Campaign for the Freedom of the Automotive Parts and Repair Market
ECAR
Established in 1993, the European Campaign for the Freedom of the Automotive Parts and Repair Market (ECAR) is an alliance of 10 independent EU organisations representing vehicle parts producers, distributors, independent repairers, the European motor insurance industry, a large cross section of small and medium-sized enterprises as well as the 260 million motoring consumers in the European Union.
ID: 24503897827-04
Lobbying Activity
Response to Review of the Designs Directive
25 Jan 2023
Please find attached the position statement of ECAR, the European Campaign for the Freedom of the Automotive Parts and Repair Market.
Read full responseResponse to Promoting sustainability in consumer after-sales
4 Apr 2022
ECAR (the European Campaign for the Freedom of the Automotive Parts and Repair Market) fully supports the objectives of the new Right to Repair Initiative, which will contribute to promote more accessible and affordable repair services to the benefit of all European consumers. Facilitating product repairability and accessibility to replaceable spare parts are essential to enable the transition to a truly competitive and circular economy, in which consumers can choose among a variety of repairers and spare parts – not just Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs).
Vehicles are high purchase value and long-standing goods that live more than 20 years, which often require repair and maintenance and are not replaced when encountering a damage or a problem but are rather well repaired to continue providing a safe, efficient and proper mobility to the consumers. The very essence of the automotive sector is indeed the existence of a robust and specific repair market and aftermarket (authorised and independent), offering strong and competitive repair services and safeguarding consumers a long lifetime for their vehicles.
In that context, it is crucial to ensure coherence with other regulatory frameworks, such as the EU Design Directive (98/71). As it stands, the Design Directive does not address the case of must-match visible parts (e.g., car body panels, windscreens), which must exactly match the design of the original component. This results in a patchwork of conflicting national legislation where some Member States still allow original manufacturers to have full design rights on all visible must-match spare parts, hence leading to a monopoly on the repairs aftermarket to the detriment of independent operators and consumers.
An EU-wide Repairs Clause in the Design Directive is indispensable to successfully achieve the objectives of the Right to Repair Initiative, by removing unnecessary and unjustified regulatory barriers, in order to enable fair competition in repairs aftermarkets, and improving cost-efficiency for repairs and replacement parts.
Since vehicles are long-standing products, a vehicle owner is susceptible to have a car accident from day 1 until the very last day of his vehicle ownership. The Repairs Clause will likely contribute to the promotion of the circular economy and sustainable consumption and reduce waste generation in certain markets, as consumers will be more inclined to repair their own products at an affordable price, rather than buying new products. This could be the case for electronics and small appliances in particular, as high after-sale prices are often dissuasive to consumers. More affordable repair services will contribute to expand product lifespan.
Call to action: on the basis of the strong support in favour of the Repairs Clause of the European Commission’s Economic and Legal Review, on the basis of the growing majority of Member States which have adopted a national Repairs Clause in their own design laws, and on the basis of the encouraging conclusion of its Evaluation exercise (SWD(2020) 264), ECAR hopes to swiftly see the publication of the proposal to revise the Design Directive including the introduction of a Repairs Clause, seizing the momentum to harmonise the market for visible spare parts by proposing the adoption of a Repairs Clause from Day 1 in the Design Directive, as the most legitimate and balanced solution for all market players. This will tangibly contribute to the objectives of the Right to Repair Initiative.
About ECAR: established in 1993, ECAR is the European Campaign for the Freedom of the Automotive Parts and Repair Market, an alliance of independent EU organisations representing the many thousands of vehicle parts producers and distributors, a large cross-section of SMEs, as well as the interests of the over three hundred million motoring consumers in the European Union.
Read full responseResponse to Review of the Community Designs Regulation
15 Dec 2020
Established in 1993, ECAR is the European Campaign for the Freedom of the Automotive Parts and Repair Market, an alliance of independent EU organisations representing the many thousands of vehicle parts producers and distributors, a large cross-section of SMEs, as well as the interests of the over three hundred million motoring consumers in the European Union.
ECAR’s objective is the establishment of a harmonised, free and genuinely competitive European Internal Market for automotive visible replacement parts: body panels; integrated lighting; automotive glass; rear-view mirrors etc. These parts are also called “must match” visible replacement parts. What distinguishes this category of spare parts from others is that the outside appearance of such spare parts, which is to be replaced in the course of a repair, must match the design of the original component exactly.
ECAR strongly welcomes the initiative of the European Commission to review the existing Design Directive and Community Design Regulation.
ECAR strongly supports the Commission’s intended policy option d) of the Inception Impact Assessment, aiming at completing “the single market for repair spare parts through further harmonisation of rules on their protectability, and in particular full liberalisation of that aftermarket through the introduction of a repair clause into the Design Directive (such as contained already in the Community Design Regulation). The latter option could allow for fair and effective competition, strengthen the competitiveness of the independent repair spare parts sector and bring greater choice and lower prices for consumers; in addition, it would contribute to the objectives and development of circular economy.”
A stated in point e) of the problems this revision exercise intends to tackle, it is time to put an end to this temporary non-harmonised situation which has dragged on now for more than 20 years.
ECAR would however like to stress that it is of crucial important to introduce a Repairs Clause applicable to ALL designs from the 1st day following the entry into force of the new Directive. A Repairs Clause which would have an effect on designs registered after the entry into force of the new legislation would have several negative impacts:
- It would create a legal uncertainty on the market as to whether this particular car or model is protected, affecting the consumers, the independent parts producers and repairers.
- It would leave the car owners of older cars (potentially those having less money) with very high priced visible spare parts, while the wealthier buying new cars would benefit from lower prices thanks to the new competitive market of visible spare parts.
Call to action: on the basis of the strong support in favour of the Repairs Clause of the Economic Review and the Legal Review, on the basis of the recent change of sides of Germany and on the basis of the encouraging conclusion of its Evaluation exercise, ECAR calls upon the European Commission to seize the momentum to harmonise the market for visible spare parts and to align the legislation in Member States to the European Union Regulation by proposing the adoption of a Repairs Clause from day 1 in the Design Directive, as the most legitimate and balanced solution for all market players.
Read full responseResponse to Evaluation of EU legislation on design protection
18 Jul 2018
Established in 1993, ECAR is an alliance of independent EU organisations representing vehicle parts producers and distributors, a large cross-section of SMEs as well as the interests of 285 million motoring consumers in the European Union.
ECAR’s objective is the establishment of a harmonised, free and genuinely competitive European Internal Market for automotive visible replacement parts, also called “must match” visible replacement parts.
Currently at stake is the integrity of the €15bn after-sales market of visible “must match” replacement parts for the millions of vehicle owners and for the spare parts suppliers. By extending design protection to visible spare parts, this would create a de facto product monopoly, to the sole benefit of the vehicle manufacturers, thereby eliminating consumer choice and stifle free and fair competition.
A Repairs Clause rightly and equitably gives vehicle manufacturers full protection over the design of their new cars and retains their ability to fairly compete in the aftermarket. It merely and correctly ensures that this protection is not extended to the corresponding visible spare parts. It thus leaves vehicle owning consumers free to repair their vehicles as they wish, and avoids creating deleterious spare parts monopolies.
Repeated evidence-based reinforcement of the legal, safety, quality and economic case has been made and supported by the aftermarket and the Commission over the past 25 year. However, despite the best efforts of the Commission and of the Parliament, the Repairs Clause has inexplicably not yet been included in the EU Design Directive, resulting thus in an incomplete European Internal Market.
National repairs clauses already exist in 11 Member states: Belgium, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Luxemburg, the Netherlands, Poland, Spain and the United Kingdom. In the rest of the EU, visible replacement parts can only be supplied by vehicle manufacturers under monopolistic conditions.
ECAR would like to bring to the attention of the Commission the recent “Partneo scandal” revealed by Mediapart in June 2018, where PSA and Renault secretly and artificially inflated the prices of certain "captive" spare parts by an average of 15%thanks to the use of a very sophisticated software, Partneo. Renault and PSA would have thereby collectively gained an undue profit, estimated at 1.5 billion euros over ten years.
This scandal, widely facilitated by the French design legislation which puts the car manufacturers in a monopolistic position in the huge market of visible spare parts, is yet another attempt by many vehicle manufacturers to use all the opportunities of their monopolistic situation to still and always make more money at the expense and to the detriment of motorist consumers.
For ECAR, the current effects of the absence of a real EU Internal Market on the thousands of independent aftermarket SMEs, which are at the heart of our local economic base, are extremely serious.
ECAR strongly welcomes the Commission Evaluation Roadmap as a next step in the Overall Evaluation procedure of the design protection legislation and system in the EU.
ECAR especially welcomes the planned assessment of the consequences of the fact that the rules applicable to spare parts have not been harmonised at EU level and looks forward to see the conclusions of both the Economic Review and the Legal review on the Repairs Clause again fully endorsed by the Commission in its future Evaluation Report.
More concretely, ECAR believes that the targeted consultation should be open to organisations of automotive aftermarket companies involved both in the production of design-protected components (automotive glass, body parts and lighting producers), in the distribution (parts wholesalers) and in the repair or replacement of these components (and not only to organisations developing original design (i.e. design holders)).
Read full responseMeeting with Kaius Kristian Hedberg (Cabinet of Commissioner Elżbieta Bieńkowska), Rolf Carsten Bermig (Cabinet of Commissioner Elżbieta Bieńkowska) and
9 Mar 2018 · Connected Car