The rule is Article 11 of Regulation (EU) 2023/1542, the batteries regulation. It applies from 18 February 2027. It is not written about phones. It is written about products incorporating portable batteries, which is a much larger set: earbuds, toys, fairy lights, electric toothbrushes, cordless vacuums, heated gloves, sound-chip greeting cards, anything with a sealed cell in it.
If you make or import any of those into the EU, you are the person the article is addressed to. So rather than restate the news, what follows is a register: the test, then a verdict for each of the product types small sellers actually list, then the things that are still unsettled.
The sentence that decides everything
Article 11(1) is one obligation and one definition. Both matter.
“Any natural or legal person that places on the market products incorporating portable batteries shall ensure that those batteries are readily removable and replaceable by the end-user at any time during the lifetime of the product. That obligation shall only apply to entire batteries and not to individual cells …”
“A portable battery shall be considered readily removable by the end-user where it can be removed from a product with the use of commercially available tools, without requiring the use of specialised tools, unless provided free of charge with the product, proprietary tools, thermal energy, or solvents to disassemble the product.”
Regulation (EU) 2023/1542, Article 11(1)Read the second half slowly, because it is the part that fails products. A screwdriver is fine. A clip is fine. A special tool is fine if you put it in the box for free. What is not fine is a heat gun, a solvent, or a tool only you can get. In practice that outlaws the glued-shut enclosure, which is how most small battery-powered goods are currently built.
Two definitions narrow the field before you go any further. A portable battery is one that is sealed, weighs 5 kg or less, is not designed specifically for industrial use, and is not an electric-vehicle, LMT or SLI battery. And the duty falls on whoever places the product on the market — the first making available in the EU. Import a finished item from outside the EU and sell it to an EU buyer and that is you, whatever the factory did or did not do.
The register
These are verdicts on common seller categories, each traced to the provision that produces it. Where the answer depends on how you built the product, it says so — that is the honest answer, not a hedge.
Power banks, and charging cases for earbuds or hearing aids
The most counter-intuitive result in the whole regime, and the Commission states it plainly. Where a product's primary function is to deliver electrical energy to other products, the product itself is considered to be a portable battery rather than a product incorporating one — “meaning that Article 11 would not be applicable in the first place.” The guidelines name rechargeable power banks, charging cases for wearables, and vehicle jump starters.
This is not a licence to ignore the regulation. It means your obligations sit in the parts of it that govern batteries as such — labelling, carbon footprint, EPR — instead of Article 11.
Wireless earbuds
The earbuds themselves, unlike their case, are a product incorporating a portable battery. The route out is the wet-appliance derogation in Article 11(2)(a), and the July 2026 guidelines do list wireless earbuds as a possible example — but only “if they meet the five indicators”.
Those five are cumulative: the appliance is specifically designed for the environment; that environment is its primary one for the majority of its active service; it is intended to be washable or rinseable; there is evidence in the product documentation that end-user replacement would compromise safety; and there is evidence that redesign is not possible with current technology. An IP rating on its own is explicitly not enough. If your supplier cannot produce that documentation, you do not have the derogation — you have a hope.
Electric toothbrushes, shavers, epilators, water flossers
These are the textbook wet appliances and the guidelines name them. But the same section adds a warning that cuts the other way: there “may still be appliances used in wet environment that incorporate batteries that are removable and replaceable by end-users, as long as this does not compromise safety” — and it gives toothbrushes and shavers powered by portable batteries of general use as the example.
A battery of general use is a standard format: AA, AAA, C, D, 9V, button cell and similar. So a rinseable toothbrush that runs on two AAs does not get the derogation, because nothing about it requires sealing. The derogation is for the sealed rechargeable design, and only with the evidence described above.
Battery fairy lights, LED decor, light-up signs
Nothing in Article 11(2) or 11(3) reaches decorative lighting. There is no wet-environment case for an indoor string light, no data-integrity case, and no safety case for continuity of supply. If the cell is glued in, the product does not comply from 18 February 2027.
This category is worth flagging precisely because it feels too small to be regulated. The guidelines make the opposite point — they single out small lithium batteries in greeting cards, smart textiles and wearables as a fire risk in waste treatment, which is the reason the rule exists.
Cordless vacuums, handheld fans, portable speakers, heated apparel
Ordinary small appliances with no derogation available. The battery has to come out with commercially available tools. Outdoor wireless speakers are the one qualified case — the guidelines mention them alongside wearables as possible wet appliances, again only on the five indicators.
Smartwatches, fitness trackers, smart glasses, electric toys
This is the category that changed three weeks before this was written, and it is the reason to read the next section before you plan around it. As the regulation stands today, Article 11(2) has only two derogations — wet appliances and professional medical imaging or radiotherapy devices. Wearables and toys are not among them.
A delegated act adopted on 14 July 2026 would add them. It is not in force. See below.
Smoke alarms with a sealed 10-year battery
Article 11(3) switches the obligation off entirely where continuity of power supply is necessary and a permanent connection is required for the safety of the user and the appliance. The guidelines apply this to smoke alarms designed for at least ten years of uninterrupted operation with a battery matched to that life, and more broadly to fire, smoke and gas detection equipment.
Smartphones and slate tablets
If you resell phones or tablets, Article 11 is not your rule. The ecodesign regulation for phones and tablets, Regulation (EU) 2023/1670, sets its own battery replaceability and spare-part requirements, and the guidelines state that where both apply, the ecodesign requirements “prevail”. Its spare-part window is seven years, not five.
The exemption list that is not law yet
On 14 July 2026 the Commission adopted a delegated regulation that replaces Article 11(2) in its entirety, expanding the derogations from two to eight. It would add: wearable devices (both by folding them into the wet-appliance line and as a new category based on miniaturisation and sealed enclosures); electric toys with rechargeable batteries, until 31 July 2030; wireless thermometer probes designed for food contact; equipment for potentially explosive atmospheres under the ATEX directive; on-body subcutaneous drug delivery systems; and roof-mounted telematics for agricultural and construction machinery.
A delegated act under Article 11(4) takes effect only if neither the European Parliament nor the Council objects within three months of notification, extendable by two more at either institution's initiative. Notification was 14 July 2026. On the ordinary schedule the objection window runs to about mid-October 2026, and to mid-December if extended. Only then is it published in the Official Journal, and it enters into force twenty days after that.
As of 5 August 2026 it had not been published in the Official Journal and carried no regulation number. If your product's compliance plan depends on the wearables or toys derogation, you are depending on something that has not happened yet — with Article 11 itself applying on 18 February 2027 regardless.
There is a second-order point worth noticing. The Commission's own July 2026 guidelines already discuss Article 11(2)(c) and (d) as though they exist, because they were written to sit alongside the delegated act. Guidance describing a provision is not the same as the provision being in force, and the two documents were published the same day.
What being in scope actually costs
Designing the enclosure to open is the visible half. These are the obligations that come with it, and they are the ones sellers tend to discover late.
- Instructions, permanently online. Article 11(1) requires products to be accompanied by instructions and safety information on use, removal and replacement of the battery, and requires that material to be “made available permanently online, on a publicly available website, in an easily understandable way for end-users”. That is a hosting commitment, not a leaflet.
- Five years of spare batteries. Article 11(7) requires the battery to be available as a spare part for a minimum of five years after the last unit of that equipment model is placed on the market, at a reasonable and non-discriminatory price. The guidelines add that if the fasteners are not reusable, the fasteners have to be available as spares too.
- No software lock-out. Article 11(8) prohibits using software to impede replacement with a compatible battery. The guidelines name parts-pairing as the practice in view. A notification telling the user a non-original battery is fitted is allowed, provided it does not affect functionality or the user experience.
- It is not retroactive. The guidelines state that the spare-parts requirement does not apply to products placed on the market before 18 February 2027. Stock already in the EU is not caught; the next production run is.
Unsettled as of 5 August 2026
Three things we could not resolve on a primary source, kept out of the register above so they are not mistaken for settled positions.
Whether the delegated act will survive scrutiny unchanged. We found no objection lodged by either institution, but the window was open at the time of writing and an absence of news is not an outcome. The Commission has also said it intends to repeat the call-for-applications exercise periodically, so the list may grow again.
Where the line falls for very small sealed goods. The proposed wearables derogation turns on devices “too small to allow the end-user to properly and safely handle a battery replacement” or relying on “a compact, sealed enclosure to maintain functional integrity”. There is no dimension, no cell size, no threshold. Until the act is in force and applied, nobody can tell you where a hearable stops being a wearable.
How marketplaces will police it. Article 11 creates a product requirement enforced through market surveillance, not — on the face of the text — a platform gatekeeping duty of the kind that packaging EPR now carries. Whether Amazon and Etsy build a pre-listing attestation for it anyway is a commercial question we cannot answer from the regulation.
Ask each supplier of a battery-powered line two questions in writing: can the battery be removed with a commercially available tool and no heat or solvent, and can you supply the technical documentation behind any derogation you are claiming. The second question is the one that matters — under Article 11(2) the evidence has to exist when the product is placed on the market, and it is you, not the factory, who places it on the EU market.
This is the third EU regime in two years to redesign what small sellers can list, after product safety labelling — covered in our guide to what has to go on a GPSR label, which you can assemble with the GPSR label builder — and packaging registration, in the EU packaging EPR marketplace check. Batteries sit awkwardly across both: the same item can need a removable cell under Article 11, a responsible person under GPSR, and an EPR number for the box it ships in. If you are recalculating what an EU order is worth after all of that, the EU import VAT and duty estimator is the place to start.
Facts verified 2026-08-05 against the sources below. This is a summary for sellers, not legal advice.
Primary sources: Regulation (EU) 2023/1542 concerning batteries and waste batteries — full text via EUR-Lex (Article 3, points (9)–(11); Article 11; Article 89(6)); European Commission, Commission Notice C(2026) 5032 final of 14 July 2026, guidelines on the removability and replaceability of portable and LMT batteries (application date 18 February 2027; power banks and charging cases; tool types and EN 45554:2020e; the five wet-appliance indicators; spare parts and non-retroactivity; parts-pairing); Commission Delegated Regulation C(2026) 5031 final of 14 July 2026 supplementing Regulation (EU) 2023/1542, transmitted to the Council as document 12056/26 of 17 July 2026; European Commission, announcement of 14 July 2026 confirming entry into force only after scrutiny and Official Journal publication; Commission Regulation (EU) 2023/1670 (ecodesign for phones and tablets), Annex II. Where a point could not be confirmed on a primary source it is flagged as unsettled in the text above rather than stated.