EU right to repair legislation has dropped
the official document says:
https://cyprus.representation.ec.europa.eu/news/right-repair-commission-introduces-new-consumer-rights-easy-and-attractive-repairs-2023-03-22_en<1 - A right for consumers to claim repair to producers, for products that are technically repairable under EU law, like a washing machine or a TV. This will ensure that consumers always have someone to turn to when they opt to repair their products, as well as encourage producers to develop more sustainable business models.<2 - A producers' obligation to inform consumers about the products that they are obliged to repair themselves.<3 - An online matchmaking repair platform to connect consumers with repairers and sellers of refurbished goods in their area. The platform will enable searches by location and quality standards, helping consumers find attractive offers, and boosting visibility for repairers.<4 - A European Repair Information Form which consumers will be able to request from any repairer, bringing to repair conditions and price, and make it easier for consumers to compare repair offers.<5 - A European quality standard for repair services will be developed to help consumers identify repairers who commit to a higher quality. This ‘easy repair' standard will be open to all repairers across the EU willing to commit to minimum quality standards, for example based on duration, or availability of products.I don't know if those rules are any good because you usually have to be a level 12 legal wizard to understand what it really means, so I'm deferring to somebody else for that judgement.
here is a video of Louis Rossmann ranting about the centralized database (point 4) where repair services have to compete on price
https://invidious.snopyta.org/watch?v=-aKw5pSR5ukThe reason he's upset is because if all repair shops have to compete in a central market place their margins will be razor thin and won't be able to accumulate capital and remain on the labor-aristocrat level.
Rossmann himself erroneously thinks he's petit bourgeois (smol business ouner) but he's wrong about that. He's class status is labor-aristocrat. He's probably wrong to complain about the EU being worse than the US, because he got throttled and prevented from accumulating capital in the US as well. They put a fake "failed to pay taxes"-lien on him, and filed it with a bogus address, so he wouldn't get noticed about it. That prevented him from gaining access to financing (for about a decade), which prevented him rising from labor-aristocrat class-status to petit-bourgeois status.
A conspiracy to throttle TheRossmann is likely, tho it might be a structural affair So same shit different methods.
Neo-liberalism is the bourgeoisie pulling up the ladder, if you didn't have capital by the 1970s you're not going to get some. Another aspect about this is that EU countries are tiered and they want to push down prices of repairs so that it's only viable to do a repair-business in the lower tier EU countries that are designated low-wage countries for support industries, because that's the basic neo-liberal model where the Neo-liberals can be middle-men that extract the difference between high-wage and low-wage countries.
TheRossmann does have a point that unless all parts are made available and there can't be shenanigans with software-locked parts, there just won't be a viable repair industry.
The question now is whether or not it would be better if labor-aristocratic repair-shops weren't held down and allowed to become bourgeois capital-havers ? Would they use their capital to start creating their own replacement-parts that compete with original parts from the manufacturers ?
Are there other ways to get a significant third-party replacement parts industry going ?
One thing is clear big-tech is monopoly capital, they want to collect monopoly-rent on mediocre closed down crap, and they're not going to let that go until tech gets forced open.