Why the EU bans Apple’s Lightning cables – economy

The commission is proposing a law to enforce uniform cables for cell phones and tablets. Apple would be more suffering. The company is angry, the European Parliament is delighted.

A lot of approval in the European Parliament, concern at Apple: This is the reaction to the draft law of the EU Commission with which the Brussels authority wants to enforce uniform charging cables. In the future, probably from 2024 or 2025, only cell phones, tablets, cameras, headphones and game consoles that are charged with USB-C cables may be sold in the EU. This is the most common for smartphones anyway. But the US company Apple has so far used its own standard called Lightning for cell phones.

Internal Market Commissioner Thierry Breton said at the presentation of the draft directive on Thursday that this is “a big step towards more consumer-friendliness and less waste generation”. So that the draft When it becomes law, it must be discussed and approved by the European Parliament and the Council of Ministers, the decision-making body of the member states. No resistance is to be expected from parliament: the MPs demanded the Commission asked a year and a half ago to enact such a regulation. After the presentation on Thursday, both Social Democrats and Christian Democrats and Greens expressed their satisfaction.

An Apple spokesman said the company was “concerned that a strict regulatory framework that stipulates only one type of charging socket is hindering rather than promoting innovation – and thus harming consumers in Europe and around the world”. The reference to the whole world is no coincidence: It would be expensive for manufacturers like Apple to produce one version of their cell phones for Europe and another for the rest of the world. As the EU is an indispensable market, the new law could therefore become the global standard.

The industry has already reduced the number of charging cable types from 30 to three through voluntary commitments. Of the three standards, one is being phased out, so that only USB-C and Apple’s Lightning remain – and soon after the will of the EU, USB-C alone will be used. In addition, the legal act obliges manufacturers to always sell cell phones without an included charger. Customers can then choose whether they want to buy just the phone or the phone plus charger. All the regulations should save consumers 250 million euros in expenditure per year.

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