This regulation aims to limit harmful waste for the environment and to defend consumer rights, forced to accumulate incompatible chargers for their different devices.
Le Monde With AFP
To the Dam of Apple, who fiercely opposed it, the 27 countries of the European Union (EU) and the MEPs agreed on Tuesday, June 7 to impose in the Union a universal wired charger For smartphones, tablets, consoles and digital cameras within two and a half years.
“Under the new rules, consumers will no longer need a different device and load cable each time they buy a new device, and can use a single charger for all their devices Portable electronics of small and average sizes “, explained the European Parliament in a Communiqui é .
By fall 2024, mobile phones, tablets, electronic readers, headphones and helmets, digital cameras, portable video game consoles and portable speakers, if they are rechargeable with a wired cable, “will have to be Equipped with a Type-C USB port, whatever their manufacturer, “he said.
Laptops will be subject to the same requirement of a single charger “within forty months following the entry into force of the text”, by 2026 (the text to be published in the Official Journal of the EU after summer, after formal approval of the Council and the European Parliament).
The regulation also provides that the load speed is harmonized for devices authorizing the fast load, to prevent it from being restrained in the event of use with a device of a different brand.
Save at least 250 million euros annually 2>
By making decoupling between the sale of electronic devices and chargers possible, the text could allow European consumers – who spend around 2.4 billion euros per year for purchases of chargers alone – to save at Less 250 million euros annually, according to the European Commission. Similarly, the waste of unused chargers, evaluated at 11,000 tonnes per year, could be reduced by almost 1,000 tonnes.
This project had been launched in 2009 by the Commission, but it had so far struck the lively reluctance of the industry, although the number of types of existing chargers has been greatly reduced over the years.
Thirty in 2009, they went to three: the micro USB connector, which has long equipped most of the phones, the USB-C, a more recent connection, and the lightning, used by Apple. The Californian group, which argues that its Lightning team technology teams more than a billion devices around the world, had expressed its fierce opposition to the European text, believing that it would “stifle innovation”.
Consumer associations, while welcoming the EU project, had regretted that it does not concern wireless loading systems, booming.