Comment by mattalex

Why do you assume that the entire EU has brain damage and did not think of this _most obvious_ loophole? Sure the companies could commit crimes but if that is enough of a reason not to pass laws then we better start striking murder of the books as well.

The EU cannot control every avenue you might be sneaking products out for destruction. The goal is not to prevent all sort of destruction, just make it risky enough not to be worth it: Since it's illegal to do, you now have something to fear when you try to get away with your (now) crime.

ESPR regulates the entire placement of products, not only the destruction, e.g. the Digital Product Passport (DPP) which every product has to have (it's slowly being phased in over the coming decade) gives information about repairability, resource used, recyclability,... To do the exporting for destruction you would need to fake the entire paper trail of the product, committing countless numbers of document forgery.

In general the "you are not allowed to destroy unsold goods" part is arguably the small element of ESPR. ESPR also contains the right-to-repair legislation, where ESPR introduces requirements (or at the very least disclosure requirements) for - Design for durability - Availability of spare parts - Access to repair information - Software support obligations - Design for repairability / Restricting design practices intended to hinder repair

The "don't destroy working items" is just a one component of this. The more important component is the DPP which makes the product lifetime traceable.