- The EU’s Common Charger Directive went into effect on December 28, 2024, meaning several categories of devices now need to support charging via USB-C to be eligible for sale in the region.
- Consequently, Apple has stopped selling the iPhone 14 and the iPhone SE in the EU.
- Laptops will also have to allow USB-C charging by April 28, 2024.
If you’ve been following tech for over a decade or two, you’d know just how much of a pain charging an electronic device truly was. Electronic devices came in all shapes and sizes, each with its unique and often proprietary charger. You would need a specific charger per electronic device, and that also extended to phones and even smartphones. The world eventually moved on to mini-USB, micro-USB, and USB-C, but companies like Apple held us back by stubbornly using a Lightning port. But thanks to EU legislation that has now gone into force, we have finally and truly moved on to USB-C everything.
The EU’s Common Charger Directive is one of the most significant driving forces behind standardizing charging ports not only in the European Union but also globally. Many companies adopted USB-C of their own accord, but the legislation created enough pressure to force holdouts like Apple to concede and adopt USB-C on their devices.