Recital 19

(19) Commercial communications for goods that contain a feature introduced to limit their durability is a commercial practice that is detrimental to consumers and the environment as they encourage the sale of such goods which leads to higher costs for consumers and unnecessary use of resources, waste production and greenhouse gas emissions. Such commercial communications should therefore be prohibited when information on the feature and its effects on the durability of the good are available to the trader. Examples of such features could be software which stops or downgrades the functionality of the good after a particular period, or a piece of hardware which is designed to fail after a particular period. It could also be a design or manufacturing flaw which, although not introduced as a feature for that purpose, leads to the premature failure of the good, if it is not fixed once information about the existence and effect of the feature has become available to the trader. In the context of that prohibition, commercial communications include communications designed to promote, directly or indirectly, the goods. The manufacturing of goods and making them available on the market do not constitute commercial communications. That prohibition should aim to cover mainly traders who are also the producers of the goods, as it is they who determine the durability of the goods. Therefore, in general, when a good is identified as containing a feature to limit the durability, the producer of that good should be expected to be aware of that feature and its effect on the durability of that good. Nevertheless, traders who are not the producers of the goods, such as the sellers, should be targeted by that prohibition where reliable information is available to them about the feature and its effects on durability, such as a statement from a competent national authority or information provided by the producer. Therefore, as soon as such information is available to the trader, the prohibition should apply irrespective of whether the trader is actually aware or unaware of that information, for example by neglecting it. For such a commercial practice to be considered unfair, it should not be necessary to demonstrate that the purpose of the feature is to stimulate the replacement of the respective good, but it would be sufficient to prove that the feature has been introduced to limit the durability of the good. This prohibition complements and does not affect the remedies available to consumers in the event of a lack of conformity under Directive (EU) 2019/771. The use of features limiting the durability of the goods should be distinguished from manufacturing practices using materials or processes of general low quality resulting in limited durability of the goods. Lack of conformity of a good resulting from the use of low quality materials or processes should continue to be governed by the rules on the conformity of goods set out in Directive (EU) 2019/771.

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Source: EUR-Lex (Cellar) · retrieved 2026-09-20 · Text as adopted (Official Journal); later amendments are not incorporated in this text.