New EU Ecodesign Rules for Smartphones – A Glimpse into the Future for Printing Equipment

October 2, 2025

This summer, the EU’s new Ecodesign and Energy Labelling Regulations for mobile phones and tablets entered into force. From June 2025, smartphones, tablets, and other mobile devices placed on the EU market will need to comply with strict new requirements for energy efficiency, durability, reparability, and recyclability.

What’s new?
The regulations introduce a series of obligations for manufacturers and suppliers:

Spare parts & repair: mandatory availability of key spare parts for up to 7 years, maximum delivery times, and easy access to repair and maintenance information.
Durability & reuse: devices must meet standards for drop resistance, scratch resistance, dust and water protection, and battery endurance. They must also provide a secure factory reset to enable reuse.
Recyclability: dismantling instructions and plastic marking requirements to improve recovery of critical raw materials.
Energy labelling: smartphones and tablets will now carry an EU energy label, informing consumers about battery life, repairability, resistance to drops, and water protection.
Market surveillance: suppliers must maintain technical documentation for 10 years and ensure products are CE-marked and fully traceable, with national authorities empowered to test and enforce compliance.

Why it matters for imaging equipment
For ETIRA, these new rules provide a preview of what may come for our industry. Concepts such as mandatory spare parts availability, design for repair, preparation for reuse, dismantling information, and stronger market surveillance are highly relevant for printers and imaging consumables.

If similar rules are extended to imaging equipment, they could significantly strengthen the remanufacturing industry by:

Ensuring fair access to repair information and spare parts.
Supporting preparation for reuse as a standard compliance requirement.
Closing loopholes that allow non-compliant, non-recyclable products to undercut responsible European remanufacturers.

ETIRA’s perspective
These measures reflect the EU’s growing commitment to the circular economy. For our sector, they offer a glimpse of a more level playing field where reusability, compliance, and sustainability are prioritised over cheap disposability. ETIRA will continue to follow these developments closely and advocate for similar, strong ecodesign rules for imaging equipment.

👉 Read more about the new smartphone and tablet rules on the EU product portal.