The European Commission will present a new bill in December for longer durability of electronic devices, cheap and available repairs, and a ban on inbuilt defects, Consumer Protection Commissioner Didier Reynders has said in talks with Croatian MEP Biljana Borzan, Borzan's office said on Tuesday.

Borzan said 210 million smartphones were sold in the EU annually and that although 77% of people preferred repair to buying a new device, only 11% phones were repaired in case of a malfunction, while the rest were thrown away.

That causes big damage to the environment as well as costing people a lot, she added.

Borzan said people wrote to her that a device for which they paid a fortune would cost more to repair than buying a new one. “Repairs must be easier, more available and cheaper.”

Apart from mobile phones, she said printers were the most obvious examples of planned obsolescence but that the Commission had done nothing about it. “It’s time the Commission regulates the lifespan of all kinds of products, not just those whose industrial lobby is the weakest.”

Reynders said he would present the new bill in December and that it was key that at the moment of purchase, a customer was informed of the expected lifespan of a device and its repairability.

The Commission is intensively thinking about how it can regulate the right to repairs during the design phase as part of the Sustainable Products Initiative, he added.