EU exempts smart glasses from removable battery rule after US pressure

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The European Commission on Tuesday exempted wearable tech from rules requiring removable batteries, clearing a major hurdle for Meta’s smart glasses to take on the EU market following pressure from the United States.

Smart glasses are in European regulators’ and lawmakers’ crosshairs over privacy and surveillance concerns. But the bloc’s batteries regulation also held up the EU rollout of Meta’s latest model in recent months because the glasses’ built-in batteries cannot be easily removed and replaced.

U.S. Ambassador to the EU Andrew Puzder came to Meta’s defense at an event in March, where he called the EU’s rules “so broad and so restrictive that it prevents the sale of this wonderful, jointly developed, U.S.-European product from being sold in the European Union” and praised the smart glasses as being “very stylish” and “very wonderful.”

“You have to focus on allowing businesses to grow and allowing businesses to innovate,” Puzder then said about the European hurdles to Meta’s product.

The Commission on Tuesday presented a legislative tweak known as a delegated act that exempts connected products including smartwatches, smart glasses, fitness trackers and electric toys from the batteries regulation.

A Commission spokesperson said in a statement that it “has not given in to anyone’s pressure,” adding that its proposals “follow a broad public consultation with consumer associations, industry stakeholders and the Member States.” The spokesperson added that the proposal for the exemption “is not about regulating one specific product” but “to ensure safer consumer and industrial products in cases where opening a device could create safety risks or where technical limits make consumer access unrealistic.”

The European Parliament and national governments have 20 days to object to the tweak; if they don’t, the bill will enter into force.

The change is a major boon for Meta, which has bet big on the new spectacle technology but felt held back in reaching European consumers with its eye-catching product. The battery rule exemption may also benefit other companies like Samsung and Google , and Apple which are planning their own smart glasses launches.

Earlier financial results from the French-Italian eyewear company EssilorLuxottica that owns the RayBan brand noted that Meta smart glasses sales are ramping up “exponentially” in the U.S.

While Meta has launched its AI glasses in the EU, the financial results said the distribution rollout is still slow in the EMEA region, with “more than half” of sales points still not served. More than 7 million pairs of Meta smart glasses were sold worldwide in 2025.

The smart glasses still face fierce privacy pushback, regardless of the change in batteries rules.

Cláudio Texeira, the head of digital policy at Europe’s largest consumer protection group BEUC, said: “Europe should not dilute consumer protections. Smart glasses are already raising important concerns about privacy, security and consumer choice. Exemptions from EU battery removability rules should remain exactly that: genuine exceptions based on clear technical and safety evidence, not industry pressure. Exempting these devices … risks setting a dangerous precedent.”

When Meta launched the first iteration of its RayBan smart glasses in Europe in 2021, the product immediately sparked concerns with Irish and Italian privacy watchdogs over whether the specs made it obvious enough to people that they are being filmed.

And earlier this year, concerns peaked again when Swedish media reported that subcontractors for Meta in Kenya were reviewing “deeply private” footage captured by the firm’s smart glasses to help annotate the content to train artificial intelligence models. It included recordings of people’s bathroom visits, banking details, or even them having sex.

The European Data Protection Board, which gathers privacy regulators across Europe, has ordered a report into smart glasses which should be finalized this summer, chair Anu Talus told POLITICO earlier. She added that the board will look at actions from there.

A Meta spokesperson told POLITICO last month that its glasses include built-in privacy safeguards and that the company has “teams dedicated to evolving these measures so that we can continue to deliver safe, secure products that enhance people’s lives.”

“Unlike smartphones, our glasses have an LED light that activates when someone prompts the glasses to take a photo or video that will be saved to their gallery. The glasses feature tamper detection technology to prevent people from covering that light. Unless users choose to share media they’ve captured with Meta, that media also stays on the device,” they said.

The U.S. Mission to the EU declined to comment.

Meta didn’t respond to POLITICO’s request for a comment.