Frankfurt/Brussels, 29 August 2023 – Ahead of the start of the trilogue negotiations on the European Ecodesign Regulation, VDMA Executive Director Thilo Brodtmann says:

 

"It is important that critical points are renegotiated in the upcoming trilogue negotiations between the EU Parliament, Council and European Commission on an Ecodesign Regulation. These include the common criteria for similar product groups, in particular for the durability and repairability of products. We have long argued here that there should be no "one-size-fits-all approach." Mechanical and plant engineering is too diverse for that. Instead, there is a need for product-specific ecodesign requirements in order to be able to adequately take into account individual characteristics and special features of the products. The feared duplications and contradictions between the Ecodesign for Sustainable Products Regulation (ESPR) and the Chemicals Regulation (REACH) should also be eliminated.

 

Before the summer break, the European Parliament and the Council quickly adopted their positions on the ESPR, advocating many improvements to the Commission's proposal. For example, the Digital Product Passport (DPP) is to be based on existing databases (SCIP, EPREL). In addition, social sustainability criteria should no longer be immediately included in the ecodesign requirements. Instead, the Commission will consider their inclusion four years after the Regulation enters into force. This is the right approach, as the planned new Ecodesign Regulation must build on the success of the previous Ecodesign Directive, which is mainly due to its product-based approach. At the same time, it must be practicable, especially for small and medium-sized enterprises, and without major bureaucratic hurdles."

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VDMA represents more than 3600 German and European mechanical and plant engineering companies. The industry stands for innovation, export orientation and SMEs. The companies employ around 3 million people in the EU-27, more than 1.2 million of them in Germany alone. This makes mechanical and plant engineering the largest employer among the capital goods industries, both in the EU-27 and in Germany. In the European Union, it represents a turnover volume of an estimated 770 billion euros. Around 80 percent of the machinery sold in the EU comes from a manufacturing plant in the domestic market.