Statement by Parliament’s Internal Market and Consumer Protection Committee Chair, Anna Cavazzini (Greens/EFA, DE), on the common charger proposal presented on 23 September by the Commission.

Brussels

Committee on the Internal Market and Consumer Protection

statement

standardisation (T)

CAVAZZINI, Anna (Greens/EFA, DE)

Common Charger: Statement by Anna Cavazzini (Greens/EFA, DE), Chair of IMCO

https://api.multimedia.europarl.europa.eu/documents/20125/15782557/I211305Chapters%5BSD-EN%5D.srt

SOUNDBITE (English), Anna CAVAZZINI (Greens/EFA, DE), Chair of the EP Committee on Internal Market and Consumer Protection, The European Parliament had asked for a common charger for about 10 years and until now the European Commission counted on voluntary initiatives. So there was like a voluntary agreement and it worked a little bit. It got a little bit better. But we, as the European Parliament insisted on a regulation on common charger because there is still a problem with too many charges around in the world.

SOUNDBITE (English), Anna CAVAZZINI (Greens/EFA, DE), Chair of the EP Committee on Internal Market and Consumer Protection, I think the proposal by the European Commission is quite good. It comes too late, but it's good that it's on the table now because it really aims at unbundling, ordering the device, let's say, a phone and the charger. So there will be less electronic waste in the future. That is good. And it's also good for consumers because the commission is finally proposing really this common charger for basically all devices, meaning that when I travel and then I don't have my cable with me, I can just ask anybody and get the cable from anybody because we will have one standard.

SOUNDBITE (English), Anna CAVAZZINI (Greens/EFA, DE), Chair of the EP Committee on Internal Market and Consumer Protection, There's different calculations. But one number is that we will save around about thirty thousand tons per year (of electronic waste). And this is quite a lot. And given the fact that we have the European green deal, we need to get down our huge waste of resources. This is already a big, big chunk.