Genuine, OE and aftermarket parts: what the law says

A truck comes off the road on a Tuesday and the workshop that has the part in stock is not the dealer. Two questions follow, usually in the wrong order: whether fitting the part costs the operator the warranty, and what the word on the box actually means. Both have answers in EU law, and the second answer largely settles the first.

The regulation behind the aftermarket, and the date to get right

Commission Regulation (EU) No 461/2010 is the block exemption for vertical agreements in the motor vehicle sector. It is competition law, not vehicle law: it does not tell anyone which part to fit, it tells manufacturers and their networks which contract terms lose the benefit of the exemption from Article 101(1) of the Treaty.

In the text as published in the Official Journal of 28 May 2010, Article 8 read “It shall expire on 31 May 2023”. Article 1(2) of Commission Regulation (EU) 2023/822 of 17 April 2023 replaced that second paragraph with “It shall expire on 31 May 2028”, and recital 4 of the amending regulation says the period of application “should be extended by five years”. Article 1(1) of the same instrument moved the Commission’s evaluation deadline to the same date. The consolidated text of 7 May 2023 carries the new wording and, as consolidations do, no preamble: it opens at Article 1. Every recital cited below is therefore cited from the original.

The 2023 date is still in print, because the United Kingdom took the same regulation somewhere else. It publishes its own retained version, whose Article 8 was never given the new date: as it stood on 31 December 2020 it read “It shall expire on 31 May 2023”, and expire it did. A domestic successor was ready. From 1 June 2023 the aftermarket in the United Kingdom has been governed by The Competition Act 1998 (Motor Vehicle Agreements Block Exemption) (No. 2) Order 2023, S.I. 2023/586 — a block exemption order made under section 6 of the Competition Act 1998 on the recommendation of the Competition and Markets Authority, whose explanatory note says it “replaces retained Commission Regulation (EU) No 461/2010 … (the retained MVBER) (EUR 2010/461), which expires at the end of 31st May 2023”. Its article 13 gives it until the end of 31 May 2029. The spent retained regulation was then formally revoked with effect from 1 January 2024 by the Retained EU Law (Revocation and Reform) Act 2023 (Revocation and Sunset Disapplication) Regulations 2023, S.I. 2023/1143. An earlier order of the same name, S.I. 2023/501, was revoked by article 14 of the No. 2 Order on 31 May 2023 and never took effect; it is the No. 2 Order that is in force. Two jurisdictions, two instruments, two dates: the EU regulation runs to 31 May 2028, the UK Order to 31 May 2029.

Scope is set by two definitions. Article 1(1)(g) defines a motor vehicle as “a self-propelled vehicle intended for use on public roads and having three or more road wheels”, which takes in tractor units, rigids, city buses and coaches. A drawn trailer or semi-trailer is not self-propelled, and the regulation nowhere mentions trailers — that reading of the definition is ours, drawn from the text. Article 1(1)(h) defines spare parts as “goods which are to be installed in or upon a motor vehicle so as to replace components of that vehicle, including goods such as lubricants which are necessary for the use of a motor vehicle, with the exception of fuel”. Engine and gear oil are spare parts for this purpose; diesel is not.

What the block exemption actually exempts

Article 4 exempts aftermarket vertical agreements that “fulfil the requirements for an exemption under Regulation (EU) No 330/2010 and do not contain any of the hardcore clauses listed in Article 5 of this Regulation”.

That cross-reference needs care: Regulation (EU) No 330/2010 is gone. Recital 2 of Commission Regulation (EU) 2022/720 records 330/2010 as expiring on 31 May 2022; 2022/720 entered into force on 1 June 2022 and, by its Article 11, expires on 31 May 2034. The consolidated text of 461/2010 still carries the old number. What was corrected instead is the Commission’s own guidance: as amended on 17 April 2023, paragraph 2 of the Supplementary Guidelines defines “the General Vertical Block Exemption Regulation” as Regulation (EU) 2022/720.

The threshold sits in Article 3(1) of 2022/720: the supplier’s share of the market on which it sells and the buyer’s share of the market on which it buys must each stay at or below 30 %. Paragraph 39 of the Supplementary Guidelines is blunt about what that means in this sector — agreements between a vehicle manufacturer or its importer on one side and spare parts distributors and/or authorised repairers on the other “will fall outside the Block Exemption Regulations when the market shares held by the parties exceed the 30 % threshold, which is likely to be the case for most such agreements.” The block exemption is therefore the floor of the analysis in the truck aftermarket, not the whole of it.

Three things a parts agreement may not do

Article 5 lists the clauses that remove the exemption outright, whatever else the agreement contains.

Paragraph 22 of the Supplementary Guidelines explains what 5(a) is aimed at: captive parts, “which may only be obtained from the motor vehicle manufacturer or from members of its authorised networks”. Paragraph 24 explains 5(c), and it is the reason a component supplier’s name is stamped on the part under the cab: putting the mark on the component “facilitates the identification of compatible replacement parts which can be obtained from OES”. The shape of a group’s supply base then sets how wide the aftermarket is for any given component, as in who builds trucks in Europe.

Original, matching quality, and a word with no legal definition

Paragraph 18 of the Supplementary Guidelines sets out three families of part: parts bearing the vehicle manufacturer’s trade mark, called OEM parts; original parts manufactured and distributed by the original equipment suppliers, called OES parts; and parts matching the quality of the original components, supplied by “matching quality” parts manufacturers.

Paragraph 19 defines the middle category. In its amended form it reads: “‘Original parts or equipment’ means parts or equipment which are manufactured according to the specifications and production standards provided by the motor vehicle manufacturer for the production of parts or equipment for the assembly of the motor vehicle in question”, and points to the second paragraph of Article 55(5) of Regulation (EU) 2018/858. Before 17 April 2023 the same paragraph pointed instead at Article 3(26) of Directive 2007/46/EC — a directive repealed with effect from 1 September 2020 by Article 88 of Regulation (EU) 2018/858 — and carried a further sentence, that parts were presumed original, unless the contrary was proven, where the part manufacturer certified both that they matched the quality of the components used for assembly and that they had been made to the vehicle’s specifications and production standards. That presumption sentence is not in the current text.

Paragraph 20 sets the matching-quality test: the parts “must be of a sufficiently high quality that their use does not endanger the reputation of the authorised network in question”, and the vehicle manufacturer may bring evidence that a given part does not meet it.

Neither instrument defines a category called “genuine”. The regulation does not use the word at all; the guidelines use it once, of a genuine sub-contracting arrangement, which is a different subject. A box marked genuine is a commercial description; the question worth asking is which of the three categories above the part falls into.

The warranty question

Recital 17 of Regulation (EU) No 461/2010, in the original text, draws the line the operator needs. Nothing in the rule against restricting a parts producer’s sales affects “the ability of vehicle manufacturers to require the authorised repairers within their distribution system to only use spare parts that match the quality of the components used for the assembly of a certain motor vehicle”; and because manufacturers are contractually involved in repairs under warranty, free servicing and recall operations, agreements obliging authorised repairers to use only manufacturer-supplied parts for those repairs are covered by the exemption. Paragraph 39 of the Supplementary Guidelines calls such an obligation not a single-branding restriction but “an objectively justified requirement”.

Paragraph 69 then deals with everything outside that ring. A qualitative selective distribution agreement may be caught by Article 101(1) if a manufacturer’s warranty, “whether legal or extended”, is made conditional on the end user having repair and maintenance work that is not covered by warranty carried out only inside the authorised network. The same applies to warranty conditions requiring the manufacturer’s brand of spare parts for replacements not covered by the warranty terms. The counterweight is in the same paragraph: if a supplier legitimately refuses a warranty claim on the ground that the situation leading to it is causally linked to a repairer’s failure to carry out an operation correctly, or to the use of poor quality spare parts, that has no bearing on whether the supplier’s repair agreements comply with the competition rules. Note what that limb does and does not do. It presupposes a refusal already legitimate on its own grounds and settles only that such a refusal leaves the supplier’s repair agreements where they were; it is not itself the permission to refuse.

The test the Guidelines describe is causal, not categorical: a blanket term reserving all servicing to the dealer network is what the Commission is looking at; a refusal tied to a specific part and a specific failure is not. That is why the invoice and the part reference settle the argument, and why service history is priced into a used vehicle as hard as emission class — a point that runs through buying a used truck.

Parts that still need approval of their own

Competition law is only half the frame. Under Article 55(1) of Regulation (EU) 2018/858, parts or equipment that may pose a serious risk to the correct functioning of systems essential to vehicle safety or environmental performance may not be placed on the market or enter into service unless an approval authority has authorised them. Article 55(2) confines those authorisations to the parts and equipment on the list, and Article 55(4) puts the list in Annex VI. In the consolidated text of 2 August 2026 both tables in Annex VI still carry a placeholder and name no item. That is not a vacuum, and the Regulation says so: because the list has not been established, Article 56(7) allows Member States to “maintain national provisions regarding parts or equipment that may affect the correct functioning of systems essential for the safety of the vehicle or its environmental performance”. Those are national rules, not a European list, and an operator working into another Member State checks them there rather than in the Regulation. Article 55(5) takes original parts or equipment outside paragraph 1 in any event, and its second subparagraph defines them, expressly “for the purposes of this Article”, as parts or equipment manufactured according to the specifications and production standards provided by the vehicle manufacturer for the assembly of the vehicle in question. That is the provision paragraph 19 of the Guidelines points to; the Guidelines’ own wording, quoted above, is not identical to it.

The real gate for heavy vehicles is elsewhere. Article 4(1) of Regulation (EU) 2019/2144 requires manufacturers to demonstrate that all new systems, components and separate technical units placed on the market or entered into service are type-approved under that Regulation, and Article 4(2) treats approval under a UN Regulation listed in Annex I as EU type-approval. UN Regulation No 90 is in that list, covering “Replacement brake lining assemblies, drum-brake linings and discs and drums for power-driven vehicles and their trailers”, 02 series of amendments, scope M, N and O. Note 8 to Annex I sets out precisely when it bites.

Read the last column carefully: the trigger is the date of the vehicle type approval, not the date the part was made or fitted. It reaches trailers, which the block exemption above does not — and how those systems are matched is covered in trailer braking systems.

What the manufacturer has to hand over

None of this works if the workshop cannot identify the part. Article 3(45) of Regulation (EU) 2018/858 defines an independent operator broadly enough to include manufacturers and distributors of spare parts, not only repairers, and Article 61(1) requires manufacturers to give them “unrestricted, standardised and non-discriminatory access to vehicle OBD information, diagnostic and other equipment, tools including the complete references, and available downloads, of the applicable software and vehicle repair and maintenance information”. The phrase about complete references governs what follows it: the references and the downloads are those of the applicable software. That reading of the sentence is ours, drawn from its grammar, and it matters because it puts the paragraph on the tooling side of the line — getting into the vehicle, rather than what is fitted to it.

The part number is dealt with a layer down. Point 6.1.2 of Annex X requires that information on all the parts a vehicle is equipped with, identified by VIN and by criteria such as wheelbase, engine output, trim level or options, which can be replaced by spare parts the manufacturer offers to its authorised repairers, dealers or third parties by reference to an original equipment (OE) parts number, “shall be made available, in the form of machine readable and electronically processable datasets, in a database that is easily accessible to independent operators”. That database is to comprise the VIN, OE parts numbers, OE naming of the parts, validity attributes, fitting attributes and, where applicable, structuring characteristics. That obligation, not the tooling clause in Article 61(1), is what turns a right to buy elsewhere into a real one. Point numbers in that Annex move: Commission Delegated Regulation (EU) 2026/699 of 23 March 2026 amended Annex X, and 6.1.2 is the number the requirement carries in the consolidated text of 2 August 2026. What that chapter obliges a manufacturer to publish, at what price and on what terms, is set out in repair information access rights. It is also why a maintenance policy is a sourcing decision before it is a budget line, as in tractor unit running costs.