Regulatory evolution

Directive (EU) 2024/1799 of 13 June 2024 on common rules promoting the repair of goods, published as OJ L, 2024/1799, 10.7.2024, entered into force on 30 July 2024. Article 22 required Member States to bring transposing measures into force by 31 July 2026 at the latest and to apply them from that date. The deadline has now passed, but transposition is uneven across the Union: a number of Member States had still not adopted their national measures at the time of writing, so the date on which the obligation actually bites varies from one market to the next.

In short:

Entry into force 30 July 2024 (Article 23); application from 31 July 2026 (Article 22).
The obligation bites only on goods covered by one of the ten acts listed in Annex II.
Transposition is incomplete: several Member States had not adopted national measures when the deadline passed.
Repair chosen as the remedy extends the liability period under Directive (EU) 2019/771 by 12 months.
Article 3 imposes full harmonisation on the points the directive covers.

The timetable set by the directive

Date	Basis	Content
30 July 2024	Article 23	Entry into force, twentieth day after publication
31 July 2026	Article 22	National measures brought into force and applied
31 July 2027	Article 7(2) and 7(3)	Common online interface developed; national platforms operational
31 July 2029	Article 13(2)	Member States notify their measures promoting repair
31 July 2031	Article 19	Commission report on the application of the directive

What Article 5 actually requires

Article 5(1) does not create a general right to have any consumer good repaired: upon the consumer's request, the manufacturer shall repair goods for which, and to the extent that, repairability requirements are provided for by the acts listed in Annex II. There is no obligation where repair is impossible, and the manufacturer may sub-contract. Article 5(2) requires the repair to be free of charge or for a reasonable price and within a reasonable period from the moment the manufacturer has physical possession of the good, has received it or has been given access to it by the consumer; it allows a replacement good to be loaned during the repair and, where repair is impossible, a refurbished good to be offered instead.

Article 5(3) sets the cascade for a manufacturer established outside the Union: its authorised representative performs the obligation, failing that the importer, failing that the distributor. That is the chain described in our guide to authorised representative and importer obligations, and the economic operator left at the end of it inherits an after-sales service it did not design.

Four further duties follow: spare parts and tools must be offered at a reasonable price that does not deter repair (Article 5(4)); indicative prices for typical repairs must be published on a free access website (Article 5(5)); contractual clauses and hardware or software techniques impeding repair are prohibited unless justified by legitimate and objective factors including intellectual property rights, with impeding independent repairers from using original, second-hand, compatible or 3D-printed spare parts expressly named, provided those parts comply with Union or national requirements such as product safety (Article 5(6)); and refusal on the sole ground that a previous repair was carried out by someone else is barred (Article 5(7)).

The real scope sits in Annex II

#	Category	Act
1	Household washing machines and washer-dryers	Commission Regulation (EU) 2019/2023
2	Household dishwashers	Commission Regulation (EU) 2019/2022
3	Refrigerating appliances	Commission Regulation (EU) 2019/2019
4	Electronic displays	Commission Regulation (EU) 2019/2021
5	Welding equipment	Commission Regulation (EU) 2019/1784
6	Vacuum cleaners	Commission Regulation (EU) No 666/2013
7	Servers and data storage products	Commission Regulation (EU) 2019/424
8	Mobile phones, cordless phones and slate tablets	Commission Regulation (EU) 2023/1670
9	Household tumble dryers	Commission Regulation (EU) 2023/2533
10	Goods incorporating light means of transport batteries	Regulation (EU) 2023/1542 of the European Parliament and of the Council

The list moves: Article 5(9) obliges the Commission to amend Annex II by delegated act at the latest twelve months after publication of the act concerned. Entry 8 shows what "repairability requirements" means in practice. Commission Regulation (EU) 2023/1670 of 16 June 2023, applicable from 20 June 2025, requires the listed spare parts to remain available for at least seven years after the end of placement on the market of the last unit of the model.

Repair information form and online platform

Article 4 creates a European Repair Information Form, the template for which is set out in Annex I. Providing it is voluntary, but it binds the repairer: supplied free of charge on a durable medium before any contract, it cannot be altered for 30 calendar days, and acceptance by the consumer within that period obliges the repairer to perform the repair on those terms. Only the necessary costs of a diagnostic service remain chargeable, and then only if the consumer has been informed of them.

Article 7 establishes a European online platform for repair, letting consumers find repairers, sellers of refurbished goods or community-led repair initiatives. The Commission is to develop the common online interface by 31 July 2027; Member States that already run a compliant national platform need not create a national section, but that platform must be operational by the same date. Registration by repairers remains voluntary.

The twelve-month guarantee extension

Article 16 amends Directive (EU) 2019/771. A new Article 10(2a) extends the liability period once by twelve months where repair is the remedy used to bring the goods into conformity. Member States keep the option of longer time limits. Three amendments come with it: the seller must inform the consumer, before providing the remedy, of the right to choose between repair and replacement and of the possible extension; repairability joins the qualities a consumer may reasonably expect under Article 7(1), point (d); and the repair remedy must be carried out free of charge and without significant inconvenience to the consumer.

Article 21, the only transitional provision in the directive, covers this package alone: the Article 16 amendments do not apply to sales contracts concluded before 31 July 2026. Nothing equivalent shields the obligation to repair.

Overlap with ESPR and the Battery Regulation

Entries 1 to 9 of Annex II are ecodesign implementing regulations adopted under Directive 2009/125/EC, the framework directive that Regulation (EU) 2024/1781 (ESPR), published as OJ L, 2024/1781, 28.6.2024, repealed with effect from 18 July 2024. Those implementing regulations themselves remain in force until they are repealed or declared obsolete. The current scope of the obligation is therefore drawn by measures from the energy-related products era. ESPR is a framework act: its substantive requirements are set product group by product group through delegated acts, and each one laying down repairability requirements will have to join Annex II within twelve months. The first working plan, COM(2025) 187 final of 16 April 2025, prioritises final and intermediate products and sets out horizontal requirements, one of which is repairability including repairability scoring. See also the digital product passport, another part of the same structure.

Entry 10 attaches the obligation to goods incorporating light means of transport batteries through Regulation (EU) 2023/1542. Commission guidelines published as Commission Notice C/2025/214 confirm that its Article 11 applies from 18 February 2027: portable batteries incorporated in appliances must be readily removable and replaceable by the end-user and, for light means of transport batteries, Article 11(5) adds removability by independent professionals down to the cells inside the pack.

An uneven transposition

A directive is not directly applicable. The obligation reaches the manufacturer only once a Member State has transposed it, and at the deadline of 31 July 2026 that work was plainly unfinished across much of the Union. Several large markets had not adopted their national measures, and others still had them in draft before their parliaments.

For a manufacturer selling across the single market, that produces an awkward interval rather than a clean start date. The applicable national text has to be checked market by market, and the absence of a transposition does not mean the obligation will not arrive: it means it will arrive later, possibly with national procedural detail attached.

A directive is not directly applicable, so the obligation reaches the operator through national law, but the full harmonisation in Article 3 makes the content of the transpositions still to come predictable. Articles 11 and 15 require effective compliance means and penalties; Articles 17 and 18 bring breaches within Directive (EU) 2020/1828 and Regulation (EU) 2017/2394. For a product team the order of checks is straightforward: whether the product falls within an Annex II act, who carries the obligation, then a review of the contractual clauses and the hardware or software techniques that could impede repair.