Automotive parts trade: competition at risk

Automotive parts trade: competition at risk

"A repair clause enables more competition for vehicle parts. That's why rapid implementation and application in the EU and Austria is necessary and important," says Sascha Öllinger, chairman of the Association of Independent Automotive Parts Dealers in Austria. From the perspective of vehicle owners, the long-overdue introduction and application of a repair clause in the European Design Protection Directive would be an important measure in times of high inflation. The EU Commission already identified the positive effect of a repair clause for consumers in a market study in 2020. Accordingly, in those member states that did not have a statutory repair clause, visible vehicle replacement and body parts such as headlights, bumpers or doors were already up to 13 percent more expensive back then, i.e. before the current wave of inflation. The EU Commission estimated the savings potential for affected consumers at up to 720 million euros per year.

Manufacturers invest a lot of time and money in the visual design of their products. They therefore rightly have an interest in protecting the design they have elaborately developed against imitation. However, in practice it has been shown that many vehicle manufacturers have used design protection to monopolize the production and marketing of such parts. As the EU Commission found in its study, this has financial disadvantages for vehicle owners because there are no free and therefore usually cheaper spare parts available as an alternative. However, this situation also brings disadvantages for many thousands of companies in the repair sector. While individual EU states have already introduced the repair clause, there are others where this has not yet happened, including Austria. This leads to legal uncertainty and unpredictability – and thus to unequal competitive conditions. This aspect is also relevant in connection with new market participants from third countries who are currently pushing into Europe, especially in the e-vehicle segment.

The current situation means that it can be completely legal to bring free spare parts onto the market in an EU country where the repair clause applies, but not in a neighboring EU country due to a missing repair clause. This makes it more difficult to create European supply chains. At the same time, independent vehicle parts dealers and repair shops are forced to purchase spare parts from monopolists - with the associated side effects: higher costs make their services less competitive. This can in turn lead to the phenomenon of repair tourism and the migration of added value abroad. Sascha Öllinger therefore demands: “A common internal market needs common rules.” The fact that the EU design protection directive is currently being revised in Brussels is good news for him. “The repair clause must be applied much more quickly than is currently provided for in the revision proposal,” said the VFT chairman.