Maybe they just meant that brand is notorious for lasting ~5 years?
Mind you, we have a Samsung which is about 9 years old and everyone says Samsungs conk out early because they cram too much feature/design into not enough space or part longevity.
BUT I think the idea that leaving the EU leaves us automatically less-good items is false. Especially the recertification bit. First of all, the UK is a tiny market compared to the rest of the EU, and most major appliance manufacturers are based in other countries e.g. Germany, Turkey (which isn't in the EU either!), Poland, US, Japan, China etc. It makes sense for them to continue to make their European spec models and sell in the UK as well - they don't need to make an entirely different, shitter model just to sell to the UK. It is probably cheaper to reuse the EU spec model for the UK and change the plug.
Secondly he is talking bollocks about the recertification being anything to do with Brexit. The energy ratings A-G have been redone because the original scale was set up in the 90s, and they had already added on loads of extra ratings like A+, A++ etc in 2010 and it made the whole thing meaningless because people would just see "A" anything and assume it was good rather than seeing the difference between the different A ratings.
So rather than keep adding ++++++++ forever, they just scrapped the old scale and made a new one. Everywhere. In fact it is an EU initiative! 🙄 And it's a good thing because every product has a datasheet attached which makes it much easier to compare products.
Also, if you bought your fridge 5 years ago then it probably wasn't a post Brexit model anyway.