Investigations
The EU's Battery Exemption List Has Eight Categories. None of Them Is a Game Console.
SEO Title: EU battery exemptions: eight categories, no game consoles
Excerpt: On 14 July 2026 the European Commission replaced the list of products exempt from the EU's battery-removability rule, expanding it from two categories to eight. Handheld consoles are not among them. From 18 February 2027, Article 11 applies to them in full — including a spare-parts duty that runs half a decade past the last unit sold, and a ban on software that impedes replacement.
On 14 July 2026 the European Commission adopted a delegated regulation, C(2026) 5031 final, that replaced Article 11(2) of the Batteries Regulation. Article 11(2) is the escape hatch: the short list of products allowed to keep a battery that only a professional can reach.
The Commission expanded that list from two categories to eight. It added wearables — smartwatches and fitness trackers, explicitly — electric toys until 31 July 2030, ATEX equipment, wireless food-probe thermometers, on-body drug delivery systems, and roof-mounted telematics units for farm and construction machinery. It rewrote the wet-appliance category to pull wearables in. The Commission's own news release that day summarised the change in one line: "six new categories, including wearable devices such as smartwatches, fitness trackers, and electric toys."
There is no category for game consoles. There is no category for handheld gaming devices, portable consoles, or anything a reader of this site would recognise. The word "console" does not appear in the delegated regulation. Neither does "game."
That absence matters because of a date. Article 96(2)(a) of Regulation (EU) 2023/1542 states that Article 11 "shall apply from 18 February 2027."
What Article 11 actually requires
The operative sentence is worth reading in full, because most coverage of this law stops at the phrase "removable battery" and never reaches the test:
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. […] 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.
Two words in that list do the work here. Thermal energy. Solvents. The regulation does not merely require that a battery be reachable. It requires that it be reachable without a heat gun and without isopropyl alcohol.
The Commission's accompanying guidelines, C(2026) 5032, published the same day, add the interpretive layer. "Commercially available tools" maps to two categories of standard EN 45554:2020e — basic tools or no tools, and commercially available tools. Product-group-specific tools are permitted only if supplied free with the product. Proprietary tools are out.
The same guidelines make the spare-parts clause explicit, and it is the part the hardware industry talks about least. Article 11(7) obliges the maker to keep the battery available as a spare part of the device it powers — at a reasonable and non-discriminatory price, for independent repairers and for end-users alike — measured from the last unit of that model placed on the market. The statutory wording is quoted in full further down. The guidelines add that the fasteners needed to reach the battery should also be available as spare parts.
And Article 11(8) is a sentence that has no equivalent in any console design document I have read: "Software shall not be used to impede the replacement of a portable battery." The Commission's guidelines name the practice it has in mind — parts pairing, where a serialised battery is bound to one unit by software and a replacement will not function "unless remotely paired to the device again via software controlled by the original manufacturer."
The eight categories, and the one that is missing
| # | Derogation category (Art. 11(2), as replaced) | Covers game consoles? |
|---|---|---|
| a | Appliances, including wearables, designed for regular splashing/immersion, washable or rinseable | No |
| b | Professional medical imaging, radiotherapy and IVD devices | No |
| c | Wearables too small, or reliant on a sealed enclosure, for safe user access | No — wearables only |
| d | Electric toys with rechargeable batteries, until 31 July 2030 | No |
| e | Wireless thermometer probes for food contact | No |
| f | Products within scope of the ATEX Directive 2014/34/EU | No |
| g | On-body systems for subcutaneous drug delivery | No |
| h | Roof-mounted telematics for agricultural and construction machinery | No |
The nearest candidate is (c), and it is worth being precise about why it fails. Category (c) is bounded by its subject: "wearable devices." A handheld console is held, not worn. The clause's two limbs — too small to handle a battery safely, or dependent on a sealed enclosure for dust and shock integrity — describe design constraints that a Nintendo Switch 2 or a Steam Deck does not have and does not claim. A console is not a smartwatch with a 300 mAh cell.
There is one further argument available to a manufacturer, and it is narrow. Article 11(3) disapplies the obligation "where continuity of power supply is necessary and a permanent connection between the product and the respective portable battery is required to ensure the safety of the user and the appliance or, for products that collect and supply data as their main function, for data integrity reasons." A games console is not a safety device. The data-integrity limb is written for instruments whose main function is to collect and supply data. It is not written for a device whose main function is to render a frame.
The delegated act's fate does not change the answer
A reasonable objection: the delegated regulation was adopted on 14 July and then transmitted to the European Parliament and the Council for scrutiny. It enters into force twenty days after publication in the Official Journal, if neither institution objects. It may not be in force yet.
That objection does not rescue the console. If the delegated act is struck down, Article 11(2) reverts to its original text — two categories, wet appliances and professional medical devices. Neither covers a console. If the delegated act survives, Article 11(2) has eight categories, and none covers a console. The industry had exactly one route to an exemption, Article 11(4), under which the Commission may add products by delegated act "only on account of market developments and technical and scientific progress, and provided that there are scientifically grounded concerns over the safety of end-users removing or replacing the portable battery." That door was opened, a list was written, and consoles were not put on it.
What the teardowns show
The compliance question for any given device is not philosophical. It is: can the battery come out with a screwdriver?
iFixit's published procedure for the Nintendo Switch 2 — the only public procedure for that device — runs to 63 steps and is rated "Moderate," one to two hours. Its required tool list includes a heat gun, a hair dryer, Isopropyl Alcohol (90% or Greater) and iFixit Adhesive Remover. The guide's own text tells the technician to "regularly reheating the stickers" and to "apply more heat instead of using more force."
The Steam Deck OLED procedure is shorter — 28 steps — and rated "Difficult," two to three hours. Its tool list includes an iOpener (a heated pad), Isopropyl Alcohol and iFixit Adhesive Remover.
Both devices are, on the face of the only public documentation, batteries that come out with thermal energy and solvent. Both are sold in the European Union.
There is a real limit to this evidence and it should be stated plainly: iFixit is not the manufacturer, and a maker could in principle specify an authorised procedure that avoids heat. For the Switch 2, no such procedure is public — Nintendo routes battery service through its repair programme — so the public record contains one method, and that method is the prohibited one. That is an inference about compliance, not a finding of law, and it is the kind of inference a market-surveillance authority would have to test by opening the device.
The two devices also diverge on the clause nobody discusses. Valve sells the Steam Deck OLED battery as a spare part through iFixit, which lists it as an item alongside the battery adhesive. That is the shape Article 11(7) asks for. iFixit's parts list for the Switch 2 battery guide contains tape, thermal putty and replacement rail stickers. No battery.
The part of the rule that outlives the hardware
Article 11(7) is the clause with the longest tail, and it is the one an OEM cannot fix with a new chassis. The statutory wording: batteries shall be "available as spare parts of the equipment that they power for a minimum of five years after placing the last unit of the equipment model on the market, with a reasonable and non-discriminatory price for independent professionals and end-users." A minimum of five years, measured from the last unit of a model placed on the market. For a console with a seven-year tail — and consoles now routinely outsell their launch window — that obligation runs well past the platform's commercial life.
Article 11(8) has an even longer reach into the second-hand market. A console that refuses a replacement cell until an authentication handshake completes is not merely inconvenient; on the Commission's reading it is using software to impede replacement, which the regulation prohibits outright.
What the law does not do
It does not recall stock. Units already placed on the Union market before 18 February 2027 may continue to be made available to consumers; the obligation attaches to placing on the market, which under EU product law means the first making available. The practical effect is not that consoles vanish from European shelves in February. It is that no new non-compliant unit may enter the Union's market from that date — which, for a device manufactured in a rolling production run, is a deadline on the production line, not on the retailer.
Nor does the regulation create a European market-surveillance army. Enforcement runs through national authorities, and the category most exposed is also the hardest to police: the direct-to-consumer handheld trade, thousands of models sold from Shenzhen storefronts with no EU establishment, no notified body and no spare-parts catalogue. Those sellers are outside the exemption list and, in most cases, outside anyone's enforcement reach. The compliance gap the regulation opens is widest exactly where the law is least able to look.
What would make this wrong
Three things.
First, if a console maker can show that its battery is retained by a pull-tab adhesive that releases without heat and without solvent, it meets the Article 11(1) test as written, whatever iFixit's method list says. The regulation bans thermal energy and solvents, not adhesive.
Second, if the Commission's pending guidance or a future delegated act adds a "sealed consumer electronics" category, the analysis changes overnight. Nothing in the July text suggests that is coming, but Article 11(4) remains open.
Third, if the Parliament or Council objects and the delegated act falls, the eight-category table above becomes moot. The conclusion does not: the baseline list still excludes consoles.
Why it went unnoticed
The July delegated act was covered as a wearables story. The trade press that followed it wrote about Apple Watch, fitness trackers and earbuds, because those are the categories the Commission named in its press release. The console category is defined by what was left out rather than what was put in, and an omission does not appear in a press release.
The result is a dated, published, legally binding change to the design rules for the fastest-moving hardware category in consumer electronics, adopted in July, with the compliance date now under four months away, and no public evidence that the console industry has priced it in. That is the gap worth watching — and, from 18 February, the one worth testing with a screwdriver.
Sources
- Regulation (EU) 2023/1542 (Batteries Regulation), Article 11 and Article 96 — full text via the EU Publications Office: data.europa.eu/eli/reg/2023/1542/oj
- Commission Delegated Regulation C(2026) 5031 final, 14 July 2026, replacing Article 11(2) — publication page and the adopted text (PDF)
- Commission guidelines C(2026) 5032, 14 July 2026, on the harmonised application of the removability and replaceability provisions — publication page and the text (PDF)
- European Commission, DG Environment, "Commission adds exemptions to rules on removability of portable batteries," 14 July 2026 — environment.ec.europa.eu
- iFixit, "Nintendo Switch 2 Battery Replacement" (63 steps, tool list including heat gun and isopropyl alcohol) — ifixit.com/Guide/190141
- iFixit, "Steam Deck OLED Battery Replacement" (28 steps, tool list including iOpener) — ifixit.com/Guide/168676
- iFixit, Steam Deck OLED Battery (spare part listing) — ifixit.com/Item