Autoparts

On the 22^nd July, the European Commission has released an important Communication on the expiry of the Motor Vehicle Block Exemption Regulation (MVBER). The published document accompanied by an Impact Assessment aims at defining policy orientations for the future competition framework for the automotive sector. It intends to address issues such as independent garages' access to technical data, access to spare parts and access to VM authorised repairs. It will also tackle the misuse of warranties aim at excluding independents. The deadling for responding to the report is September 25th 2009.

For the moment, the Commission has put forward 3 potential solutions to handle aftermarket issues:

• The application of the general rules set in the VR-BER completed by guidelines
• The creation of a new Block Exemption Regulation focused on aftermarket issues
• The use a combination of both Guidelines and Aftermarket orientated BER.

As a first comment, although the R2RC members welcome the Commission’s view on competition shortcomings in the aftermarket, it must be pointed out that there is no detail of how these will be dealt with. The Right 2 Repair Campaign favour the application of modernised sector-specific rules as from June 2010 and call upon the Commission to use the next months to tackle the deficiencies of the current MV-BER and to create more up-to-date, more robust and more complete rules for the aftermarket.

The fight is still on, at least until May 2010 when the current BER expires.