Common charger

How the EU wants to force Apple to adopt common charger

The US tech giant has been resisting hard legislation for a common charging system since 2009.

BY LOUISE GUILLOT AND PIETER HAECK

Brussels has a plan to empty your drawers full of useless chargers: making them illegal.

The European Commission is ready to use hard legislation to force tech manufacturers into harmonizing charging solutions for small electronic devices like smartphones and tablets, it announced today.

“The Commission had to go ahead and put an end to this sea monster,” said Commissioner for the Internal Market Thierry Breton. “We propose more freedom, less costs [for consumers] ... and it is also about reducing waste.”

Even if the Commission does not say so, the main target of this new legislative move is inarguably Apple, as the company’s flagship product, the iPhone, uses a proprietary charging solution called Lightning.

Apple said in a statement: “We remain concerned that strict regulation mandating just one type of connector stifles innovation rather than encouraging it, which in turn will harm consumers in Europe."

It’s an old song.

The company has successfully opposed efforts to impose legally binding measures for more than a decade, arguing that the harm it could bring to innovation outweighs ecological benefits.

But now the Commission is trying a new tack. Rather than trying to standardize the charger itself, it wants to impose that all new smartphones — as well as tablets, digital cameras, headsets, loudspeakers and handheld video game consoles — offer a USB-C connector for charging.

That would create interoperability between chargers and brands, allowing consumers to use the same charger and cable for different devices, the Commission argues.

By requiring manufacturers to stop selling a charger with every new smartphone, the Commission also hopes to reduce e-waste by 1,000 tons annually. Currently, about 4 million tons of e-waste are collected in the EU each year.

Imposing a USB-C connector on all devices won’t fully solve the issue if brands don’t make chargers interoperable, said Ernestas Oldyrevas, program manager with the environmental group ECOS, also warning that failure to standardize fast charging protocols could damage batteries and create safety risks.

The Commission's is addressing this issue by requiring that software protocol for fast charging be interoperable between brands and devices in order to avoid fragmentation.

NGOs also warn that the decision not to target wireless charging systems is a major loophole that risks undermining the Commission's efforts.

Manufacturers could turn to solely using wireless systems to avoid the rules, something that would "completely negate the overall purpose of this initiative," said Oldyrevas. Apple introduced its own wireless charging system called "Magsafe" late last year, with the launch of the iPhone 12.

Bruno Basalisco, author of a study on the common charger commissioned by Apple, disagreed.

There is “a major disconnect between the small size of the environmental benefits that can be gained via the regulation, €13 million, and the large size of the consumer harm from losing out on innovation potential, €1.5 billion,” he said.

A Commission official said the impact assessment on wireless charging found that "it would be premature to regulate now," given it is "still a developing technology" and there is "no high level of fragmentation in the market." The rules will still apply to devices that include both options of being charged wired and wirelessly, the official added.

The proposal will now be discussed by the European Parliament and the Council of the EU. The Commission has said it expects the new rules to kick in by 2024.