What the US Can Learn from Europe’s “Right to Repair” Fight

Earlier in July, the Biden Administration dropped another hammer with its new “right to repair” executive order.

With the ultimate goal of increasing competition across the US economy, this new executive order forces the U.S. Federal Trade Commission to draw up new rules & regulations protecting the right & ability of consumers to repair their own equipment.

While it is too soon to understand what the FTC’s new rules targeting the restrictions will look like, Daniel Litwin, the voice of B2B, invited Tomas O’Leary, founder of Origina and co-founder of Free ICT Europe, to draw some parallels on similar action occurring in Europe.

The two drew distinctions between where the UK is at in its right-to-repair journey vs the US, as well as whether issues concerning “right to repair” should be approached from an international/federal level or a more industry-specific, intra-industry level.

“When American democracy moves it moves so much quicker…so you go straight in with the repair side and start to put legislation and directives around that,” O’Leary explained, “What I think you end up with as a European that lives in Europe but does business in America is quite a nice balance.”

They also discuss the pushback from OEMs and software developers as a result of this executive order, as well as the possible intersections with enterprise support software.

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