I see no one bothered to read the article…
It complains about requirement to list prices or spare parts on a website. 80% of phone labels don’t include a URL to that websites. Looks like they are meeting other requirements and the article only complains about the missing URL. So saying that “makers don’t bother to comply” is a misleading clickbait.
The requirement was only to include this URL but since most of those manufacturers most likely don’t offer replacement parts they didn’t set up websites that list them.
Now, starting July 2026 they actually do have to sell replacement parts. As a consumer you have the right to request them and if those are not provided you can file a complaint. My guess is this will be rolled out slowly and will take some complaining and fining to reach 100% compliance. So… familiarize yourself with your rights and file complaints when needed.
I feel that “don’t bother to comply” is perfectly fair language. The article talks about misleading self-assigned scores, links that don’t actually provide information, useless reported price ranges, and other shady practices.
The reason this deserves to be a big story is that this wasn’t even a matter of hardball or softball; the law practically set the ball on a tee and the manufacturers are refusing to swing while saying “yeah, I hit it out of the park.” These laws exist to address the shitty, shady practices employed by most manufacturers, and they can’t be allowed to get away with more shitty practices when the requirements are so low. If we wait for them to follow the law only when there are more regulations to follow, then we, the customers are going to be left playing whack-a-mole with even more violations when we could have already at least put offending manufacturers on notice.
Anything less than calling this shit out right now is gifting shitty manufacturers and shady politicians the ability to later throw their hands in the air saying, “these are too many requirements all at once. How is anyone supposed to understand all this???” And then, instead of pressuring companies to fall in line with the standards, the laws and standards will be reduced, and the consumers will lose yet again.
Disclaimer: I doubt anyone cares, but I know my views as an American are likely far more skewed, but I’m still a consumer who benefits from your laws, even though my country is one of the greatest offenders of deregulation. If you don’t wanna end up like the USA, don’t go after your manufacturers with kids’ gloves like we did. They’re multi-billion dollar companies with big boys and girls working there whose entire pay scale justification is to deal with this kind of shit. Make them do their jobs.
They way I see it this is the less important part of the regulation so saying that manufactures are just ignoring the rules set by EU is alarmist and clibaity. Same thing happened with GDPR: there was a mess with consent popups, some companies ignored the requirements, EU started giving out fines and things improved. I wouldn’t expect anything different here. So far we’re talking about sticker requirements. Now that the law requires manufacturers to actually provide replacement parts we have to let EU enforce them and things should improve.
I don’t think politicians set this law to fail on purpose. The alternative would be to create some certification authority which would add a lot of red tape. This could turn out to be a good compromise. We’ll see.
The world is moving past the EU.
-50 points in 18 hours. That’s impressive.
Probably because 90% of growth is occurring outside the EU.
Edit. It’s a fucking EU stated fact muppets
Do you think Apple and Samsung would stop selling 60% of the European phones? https://appleworld.today/2026/08/apple-now-has-34-of-europes-smartphone-market/
Also you’re the kind of useful idiot that we see all over the internet. Stop.
They obviously aren’t, so what’s your point?
If you resort to name calling, you’re a fucking idiot.
Growth isn’t the only important metric here.
It is to smartphone manufacturers
It’s not. Year on year sales can remain flat but they are still important to turnover.
Lol
Why ?
Because flat < growth
It’s not that deep
Obviously but that doesn’t mean that the flat number of year on year sales don’t matter. It’s a very important metric
Average UKdiot
That’s a stat from the EU lol
And your portmanteau doesn’t work.
So? These companies would just throw out 10% of the ‘growth’?
The EU could flip the scrip and get back to Nokia phones and real interactions. That way the data flow abroad would be minimised significantly.
Just like North Korea?
