The Sustainable Consumption Law will tackle short-haul flights and planned obsolescence.

Madrid, July 1 (EFE).- The government approved the draft law on sustainable consumption on Tuesday, a broad legislative package that bans advertising for the most polluting products, such as short-haul flights, fossil fuels, and vehicles powered solely by fossil fuels, and prohibits planned obsolescence.

The new regulation, which strengthens consumer and environmental protection, as stated by the Minister of Social Rights, Consumption and the 2030 Agenda, Pablo Bustinduy, after the Council of Ministers, provides measures to encourage product repairs and combat planned obsolescence (the useful life that companies give to a product so that the user is forced to buy another model).

To this end, the Sustainable Consumer Law aims to regulate software updates and prohibit those that worsen product performance and are passed off as necessary. This situation, as Bustinduy noted, occurs on a daily basis, making it impossible to open certain programs or causing our computers to perform less well.

Promoting repairs

Product labels must also indicate whether they have a warranty of more than two years and whether they can be repaired because, as the minister emphasized, the most important aspect of the Sustainable Consumer Law "is the enshrining of the right to repair."

Spare parts for a product or good will be required to be available for up to ten years after it ceases to be manufactured, and manufacturers' websites must include information on repair prices.

The warranty period for repaired appliances will be extended by an additional twelve months, and a digital repair platform will be created where users can find authorized repairers and where buyers of defective goods and sellers of reconditioned goods can also contact each other.

The most innovative measure, according to Bustinduy, is the creation of a co-financing system for repairs, as the Consumer Ministry seeks to reduce its bill by having producers assume a portion of the cost: up to 20% of the cost of repairs will be borne by producers.

Ecopostureo is prohibited

The text approved in the first round by the Council also bans other practices increasingly criticized by consumers, such as the abusive resale of tickets, reduflage (reduction of a product for the same price), and "greenwashing," which disguises products that are not sustainable as sustainable.

Bustinduy highlighted the fight against greenwashing as the first pillar of this "ambitious" law: it is expected to regulate the need to certify companies' claims about sustainability, because, as the minister acknowledged, "everything today is bio, eco, and good for the planet," and also other laws based on offsetting greenhouse gas emissions.

The minister referred to the need for an ecological transition based on social justice when asked about limiting advertising for vehicles that run exclusively on fossil fuels.

What it aims to do, he argued, is accelerate the industrial and productive transition to make the industry more competitive and ensure accessibility and social justice in this transformation.

But this ecological transition, he warned, "cannot fall on individual responsibilities, nor can it depend on each individual's economic capacity or income." In his opinion, it is essential that industrial transformation be carried out according to criteria of equity and inclusion.

It is, he said, because 1% of the population pollutes more than 12,000,000 people in Spain, and it is fiscally necessary, in his opinion, to place the cost of this transition on those who pollute the most.