Maria da Graça Carvalho defended on Monday in Strasbourg that the European Commission should promote “binding regulation, with concrete goals and objectives for the entire internal market”, on the introduction of single chargers for mobile phones and other mobile equipment.
Following a plenary statement on this topic by Maroš Šefčovič, European Commissioner for Interinstitutional Relations and Foresight, Maria da Graça Carvalho recalled that, as early as 2014, the European Parliament instructed the Commission to develop specific rules on this matter, but the solution adopted - “encouraging” manufacturers to produce a single model - “did not produce satisfactory results”.
"The issue of the common charger is of the utmost importance not only for the practical life of consumers, who are forced to buy a panoply of chargers for each electronic device, but also for environmental reasons", the Graça Carvalho stated. "In the EU alone, it is estimated that there are around 50 thousand tonnes of obsolete chargers every year".