Portugal and 17 other EU countries miss the right-to-repair deadline
Portugal is one of 18 EU countries facing EU legal action over new repair rules. While the paperwork catches up, volunteers are teaching people to fix things themselves.
On 25 September the European Commission sent formal warnings to Portugal and 17 other member states, among them Spain, France, Italy and the Netherlands. None of them had notified Brussels by the 31 July deadline that they'd fully written the new right-to-repair directive into national law, and they now have two months to respond.
The directive is meant to make repair the easy choice. Makers of products covered by EU repair rules, such as phones, washing machines and fridges, must offer to repair them, in some cases even after the legal guarantee has run out. Spare parts have to be sold at reasonable prices. They also can't use contract terms, hardware or software tricks to block independent repairers, or stop them using second-hand or 3D-printed parts without an objective reason. If you choose repair over replacement while still under guarantee, the guarantee gets an extra year, and a European platform to help people find repairers is due to start operating in early 2028.
Rosário Tereso of consumer group DECO says people tend to give up on repair once it costs more than a third of the price of a new product.
Each country must also take at least one step to encourage repair, whether through vouchers, tax breaks or support for community repair groups. Austria and France already offer repair vouchers. In 2024, ZERO and Circular Economy Portugal warned that the directive doesn't guarantee non-professional repairers, such as the volunteers at repair cafés, any access to the spare parts they need.
Circular Economy Portugal runs Repair Café Lisboa, which has organised free repair sessions since 2016. Together with Electrão, a licensed producer-responsibility organisation for electrical and electronic waste, it's now launching the second Academia REPARA, a free course on Saturday mornings from 17 October to 5 December at Entrajuda in Lisbon. It's open to 10 to 20 people, who sign up online. Participants learn how appliances work, how to find simple faults and how to make safe, basic repairs. The first two sessions are compulsory.
If you'd rather bring something broken, Zero Waste Lab and ADM Estrela are running repair sessions at MAAT Central in Lisbon on 7 November and 12 December, from 10:00 to 13:00. Repairs are free and limited to one small appliance per person, but you'll need to register in advance and pay museum admission.
In the Algarve, Repair Café Algarve, run by the Benfazer association, held its first fair in Loulé in March and plans the next one for 27 and 28 March 2027. Until then, its website lists local professional repairers on a map and takes repair requests online.
