Repair is widely valued, but it is often a hard option to put into practice. Most consumers end up replacing or recycling their broken products which comes at a financial and environmental cost. Making repair the easy, economic and obvious choice will drive a repair market that works for everyone.
Euroconsumers members Altroconsumo, OCU and DECO PROteste are key partners in the REPper project, which began in 2023 to develop a culture of repair by taking action at the supply side, demand side and across skills development.
REPper stands for Repair Perspective and operates across the Mediterranean countries of France, Greece, Italy, Portugal, Slovenia, Spain, Albania and Bosnia and Herzegovina.
REPper has run a series of indepth roundtables across the project countries, hearing from 137 stakeholders about the economic, behavioural and educational changes needed to make repair a viable option for consumers when products break.
The roundtable discussions revealed that extending product lifespans reduces waste and resource consumption and creates local economic opportunities, especially for small businesses and skilled workers.
However, repair is still often less attractive than replacement due to barriers such as high costs, limited access to spare parts, lack of skills, low consumer trust and regulatory challenges.
This month, Euroconsumers widened the reach of the roundtable results and reflections with a high level roundtable as part of the Start Talking webinar series.
At the event we heard the EU perspective from experts from the REPper Consortium and consumer organisation OCU, the European Commission, WEEE Forum, community repair programme The Restart Project, BusinessEurope and ANEC who represent consumers in standards development.
Together, they brought together their views on the incoming EU Repair Directive, learnings from REPper and ideas about what needs to happen to make genuine, lasting changes to Europe’s repair system.
1. Repair needs an integrated approach
First up, the participants said that a strong repair culture can only embed and scale through an integrated approach. Pushing at individual levers won’t work, it requires a wholesale approach that combines regulation, financial incentives, education, consumer information and public strategies.