USB Type-C to Become Mandatory Charging Port in the European Union

Lawmakers in the European Union have formally agreed to make USB Type-C the standard charging port in the union and although there are still a couple of minor hurdles ahead of it becoming a legal requirement, it’s expected to be a requirement by the autumn of 2024. For it to become EU wide legislation, the EU parliament and Council still needs to approve the new law, but considering all sides seem to have largely agreed on the details, this is said to be largely formality at this point. However, the new law isn’t just about making USB-C the standard used for charging mobile phones, tablets and other types of portable electronics, including laptops, but it also covers chargers and this is where things get a bit tricky.

The EU is legislating for what it calls a “harmonised fast-charging technology”, which means that proprietary fast charging technologies might be out. The USB Power Delivery standard already supports fast charging, but it’s still limited compared to some of the proprietary charging standards that are coming out of China, where some companies offer a full charge in 15 minutes. This may in itself not be that big of a deal, as all of these standards still use USB-C connectors and can rely on USB PD as a fallback charging method, but the EU also wants to unbundle chargers from devices. This means that any device that requires a proprietary charger to reach its optimal charging performance, will require consumers to buy a charger that used to come bundled with said device. This might not be a major hassle, but it’s still an inconvenience in those cases and it’s likely this will lead to higher prices for some products as well.

The new rules will have a 24 month grace period for all devices, except laptops, which will be given a 40 month grace period. There’s a simple reason for this, the EU is expecting laptops to use USB PD 3.1, which allow for 100 to 240 W power adapters, which is more in line with what higher-end laptops are using. Many laptops that lack a discrete graphics chip, or have a lower-end discrete graphics chip already rely on USB PD 3.0 for charging and the recently launched MacBook Air only ships with a 35 W adapter as an example. Most thin and light notebooks rely on a 65 W adapter, but there are also desktop replacement laptops that use 300 W plus adapters, so it’ll be interesting to see how the notebook manufacturers deal with such devices down the road.