Brussels Pries Open the Dashboard: Independent Garages Win Legal Right to Talk to Modern Cars
Published on 09/25/2026 at 02:10 | Editorial boerse-global.de
Repair shops that have watched vehicle software drift further out of reach now have a legal crowbar. The first stage of EU Regulation 2026/699 is in force, and it obliges carmakers to hand diagnostic-system providers the information they need to communicate with today's vehicles. The goal is straightforward: keep the aftermarket competitive and give independent workshops a fighting chance.
Brussels moved after years of legal sparring over how competition rules should be read. Industry observers point to a European Court of Justice ruling (C-296/22) as the trigger — cybersecurity measures, the court held, must not restrict free competition disproportionately. The technical opening of vehicle interfaces will roll out on a fixed, multi-year timetable rather than all at once.
Four Steps, Two Years, One Deadline
Stage two lands on 23.12.2026. From that date, manufacturers must open interfaces for variant coding, precise spare-part matching and control-unit programming.
June 2027 brings the third phase, covering access to vehicle repair and maintenance information. Full implementation is slated for June 2028, when supplying software updates to third parties also becomes mandatory.
A Right on Paper Is Not a Bay in the Workshop
Trade bodies are not celebrating yet. Kfz-Gewerbe Baden-Württemberg, which speaks for roughly 5,400 businesses, warned that a legal entitlement does not by itself deliver smooth access in day-to-day workshop practice.
Carsten Beuß, the association's chief executive, pressed for transparent schedules and affordable pricing to create genuinely equal competitive conditions, and called for dependable dates for the technical rollout.
The ADAC backs the trades. In a study, the motoring club highlighted the sheer volume of data modern cars generate. Recorded parameters — distances driven, locations, how long the lights were on, fault-memory entries — have so far remained largely the exclusive preserve of manufacturers.
Arnulf Thiemel, a data specialist at the ADAC, expects future vehicle generations to capture considerably more. Karsten Schulze, the club's technical president, wants an explicit statutory rule on data sovereignty so that vehicle owners themselves decide how their data is used. A study by the Goslar Institut confirmed the appetite: consumers want to share their mobility data on their own terms.
Meanwhile, the Toolmakers Are Already Moving
As the legal framework shifts, system suppliers are building the digital repair kit. TecAlliance has strengthened its European leadership team with Isabel Meeus as Commercial Director Europe Central, part of a push to sharpen its market positioning.
One focus is cutting ambiguity in parts identification by using richer vehicle attributes such as engine codes and equipment variants. Through its TecRMI system, the company also folds verified real-world repair cases into manufacturer specifications, applying artificial intelligence to historical data to rank diagnostic steps by probability.
TecAlliance is likewise active in the European Independent Automotive Data Publishers Association (ADPA), campaigning for open data access — mapping supplier numbers to original part numbers remains one of the aftermarket's toughest puzzles.
On a parallel track, the "Autowerkstatt 4.0" project is laying the technological groundwork for AI-assisted diagnostics. Led by LMIS AG and funded by the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Action, the project produced a dedicated multi-channel oscilloscope. Seventy workshops are currently using it, running six-month measurement series to train an AI model. Technical instruction for the participating businesses was led by Lukas Jakubczyk of TH Georg Agricola.
