Right to Repair Dir 2024/1799: why textiles remain outside Annex II and what is coming in 2027

What Directive 2024/1799 establishes

The promulgation of Directive (EU) 2024/1799 of the European Parliament and of the Council on common rules promoting the repair of goods (Right to Repair) introduces a paradigm shift in the post-sale obligations of economic operators in the internal market. Published in the Official Journal of the European Union and with effective entry into force, the regulatory text establishes a binding framework that the Member States must incorporate into their national legal order before 31 Jul 2026. This transposition deadline, documented in the CELEX register 32024L1799, marks the start of a structural requirement for the European industrial fabric. The main mandate falls on manufacturers, who assume the unavoidable duty to repair defective goods at the consumer's request, operating independently from the legal guarantee of conformity previously regulated by Directive (EU) 2019/771.

The architecture of Directive 2024/1799 is structured around the repair obligation embodied in its Article 5. The rule requires that the repair be carried out "free of charge or for a reasonable price" and that it be executed "within a reasonable time from the moment the manufacturer takes physical possession of the good". This reasonableness criterion in the price seeks to prevent the cost of intervention and spare parts from operating as a deterrent barrier for the consumer. Likewise, in Article 4 the legislator introduces the European Repair Information Form. This pre-contractual instrument standardises the key parameters of the technical service, binding the repairer for a period of thirty calendar days and providing legal certainty to the decision-making process of the end user.

The scope of this repair duty is not universal. Article 5(1) explicitly restricts this obligation to goods for which Union law provides reparability requirements. The material delimitation of the rule is set out in Annex II of the Directive, which operates as a closed list of Union legal acts establishing those technical requirements. Currently, this annex enumerates specific regulations applicable to domestic washing machines, refrigeration appliances, electronic displays, welding equipment and mobile phones. In this current regulatory configuration, the textile sector remains entirely excluded. Apparel and footwear products do not appear in Annex II, temporarily exempting fashion brands from the direct repair obligations stipulated by this directive.

Why textiles remain outside Annex II

The absence of the textile sector from Annex II of Directive (EU) 2024/1799 constitutes neither a permanent exemption nor a legislative oversight, but a jurisdictional gap rooted in limitations of a technical and regulatory nature. Recital 21 of the Directive itself sets out the underlying doctrine: "In order to avoid overburdening manufacturers and to ensure they are able to comply with their repair obligation, that obligation should be limited to those goods for which reparability requirements are laid down in Union legal acts". This premise conditions the application of the rule on the prior existence of an ecodesign framework that defines what constitutes a repairable product.

From a technical perspective, the assessment of reparability in textile-based articles presents a material complexity far higher than that of electronic appliances. Whereas a mobile phone allows modular design and assembly through standardised screws, apparel is characterised by deep heterogeneity in fibre composition and sewing techniques. The standardised assessment of ease of disassembly is not directly transferable to apparel products. Textile repair requires interventions of an artisanal nature, where the replacement of trims and the restoration of sewn joints depend on variables not codified in current European standards. Without a parametric definition of which elements must be supplied as spare parts or which tools are considered of common access to intervene on a garment, the legislator lacks the technical substrate needed to impose a binding repair obligation.

The political and regulatory architecture factor is equally decisive in explaining this exclusion. The European institutions have decided to address the sustainability of the fashion sector through a broader horizontal harmonisation instrument: Regulation (EU) 2024/1781 on ecodesign for sustainable products (ESPR). The anticipated inclusion of textiles in Directive 2024/1799 would have generated a legal asymmetry, imposing repair obligations in the post-sale phase on goods that are not yet subject to design requirements facilitating such intervention at their origin.

Therefore, the legislator opts for strict regulatory sequencing. First, the design imperative and component standardisation must be established through the ESPR. The European Commission will articulate the exact specifications through a sectoral delegated act, which will define the requirements for spare parts supply and the availability of mending instructions. Only when this textile delegated act acquires full legal effect will the enabling scenario be set for apparel products to join the catalogue of goods subject to the legal repair duty.

France pioneering the reparability index

In the scenario of European regulatory development, the French regulatory framework has operated as a legal laboratory ahead of the Community guidelines, establishing material precedents for measuring the useful life of products. The basis of this national architecture lies in Loi n° 2020-105 on combating waste and on the circular economy (Loi AGEC) and the subsequent Loi n° 2021-1104 on combating climate change. These legislative texts introduced the obligation to provide pre-contractual information on the repair capacity of certain categories of goods, configuring the French reparability index.

Article 13 of the AGEC Law articulates the duty of producers and importers to inform the consumer about the environmental qualities and characteristics of products. In its operational deployment, the French reparability index works through a scoring system on a scale from one to ten. This numerical value is calculated through an evaluation matrix weighing various variables critical for technical intervention. The fundamental parameters include the availability of technical documentation and effective access to spare parts. This parametric approach requires economic operators to document the product's architecture exhaustively.

The application of this system to the textile typology presents substantial taxonomic challenges, but the French legal order has already mapped the roadmap for its implementation. The evaluation methodology for garments prioritises elements such as the replaceability of zips and the resistance of structural seams. The calculation of the index requires the manufacturer to declare the supply time of essential spare parts and the proportion of the price of those spare parts against the total cost of the new good. This forced transparency alters the marketing model, forcing brands to internalise post-sale costs at the collection design stage.

The entry into force of the new durability criteria for the textile sector under French regulation exerts centripetal pressure on the European single market. The imposition of labelling and reparability calculation obligations unilaterally by a Member State generates risks of commercial fragmentation. Companies operating cross-border must adapt their traceability and packaging systems to comply with the requirements of the French Directorate-General for Competition, Consumer Affairs and Fraud Control (DGCCRF), assuming asymmetric operational costs. This scenario of national divergence acts as a decisive political accelerator. The European Commission uses the methodological learnings of the French index as empirical substrate to structure the information requirements of the imminent European delegated act.

ESPR textile delegated act, 2027 horizon

The European Union's regulatory architecture for the fashion industry pivots on the development of specific delegated acts under the umbrella of Regulation (EU) 2024/1781 (ESPR). The Commission's strategic document, called the Working Plan 2025-2030 (referenced as COM(2025) 187 final), establishes the timetable of priority intervention, placing the textile and apparel sector in the first block of action with a 2027 horizon. This timeframe determines the moment at which the technical standards that will transform manufacturing and marketing operations in the internal market will be adopted.

The textile delegated act will operate through the direct activation of the product parameters enumerated in Annex I of the ESPR. Article 5(1) of the Regulation empowers the Commission to issue performance requirements focused on durability and reparability. In the context of garments, the technical specifications will address abrasion resistance and colour fastness to washing. Simultaneously, the reparability requirements will impose the modular design of fastenings and the standardisation of trims to facilitate non-destructive mending. The legislator will oblige brands to maintain an accessible inventory of critical spare parts and to provide technical repair diagrams, eliminating the informational barriers that currently block interventions by networks of independent workshops.

The transparency vector falls on Article 7 of the ESPR, which governs information requirements. Paragraph 2 of that article requires products to be accompanied by "information on the performance of the product in relation to one or more of the product parameters set out in Annex I, including a reparability score and a durability score". This reparability score harmonised for the whole Union will absorb the experience of the French model, translating the garment's engineering data into a comparable metric that can be required at the point of sale.

The legislative design deliberately opts to channel these obligations through the ESPR rather than forcing an immediate amendment to the Right to Repair Directive. The ESPR functions as the enabling rule of supply. Only when the 2027 delegated act defines which spare parts must be available and how the textile reparability index is calculated will the legal framework needed to require post-sale liabilities be consolidated. Once this delegated act is applicable, the procedural mechanism contemplated in Article 5(9) of Directive 2024/1799 will be activated. That provision obliges the Commission to adopt new delegated acts to update Annex II "in the light of the evolution of the legislation" and to include textiles in the list of goods subject to the formal and unconditional duty of repair by the manufacturer.

Electronics vs textiles jurisdictional gap

The contrast between the regulation of large household appliances and the apparel sector illustrates a profound asymmetry in the maturity of European industrial standardisation. Electrical equipment operates under the framework inherited from Directive 2009/125/EC on ecodesign, which has enabled the consolidation of rigorous technical standards. Standard EN 45554:2020 defines precise methods for assessing the repair capacity of energy-related devices. This standardisation maturity provides the legal scaffolding that has allowed the legislator to automatically incorporate smartphones and data servers into Annex II of Directive 2024/1799. Post-sale repair obligations are immediately enforceable for the electronics industry because the design requirements are already part of the positive legal order.

The textile sector lacks this body of harmonised standardisation at Community level. Within the framework of the European Committee for Standardisation (CEN), there is no equivalent technical standard that parameterises the repair capacity of a sweater or a pair of trousers with the same metric precision applied to a motherboard. The legislator faces the challenge of defining wear tolerance variables and seam tensile testing methods to legally underpin any penalty for lack of reparability. The adoption of the dual approach recognises this transitory technical incapacity. The immediate execution of the Right to Repair Directive is prioritised in sectors with consolidated design parameters, while the fashion industry is confined to a period of technical incubation under the discipline of the ESPR.

This strategic bifurcation generates a temporal jurisdictional gap with critical implications for corporate planning. Electronics companies are legally bound today to set reasonable prices for repair and to guarantee interventions within a reasonable time under the regime of Directive 2024/1799. By contrast, textile manufacturers operate in a regulatory latency where post-sale requirements are not yet actionable by the consumer through a direct right of protection against the brand.

Nevertheless, this exemption from obligations in the repair sphere does not exempt the textile sector from documentary preparation. Article 5(9) of the Right to Repair Directive acts as a deferred legal bridge. This provision orders the Commission to adopt delegated acts to add new Union legal acts to Annex II within a maximum period of twelve months after their publication. Consequently, the jurisdictional gap will close automatically shortly after the entry into force of the ESPR textile delegated act. Fashion brands have a compressed temporal margin to redesign their supply chain and establish the repair infrastructure that will be imperative by the end of the decade.

Analytical reflection

The analysis of the regulatory framework reveals that the temporary exclusion of the textile sector from the direct repair obligations responds to a mechanism of sequential legal structuring. The European legislator subordinates the enforceability of post-sale technical intervention to the prior consolidation of the material design requirements. This regulatory hierarchy prevents penalising a manufacturer for the irreparability of a garment until the legal order codifies its constructive parameters. The ESPR assumes the role of technical foundation, while Directive (EU) 2024/1799 positions itself as the coercive instrument that closes the cycle.

The Digital Product Passport (DPP) emerges as the data transmission axis between these two regulatory spheres. The ESPR requirements will oblige brands to store the reparability score and the disassembly documentation in the DPP data carrier. This information architecture is indispensable to comply with future repair obligations, allowing independent mending workshops to access technical intervention manuals and verify the compatibility of spare parts. A joint reading of Pillar 1 ESPR/DPP evidences that ecodesign does not operate in isolation, but as the data prerequisite for the functionality of the second-hand market and the repair sector.

The regulatory interconnection becomes even more evident when observing the recent proposals on the dematerialisation of declarations of conformity. As drawn from the analysis of Proposal COM(2025) 504 on digitalisation by default, the effort to digitalise instructions for use and dump the legal documentation into the Digital Product Passport eliminates barriers to accessing technical information. An independent repairer will no longer depend on obsolete printed manuals, but will interact directly with the centralised product register.

The legal mapping developed in the CIRPASS D2.1-d21-schema-tutorial) project already anticipated the convergence of directives around component traceability. The exclusion of textiles from Annex II of Directive 2024/1799 does not constitute a deregulation refuge, but an operational moratorium. The 2027 horizon marks the inflection point at which the textile delegated act will activate the mechanism of Article 5(9) of the Right to Repair Directive. Finance departments and regulatory compliance teams must interpret this transition period not as an absence of obligations, but as the critical temporal window to restructure product engineering and audit the networks of authorised workshops before the repair imperative is fully integrated into the Community textile jurisdiction.