Apparently, Europe will be left without a single USB standard

The head of the USB Implementers Forum Jeffrey Ravencraft unexpectedly sharply criticized the initiative to introduce a single standard for charging electronic devices. The European Commission wanted to create a common USB Type-C standard, and the idea was that USB manufacturers should approve this solution. As it turned out, the prospects are not so bright.

Ravencraft stated that the adoption of the proposed uniform standard would do more harm than good. The fact is that the European Commission in its documentation indicated two standards - EN IEC 6280-1-3: 2021 and EN IEC 6280-1-2: 2021, which date back to 2019 and are too outdated today. A new version of this standard was released in 2021, and legislators did not take this into account. For this reason, the single standard only allows charging power up to 15W, while the more modern standard only allows charging power of 240W.

According to Ravencraft, The European Commission does not want to include the new version of the standard in the bill, as it believes that not all manufacturers will be able to provide support for it in their devices. The head of the USB Implementers Forum considers this to be a serious problem - legislators are lagging behind progress and are adopting what is outdated for a long time...

The European Commission began work on a directive on a single charging standard for mobile devices in September 2021. This directive will oblige manufacturers to support USB Type-C in all smartphones, tablets, wireless headphones and similar devices marketed in the European Union. Thanks to this initiative, EU residents will theoretically save about 250 million euros on the purchase of chargers a year, and the volume of e-waste will be reduced by more than 1000 tons.

A source: europa.eu