Answer in brief
A repairability index rates how easily a product can be opened, supplied with parts and documented for repair. France has displayed a mark out of ten since 2021 and is replacing it with a durability index for some products; the EU energy label has shown a repairability class from A to E on smartphones and slate tablets since 20 June 2025. Both are calculated by the manufacturer from disassembly steps, fasteners, tools, spare parts and repair information, so the grade is decided at the design stage.
A repair grade now sits beside the price tag
A repairability score puts a number on something buyers used to discover only after a breakdown: whether the product can be opened, whether parts exist and whether anyone outside the factory is told how to fix it. France made such a figure compulsory first. The French ministry for ecological transition dates its indice de réparabilité, a mark out of ten shown next to the price, to 1 January 2021.
The European Union followed with its own version. According to the European Commission, smartphones and slate tablets placed on the EU market from 20 June 2025 carry an energy label that includes a repairability class, and the Commission describes this as the first time a product sold in the EU has been required to display such a score. The scale runs from A to E.
For a product team the interesting part is where the grade comes from. It is not awarded by a jury and it cannot be improved by a campaign. It is calculated from the number of steps needed to reach the battery, the kind of fasteners used, the tools required, the parts on offer and the documents published. Every one of those is a design or service decision taken long before launch.
Five criteria behind the French indice de réparabilité
The French index was created by article 16 of the law of 10 February 2020 against waste and for a circular economy. The ministry lists five criteria. Documentation: for how many years the producer undertakes to make technical documents available free of charge to repairers and consumers. Disassembly: how easily the product comes apart, with which tools and which fasteners. Availability of spare parts: for how long, and how quickly they are delivered.
The fourth criterion is the price of spare parts, measured as the ratio between the price of the parts and the price of the product. The fifth is a set of sub-criteria specific to each product category. The five results are combined into one mark out of ten, printed on a colour-coded pictogram that runs from red to dark green.
The display rules are as instructive as the formula. Sellers must show the mark near the price, in the shop and on every web page from which the product can be bought, and must make the detailed scoring table available. Manufacturers and importers have fifteen days to send the mark and its breakdown, free of charge, to anyone who asks, and must keep the supporting evidence for inspection. The company declares the index itself, but it does not escape scrutiny.
What replaced the index depends on the product
The French index has not disappeared; it has been split. The ministry states that in 2025 a durability index replaced it for televisions from 8 January and for washing machines from 8 April, adding new criteria that deal in particular with reliability. For those two categories the buyer now sees a mark that asks a broader question: how long the appliance is likely to last, and not only whether it can be mended.
For five other categories the original index is still the one on display. The ministry’s page, last updated in July 2025, names laptops, electric lawnmowers, dishwashers, vacuum cleaners and high-pressure cleaners. Anyone selling into France should read that list on the day they need it, because it has changed more than once since 2021.
Smartphones took a third route. The ministry’s list of legal texts includes an order of 26 June 2025 repealing the 2020 order that set the scoring criteria for smartphones, and phones are no longer among the categories it names. Six days earlier, on 20 June 2025, the EU label with its own repairability class had begun to apply. For phones, a national mark out of ten gave way to a European letter.
Six parameters decide the EU repairability class
The European grade is defined in Commission Delegated Regulation (EU) 2023/1669 on the energy labelling of smartphones and slate tablets. Its Annex IV calculates a repairability index from six parameters: disassembly depth, type of fasteners, type of tools, spare parts, duration of software updates and repair information. Disassembly depth carries a quarter of the weight; each of the other five carries 15 per cent.
The index is expressed on a scale that tops out at five and is then translated into a letter. Under the regulation’s table, class A requires an index of at least 4.00, and class E covers results from 1.00 up to 1.75. The Commission’s page for this product group adds that the detail of the six parameters is published for every model in the EPREL product database, which the QR code on the label opens.
One absence is worth noticing. The French index gave marks for the price of spare parts; the European formula does not. The regulation’s own review clause asks the Commission to assess, by 20 September 2027, whether the index should be revised by adding further aspects and the prices of spare parts. A brand whose parts are available but expensive is therefore graded differently by the two systems.
How points are won and lost inside the casing
Disassembly depth is a count of steps. Under Annex IV, a part that can be removed in two steps or fewer earns five points; one that takes more than fifteen earns a single point. Cleaning, removing residue and heating each count as a step, which is how glue enters the arithmetic. If a replacement part only works fully after a serial number has been authorised remotely, each such action is counted as five extra steps.
Fasteners and tools are scored part by part. Reusable fasteners earn five points, fasteners resupplied with the spare part three, and merely removable ones one. A part that needs no tool earns five points, basic tools four, and the scale falls to one point where other commercially available tools are required. For phones that do not fold, the battery and the display assembly each account for 30 per cent of these part-level scores, so those two repairs dominate the result.
The remaining three parameters are commitments, not geometry. Spare parts score highest when every priority part can be bought by end users as well as professional repairers. Operating-system updates guaranteed for at least seven years earn five points, six years three and five years one. Repair information earns full marks when it is public and free for end users, and only one point when professionals must pay a fee, however reasonable.
Minimum requirements sit underneath the label
The label ranks products; a separate ecodesign regulation sets the floor below which none may be sold. The Commission summarises it for phones and tablets as follows: batteries that withstand at least 800 charge and discharge cycles while keeping at least 80 per cent of their initial capacity, resistance to drops and scratches, and protection from dust and water.
Repair has its own floor. Producers must make critical spare parts available within five to ten working days, and for seven years after the model stops being sold in the EU. Operating-system upgrades must be offered for at least five years from the date the last unit of a model is placed on the market. Professional repairers must be given non-discriminatory access to any software or firmware needed for a replacement.
Set the two documents side by side and the logic becomes clear. Five years of updates is the legal minimum described by the Commission, and on the label it earns the lowest mark for that parameter. The class therefore measures how far a model goes beyond what it was already obliged to do, at least on the parameters where the two texts meet.
The repair directive adds duties after the sale
A grade informs; a directive obliges. Directive (EU) 2024/1799 on common rules promoting the repair of goods was adopted on 13 June 2024, and the Commission states that Member States had to apply their national rules from 31 July 2026. Because it is a directive, the detail sits in each country’s own law, which is where a seller should check it.
Its core, in the Commission’s summary, is an obligation to repair. Manufacturers of products that are subject to reparability requirements in EU law and listed in the directive’s Annex II, with fridges and smartphones given as examples, must repair them within a reasonable time and for a reasonable price. They may not use contractual clauses, hardware or software techniques that impede repair unless there are legitimate and objective reasons, and where they supply spare parts they must do so at reasonable prices.
The directive also changes what must be published and what the customer gains. Manufacturers have to make information on their repair services easy to find and state indicative prices for typical repairs on a freely accessible website. A consumer who chooses repair over replacement under the legal guarantee receives an extra year of that guarantee. The Commission expects a European online repair platform to become operational in January 2028.
Parts, manuals and the path to the battery: preparing a product
Preparation starts on a bench, not in a spreadsheet. Take the current model, or the prototype, and count the steps needed to remove the battery and the display with the tools a repair shop would own. Note every point where adhesive has to be heated or a part has to be re-authorised by software. That count is the heaviest single input to the European index and a fair proxy for the French disassembly criterion.
Then write down the commitments. For how many years will each part be stocked, who may buy it, how fast will it ship and at what price? For how long will the software be updated? These are commercial decisions with a cost, and they belong to the people who answer for the margin, not to whoever fills in the calculation grid. Both the French and the European schemes score the promise, so the promise has to be one the company can keep.
Finally, treat documentation as a product. A repair manual drafted while the design is still open costs little and exposes awkward steps early. Publish it where repairers can find it, together with the parts list and indicative prices. Keep the calculation, the test evidence and the dated commitments in one file, because in France the manufacturer must be able to justify the mark to the authorities, and in the EU market surveillance verifies declared classes.
Reading the grade wisely, and checking it again next year
As a decision tool the score works best inside one category and one scheme. Compare two phones by their EU class, or two dishwashers by their French mark, and then open the breakdown: a middling total can hide an excellent battery replacement and a poor parts policy, or the reverse. The EU label helps by printing the repairability class beside the ingress protection rating and the drop-resistance class, which makes the trade-off between a sealed casing and an openable one visible on a single sticker.
The evidence that such labels change behaviour is encouraging but modest. The French ministry cites a government study according to which the index appears to have moved shoppers towards more repairable choices and retailers towards wanting to sell them, and it words that finding cautiously. A score is one input to a judgement. It says nothing about whether a repair shop exists near the customer or whether the repair will be worth its price in year six.
The rules will keep moving, so the useful habit is checking, not memorising. The French list of categories sits on the ministry’s page; the European requirements for each product group sit on the Commission’s energy-efficient products site; the directive’s Annex II grows as new repairability requirements are adopted, and domestic local space heaters have been on it since 31 July 2026. Put a date in the product calendar to read all three before each design freeze.
Practical checklist
- Identify which scheme applies to each product and market, French index, durability index or EU label, and note the official page where you checked.
- Count the steps, fasteners and tools needed to reach the battery and the display on your current design.
- Decide for how many years spare parts and software updates will be supplied, and put that commitment in writing.
- Publish repair information and indicative prices for typical repairs where customers and repairers can find them.
- Keep the calculation file and its evidence ready for the authorities, and re-check the rules at every product review.
Questions and answers
Which factors does a repairability index take into account?
The ones that make a repair practical; it says nothing about how often the product breaks. The French index combines documentation, ease of disassembly, availability of spare parts, their price and product-specific criteria into a mark out of ten. The EU class for smartphones and slate tablets combines disassembly depth, fasteners, tools, spare parts, software updates and repair information into a letter from A to E.
Is the French repairability index still in force?
Yes, for some products. According to the French ministry for ecological transition, a durability index replaced it in 2025 for televisions and washing machines, while laptops, electric lawnmowers, dishwashers, vacuum cleaners and high-pressure cleaners keep the original index. Smartphones now come under the EU energy label. Consult the ministry’s page for the current list before relying on it.
Which products carry the EU repairability class?
At present, smartphones and slate tablets. The Commission says the energy labelling rules have applied to them since 20 June 2025 and exclude tablet computers, products with a roll-up flexible display and smartphones for high-security communication. Cordless phones and feature phones fall under the ecodesign requirements but do not carry the label.
Does the EU score take the price of spare parts into account?
Not today. The six parameters in Delegated Regulation (EU) 2023/1669 cover the availability of parts but not what they cost. The same regulation instructs the Commission to consider, in a review due by 20 September 2027, whether the index should be changed to include further aspects and spare-part prices. In the French index, by contrast, price is one of the five criteria.
How can a manufacturer improve its repairability class?
By changing the inputs, most of which are fixed at the design stage. Reduce the number of steps to reach the battery and the display, replace adhesive with reusable fasteners, make repairs possible with basic tools, sell priority parts to end users as well as professionals, extend the period of software updates and publish repair information free of charge. Each measure moves one specific parameter in the calculation.