What the Scores Actually Say
When the European Union's Ecodesign Regulation for smartphones (EU 2023/1670) came into force on June 20, 2025, every new phone on EU retail shelves acquired a mandatory A-to-E repairability grade. The results were not flattering for American manufacturers. According to a May 11, 2026 analysis by the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation (ITIF), Apple scored D- for smartphones and C- for laptops; Google scored C- for smartphones; Microsoft landed at B- for laptops. Motorola — whose Android handsets rely on standardised, interchangeable components — scored B+.
The grades are not aberrations. They reflect a design gap that is structural, not accidental. And with the EU's Right to Repair Directive (2024/1799) transposition deadline of July 31, 2026 now arrived — banning software-based parts-pairing restrictions and mandating seven years of spare-parts availability for smartphones after the last model is sold — the commercial stakes of those grades have risen sharply.
The Case For the EU's Agenda
Before examining the competitive distortion, it is worth stating the underlying problem the EU is trying to solve, because it is real and serious. Global e-waste reached 62 million tonnes in 2022 — an 82 percent increase since 2010 — with less than 25 percent properly collected or recycled, leaving an estimated $62 billion in recoverable materials discarded annually. When a cracked iPhone screen or a failed laptop battery triggers a replacement purchase because repair is economically irrational or technically blocked, that device joins a growing toxic stream.
The directive's core demand is reasonable: manufacturers should supply spare parts at fair prices, provide repair manuals to professionals, and stop using software or hardware to obstruct independent repair without legitimate justification. It extends a consumer's statutory warranty by one year when they choose repair over replacement. These are proportionate consumer-protection measures backed by serious environmental data.
Where the Proportionality Argument Breaks Down
The difficulty is in the scoring methodology's architecture. The EU repairability score evaluates six parameters — disassembly depth, tool requirements, fastener types, spare-parts availability, repair documentation, and software update duration — with disassembly depth weighted at 25 percent. This methodology systematically rewards devices designed with modular, standardised components and penalises integrated designs where the entire stack (hardware, software, security architecture) is engineered as a unit.
That is not a neutral design preference. Apple's Secure Enclave, which binds Touch ID and Face ID sensors to the device's logic board, exists partly to prevent biometric data theft via counterfeit components. Parts-pairing in that context is not planned obsolescence — it is a security architecture choice. The EU directive bans restrictions on third-party repair without "legitimate and objective justification," but leaves manufacturers to argue that justification case-by-case before national enforcement bodies, creating legal uncertainty for firms whose entire product philosophy rests on integrated design.
The ITIF analysis identifies a second structural asymmetry: Digital Product Passport (DPP) compliance. The EU's DPP registry launched July 19, 2026 — twelve days before the Right to Repair Directive takes full effect — requiring manufacturers to document materials, repair characteristics, and supply chain data across every product variant. For a company like Apple managing thousands of SKUs across supply chains spanning 30 to 50 countries, with chip architectures that become obsolete within two to five years, the disclosure requirements threaten to expose competitively sensitive system design data that Asian competitors using commodity components simply do not possess. Motorola does not have the same problem because Motorola does not have the same integrated stack.
The Brussels Effect Is Working — Partially
Proponents of the EU's approach correctly point to the Brussels Effect. Apple expanded its Self Service Repair program to 32 European countries in 2024, and the program now covers 65 products globally — meaning American consumers benefit from European regulatory pressure without the US government having passed a single federal repair law. Apple's MacBook Neo, launched ahead of the July 2026 deadline and described by teardown analysts as "the most repairable Mac in 15 years," uses zero adhesive and 18 standard screws. The EU forced a design pivot that a decade of consumer advocacy could not.
But the Brussels Effect cuts both ways. When one jurisdiction's scoring criteria become the de facto global standard, the underlying policy choices in that criteria are exported too. India, Australia, Brazil, and Colombia are all advancing right-to-repair frameworks. If they adopt EU methodology wholesale — as smaller regulators often do to save resources — the structural bias against integrated design becomes a global market access condition, not a domestic European preference.
A Proportionate Path Forward
The ITIF recommends that US policymakers engage the International Electrotechnical Commission to develop international repairability standards that account for software-enabled repair and security architecture, rather than defaulting entirely to the EU's hardware-centric scoring model. That is the right instinct. The goal of repair regulation should be measurable consumer and environmental outcomes — lower repair costs, longer product lifespans, less e-waste — not a specific hardware design philosophy.
Right to Repair Europe, the coalition that campaigned hardest for the directive, itself acknowledges the current framework is incomplete: only five of fifteen required spare parts are accessible to end-users, screen replaceability requirements fell short of what advocates demanded, and parts-pairing restrictions were reduced to a notification requirement rather than an outright ban. Both the industry critics and the advocacy community agree the current rules are imperfect.
That shared dissatisfaction is the right starting point for reform. Repairability metrics should reward durable, long-supported products — regardless of whether that durability comes from modular hardware or from a manufacturer standing behind seven years of software support and professional repair access. A framework that cannot distinguish between Apple's secure-by-design architecture and a cheap device with proprietary screws designed solely to frustrate repair is not a policy instrument; it is a tariff in disguise.