I don't know if this EU regulation will work or not (most likely not), but I can share how it is done in China (where package volume is orders of magnitude higher).
China identifies "choke points" most packages pass: large platforms and logistics companies. Yes, Chinese e-commerce is more centralized on Alibaba/JD/PDD etc, but there are actually much more logistics companies in China than in EU.
They also do not introduce these regulations "from tomorrow" (well, sometimes they do, but it's a different topic). E.g. the non-degradable plastic regulation was issued in 2020 to come in effect in 2025. This gives time to prepare and implement (unlike EU border controls mess...)
So now if something is shipped in non-degradable plastic, the logistics company is fined along with the sender. This is much more scalable and easy to implement. Logistics companies might rise their prices a bit in light of expanded work scope, but it would be peanuts compared to every individual seller.
Could EU just ask DHL/Hermes/whatever to charge an additional €1 "for recycling"? Yes, but...
But of course EU is fundamentally different in a way that the politicians need to please the electorate, so nothing is really planned ahead.
Per downthread, this whole crisis arises because of Chinese companies shipping to Europe. The EU Directives are definitely visible in advance, none of this is dropped on people.
One of the biggest problems that I have in the EU is that it's almost federated. EU will pass laws, countries will adopt those laws, but you end up with 20-24 different versions of those laws. With some countries being strict or lenient about the law that everyone agreed to. And a lot it is written from the perspective that large corporations are the only ones who do business throughout the EU. It's completely missed that small entrepreneurs may also want to take part. Modern technology makes it feasible, but old ideas just drags it down.
Dunno about that. I live in the US. I can start a small business today and the only thing I'd have to do differently is file an additional form on my taxes next year.
Yes, that's a simplification that doesn't apply to every situation, but it is still completely accurate.
Its not as bad as in the US I think, but yeah, most of the laws are actually (literally) written by corporations. I wouldn't call them puppets, but EU corps have an outsized influence on the outcome of the process.
That might be one reason they refuse to be open about their financial supports in their various organizations yes. it is very well known unfortunately..
That is the issue across the entire world. Large corporations can easily bear the cost of regulatory laws, environmental requirements, rules, and regulations. They can also go to great lengths to promote an environment that is almost nightmarish for a smaller company or entrepreneur trying to enter the game.
They create barrier after barrier through their lobbying efforts. A good example is having to pay $50,000 for an inspector to come and determine whether your automatic door opens and closes properly, or to verify that your facility does not have a chimney. A friend of mine who owns a business in Niagara Falls, Canada, had to pay around $10,000 for a wind assessment to determine where chimney exhaust would go once released. He didn’t even have a chimney.
Many of these environmental laws are intentionally created and applied to small businesses as well, even when the cost of meeting the requirements is greater than what the business could realistically generate in sales.
The result is that large corporations can absorb these costs, while small businesses and entrepreneurs are often priced out before they even have a chance to compete.
The US is wealthier, has more billionaires and has fewer of these barriers for small entrepreneurs. So no, this is not the monocausal explanation that applies equally everywhere.
(YES, the US has regulatory capture, YES the wealthy attempt to use it, YES we should try to eliminate it here too, but it remains true that it is easier to run a small business in the US, while having more billionaires. There are other explanations to the differential here).
Agreed, europe has a culture of "stability" first. The fear of disruption and chaos is larger after two WW and it outsourced the risks of disruption to the US. Basically, use the us as a test-mouse for new ideas and innovations, then when proven safe introduce them and ride those coat-tails to infinity.
> use the us as a test-mouse for new ideas and innovations, then when proven safe introduce them and ride those coat-tails to infinity
What actually happened, and continues to happen, is that Europe and the EU became entirely dependent on US tech and other foreign industry. It wasn't just a matter of "see what works and then copy it domestically". It oursourced basically everything.
Can you elaborate more? When you say "checks and balances" do you mean explicit legal mechanisms or implicit mechanisms like Tiebout-style foot voting? For the latter areas with "almost zero oversight" seem advantages. Also, can you give an example of these low-oversight places and how it manifests? I'm thankful even for some pointers in what to search for.
One example is the effective prohibition on spraying pesticides by air, including drone. Drones allow lower pesticide use than current, legal practices
Living in Europe, I find that with LLMs, it is possible to navigate the federal & law jungle. However, LLMs don't protect you from institutional envy or the resistance of people trying to block progress simply because it is perceived as 'too modern' or disruptive. I find this the hardest challenge. And I have the feeling during times of general decline, like these, it gets worse.
I personally hate the "reenact" the old- good times to recreate the prosperity cargo cults. What created those prosperous times, where "characters" that would just do things, and ask for forgiveness by the law later. And that was actually priced into the justice system, by giving the judges a range to verdict from. In a way, the rule of law was much less strict in the 50s and 60s and way more informal.
Even medium-sized corporations are not willing to send products across borders to consumers (say, outside Germany), further destroying the single market.
I think this is a big factor. While I would prefer a more federated US, the US as is is a great market to start in. It's 350M fairly wealthy people under mostly the same tech restrictions. That's a great place to grow.
It's important to remember that even without the fact that big companies basically write the regulations, regulations naturally tend to being effectively regressive wrt company stage/size. Every new one is a hurdle that a bigger company has more resources to overcome.
Ah yes, let’s give the EU and its undemocratic system in which policy formation is heavily filtered through a relatively narrow professional political class, ordinary voters have weak or almost no direct control over major policy choices, dissent encounters administrative/economic punishment, and central institutions possess and use powerful financial means to discipline peripheral governments should have even more centralised power?
And no, just because voting for MEPs is bolted on there as a pressure valve doesn’t suddenly make it all okay when most of the real decisions happen behind closed doors and adherence to the passed laws, no matter how damaging is ensured through financial coercion.
Not a single person voted or agreed to this law, and yet here we are.
Because if the EU tried to force countries into single compliance, there would no end of "EU is trampling national interests" and similar screaming.
It's an unwinnable situation. Again, EU-level politics keep assuming everyone (corporations and states) are adults. Unfortunately, everyone are just a bunch of screaming, scheming petulant children.
>Again, EU-level politics keep assuming everyone (corporations and states) are adults. Unfortunately, everyone are just a bunch of screaming, scheming petulant children.
One in four MEPs are involved in scandals [0] ranging from harassment to organized crime and corruption. The European Parliament also remains a free out-of-jail card through abuse of parliamentary immunity, and they do abuse it [1]. EU politics is a circus.
One of the best example is Ursula Von der Leyen. She was sent from Berlin to EU by Angela Merkle because when she was the defence minister of Germany under Merkle’s government there was a huge scandal of offering contracts (https://www.euractiv.com/news/von-der-leyen-admits-mistakes-...)
She was sent to EU so she can do less harm in the future, but the irony is that she became the head of EU.
> there would no end of "EU is trampling national interests" and similar screaming
To just call this "screaming" is to completely dismiss a real and huge problem. The EU is the idea that countries should fuse into economic areas, but the countries are also individual still. Of course there's a lot of friction.
For example, because Greece was in the Euro, they couldn't inflate their currency to compensate for the fact that they gradually outsourced more and more work to Germany, until they had nothing left and hit a financial crisis because their government couldn't borrow more money. That's not mindless screaming.
They could neither fix the problem with the policy tools a country with its own currency would have, nor did they have the automatic support from a central budget a region or state of a country would have.
No, the Greeks were cool and calculating, turning an inflating fake fiat currency into hard assets like real estate, while not working or producing anything.
The introduction of the Euro was the start signal for each country to try to inflate as much as they can for their own benefit - since the first inflator gets the best value out of the currency. Idiots are left holding paper currency worth less and less each day. Having to work harder and harder in a never ending spiral.
The bigger issue in OP's case is they are dependent on de minimis.
The de minimis crackdown [0] and EPR [1] are both being rolled out because Chinese conglomerates like PDD and SHEIN took undue advantage of that while ignoring European regulators on issues such as dark patterns [2], breaching the Digital Services Act [3], and gacha/engagement mechanisms [4].
Seems European HNers are fine with European regulations until it hurts their niche interests.
The issue is that those marketplaces got too mainstream, and the average consumer is too stupid.
10-15 years ago if you were importing stuff from China you'd know that the trade off for cheaper prices is that you'd lose your consumer laws protection and you'd be on your own. If you wanted those, then you'd go to your local retailer and pay extra.
This echos the FCC rules in the US, which I believe are gotten around by not complying.
Even if you are not making an intentional radiator, and/or are using datasheet-specified layouts or modules, you still must comply, which makes these businesses non-viable if complying.
I believe Adafruit gets around certifying every device by declaring themselves a cellphone company and being on good terms with regulators. This isn't viable for the sort of businesses and people described by this article.
I'm not sure about the Ali/Amazon products. I'm assuming they just are not complying.
FCC allows suppliers to self-declare conformance with EMI/EMC rules. You’re obviously taking a risk selling stuff if you haven’t had it properly tested so don’t really know if it passes but it’s unlikely to really be an issue for a small maker selling low quantities, especially if any intentional radiators (Bluetooth, WiFi etc.) are already-certified modules.
Your device tends to need to be causing problems, that the FCC then go and track down, and then come back to you. That is (hopefully, depending on the kind of device) extremely unlikely.
As for Ali stuff, probably lots of it is not tested but still comes with a FCC label - but if it is shipped from overseas, who is going to take responsibility for it? Nobody… So there is nothing they can do except fine the person who bought it if it’s really causing problems (and usually I doubt they’d even do that if the user wasn’t intentionally doing something they shouldn’t have been, they are just told to stop and maybe the device would be seized/ destroyed)
Huh. I thought that is actually the EU that allows self declared conformance, rather than the FCC. But looking into this it seems both do?
I recall trying to build some hardware in 2020 and getting discouraged because of the CE/FCC silliness. Even though I could self declare for the EU it seemed like a big risk to do so.
They'll get adequate feedback in the next elections If this doesn't get stopped, otherwise every business and their peers will likely vote for EU critic parties which means far left or far right.
It appears there is space for "packaging and distribution in EU as a service" business model.
Creators, producers and manufacturers in many fields do not distribute or sell directly to consumers (musicians can't directly upload to Spotify and Apple Music; film producers don't upload to Netflix, writers don't print their books).
A small-time maker may pay a fee to the established distributor of the physical products, who takes care of compliance, and uses their packaging and distribution channels.
Firstly for the reasons outlined in the article: it essentially makes being a micro/small business in the EU impossible, if your market is other EU countries.
Secondly because it validates insidious populist views that the EU institution is useless and incompetent at a fundamental level.
The legislation is so ABSURDIST that the EU have actually asked companies to ignore the law that they just implemented. I can assure you it is difficult to ignore a law that comes with a €200000 fine for non-compliance.
Gosh I hate it when politicians are useless and incompetent, since it just validates the false populist propaganda that politicians can be useless and incompetent, which is clearly not true (even in cases when politicians actually are useless and incompetent, which they of course cannot be, since that is evil propaganda).
This is a great read and I can extend this argument really to any small business. Tax filing, VAT, bookkeeping, privacy, consumer, workplace and sectoral requirements frequently impose a disproportionately large cost on microbusinesses. EU is more and more split along the enterprise and VC backed line, and everyone in between has disproportionate costs. My barber in Stockholm often complains about this - the amount of money they would need to earn to overcome all these costs is staggering. So they often do lots of gigs on the side.
UK has similar rules but, as with pretty much all other similar regulations, there are de minimis carve-outs:
≤ £1m turnover: no packaging EPR obligation, regardless of packaging volume.
£1m turnover + >25 tonnes of packaging: small producer obligations.
£2m turnover + >50 tonnes: large producer obligations.
The EU has been removing de minimis thresholds because 'China' can easily 'exploit' them. They're kind of right, but it's obviously an insanely stupid situation when someone selling something as a hobby, or just starting up on their own gets dragged into this.
This is actively preventing me from sending packages to other countries as a maker. No matter how small the risk is, I don't want to risk a 5000 euro fine for sending a small amount of packages to other EU countries.
Really sorry you’re experiencing this, that whole regulation rollout is a complete mess. The leadership should be sacked for such an incompetent regulation, it’s insane how much troubles they are creating for small businesses.
... but you can still fail to notice one, and you can gauge and to some degree control your risk of being fined.
In fact, if you sell 10 hobby prototype boards to other hobbyists, you probably have a higher risk of getting hit by a bus on the way to the post office than you do of being fined.
The complaint is totally understandable, BUT the examples do not make sense.
Arduino did not start as some dude selling less than 10 boards a year, but as an educational tool, which THEN ramped up to 100s of boards produced every day.
If your perspective is "I may sell 10 boards this year, maybe", your target is some local/national maker-faire, not a EU marketplace.
I think makers with such limited productions will just fly under the radar (if you sell so little, it's likely you probably won't need to incorporate or declare taxes in a lot of EU countries).
If they sell 100s of products across EU, they probably have at least one over-worked accountant taking care of existing compliance stuff.
As someone living in the tiny country of Estonia with just about 1.2 million residents, this worries me. No one but the biggest online shops in the EU will bother with the paperwork for such a small market. I'm expecting my import options to drop sharply in the coming years because of this.
I believe the view layed out in the article is wrong. The German Wikipedia has an article about the PPWR. One Paragraph is saying: "The distributor must verify that the manufacturer and, where applicable, the importer have fulfilled their requirements, that all necessary markings are affixed to the packaging, and that the manufacturer is registered in the producer register pursuant to Article 44." That does not sound like you are responsible for registering yourself but you need to purchase your packaging from registered vendors and you need to verify that. Sound reasonable to me.
I've seen some conflicting claims on this law and to me it sounded like it affects mostly producers of packaging, but everyone else seems to be complaining about it too. Did everyone actually read the law or is this a game of telephone?
The terminology is confusing. Under the PPWR, a “producer” is not necessarily someone who manufactures packaging. The regulation also covers businesses selling packaging or packaged products directly to end users in another Member State. So a maker shipping a board in an envelope can indeed be the packaging producer for EPR purposes.
as the whole world crushes small entities one has to wonder whether the EU would be the saviour or not. Apparently not. With its rules, they merely help crush small business as per usual.
I heard in the 50s an american could just startup a business installing septic tanks. But now the same person would need a myriad of regulations to be met, heavy equipment use mandated, all of which raise overhead to a level where its impossible to get off the ground.
I always felt the EU were the "good guys", IE not allowing corps to steam roll everyone, what with their rules fining poor behvaiour such as privacy violations, chargers being non standard etc.
However the same problem exists in weird ways you wouldnt even imagine.
For example if someone walks into a small "mom and pops" coffee shop and accuse the owner of "ejecting them due to harrasment reasons", that results in a court case, which can bankrupt the whole margin thin enterprise.
You might say, wait how on earth would a random troublemaker get funding to take a cafe to court, and for what benefit? For one its easier for a settlement to be reached regardless of fault that benefits the claimant than a long court process.
Now how could claimants have the resources? Unbelievably it turns out there are free national non profit corporations that will take any claim for free to court for situation mentioned above.
So what happens in the end? The small coffee shops cant survive but the larger corps who can afford the random payouts are fine, the competition seems to go away on its own and the claimants are happy with what amounts to random payouts for little work.
Please look it up it, and correct me if im wrong, I only know this from some little research into the forays of why small coffee shops find it hard to survive in western landscapes and risks, as I wanted to open my own coffee shop!
In summary, as always the road to ruin is paved with good intentions. So the EU trying to help a little guy in a specific context, ends up creating a situation that makes all small coffee shops non profitable.
> I heard in the 50s an american could just startup a business installing septic tanks. But now the same person would need a myriad of regulations to be met, heavy equipment use mandated, all of which raise overhead to a level where its impossible to get off the ground.
You can still do such businesses, but the red tape and other requirements are enourmous: health department and construction applications, soil tests, inspections, manufacturing requirements, and so on. The additional costs and delays are passed on to customers.
It's not just septic tanks, it's all areas of construction and one of the reasons why in many states (like New York and California) it's impossible to make low-cost housing anymore, or (like in Florida) new regulations governing old construction are leading to sky-high reserve requirements and condo fees.
There's also the phenomenon of people just ignoring the laws or bypassing them. For your septic tank example, in Alabama or one of the other southern states states people with low cost prefab houses ("double wides") don't want to pay $10,000 to dig a trench for a septic tank, so they just run sewer hoses deep into the woods or ditches. https://www.epa.gov/septic/surface-discharge-raw-wastewater-...
You’re the one making the claim, so please provide sources for your fantastical scenario. By your logic there should be no small coffee shops across the EU, yet this is verifiably and patently untrue.
You should do your own research and I don’t want to take up space on HN but I’m happy to take a look can you name what exactly you found hard to believe? It’s been known for decades small business can’t survive legal landscape as easily as large corps.
If you are confused by the statement there are no small coffee shops - are you living in Europe? From first hand experience coffee shops survive less than a couple years on any high street , yet there is a Starbucks on every street corner and it’s a well known fact small coffee shops operate on almost non existent margins.
Sure, but you should also understand that “look it up” is the escape words of every inane claim. “The Earth is flat, look it up”; “Reptilians are controlling the world, do your own research”; “Bill Gates is injecting you with mind-control chips, google it”.
You can “do your own research” and “confirm” anything. Which is why the person making the original claim should provide sources, so we can all discuss the same thing and not talk past each other. If your sources are flawed, it’s much easier to reach that conclusion if we’re all looking at the same thing.
> I don’t want to take up space on HN
Don’t worry, a few characters won’t make a difference.
> I’m happy to take a look
Thank you.
> can you name what exactly you found hard to believe?
Certainly. It’s paragraphs 5–8 in your original post. The claim that there are random troublemakers regularly employing free national non-profit corporations in the EU to extort and bankrupt local coffee shops by lying about having been ejected for racial reasons.
And then there is Temu (as a platform). They've done all the necessary EPR/PPWR agreements with various European countries/vendors. It handles all the fees and reporting for Chinese sellers.
"... there are separate registration and recycling schemes for each of the 28+ EU member jurisdictions (and even a few of their provinces). What part of COMMON MARKET was so hard to understand for EU lawmakers ?
Since there is no single registration available, and separate registration would involve mindboggling complexity, bureaucracy and costs, we do not sell to EU end users until the EU gets their act together. Please order from EU based distributors, or as a business customer.
Business customers are expected to meet their obligations by registering in the EU countries they sell in. "
That was already ages ago when I did some sofware for them. 2007 ish if I'm to trust my Linkedin.
Is it actually a bad thing? From Asia I definitely see so much shady business practices from small businesses. Customer protection is non-existent. Keeping small businesses in drive prices down, but also drive wages down. I don’t think this is a compromise that many people would be happy with.
Small businesses result in innovation. There is little innovation from big business whose entire mission becomes profit maximization once sufficiently large enough. The little guys are that ones that come with new ideas and move fast to grow it. This is the entire story of startups in the US, silicon valley and more.
Big business also drives down wages way more than small businesses. When you are one of the few major employers in an industry, there is zero need to pay more while sucking in profit. Sure, maybe you could get an union involved but you are still subservient to the same employer who no longer has to respond to any labor market pressure other than quelling the union once in awhile.
I am from Europe and I think this complaint is misplaced. Europe is currently speeding towards neo-liberalism at lightspeed and shows no sign of slowing down. The beneficiaries are primarily the CEOs and big corporations. The workers are certainly not the ones benefiting from the status quo, especially if you look at the stripping down of consumer protection which is starting to look like completely absent in the continent. And on top of everything you have mass austerity, stripping away any social safety net.
However I do not see favoring smaller entrepreneurs over the status quo as something which will improve matters at all. It feels saying our problem is that we have the wrong capitalists. We just need to swap out our old capitalists, get new ones in, and hand them the exploited wealth, and then everything will be good.
What Europe needs is a focus on workers. Enough with capitalism already.
It is possible to ignore laws if it's too much bother to comply with them... it's hard to imagine the authorities will come after someone for mailing out 10 anti-static bags.
The problem is that even this has a chilling effect on innovation:
1.It will dissuade some people from starting in the first place because it's one more hurdle. Even if in practice people don't comply, the existence of that complexity will dissuade some people.
2.Even if nobody is being prosecuted for mailing 10 anti-static bags, what is the number at which you do comply? And once you do, will you be held accountable for everything that came before?
That's a very American mindset. I've worked across both the US and EU at a variety of companies with customers, partners, etc and it's a clear pattern:
- Americans are usually willing to skirt the rules and figure it out later. This comes with risk but is ideal when you're early stage, low stakes, and you couldn't follow the rules anyway.
- Europeans absolutely want to do it by the book and will be shocked if you suggest otherwise. Being process oriented is great for high stakes industries where lives and safety are on the line but destroys startups, likely slowing or even killing innovation.
There is no floor to the level of "petty" that can happen here: the UK - granted, not the EU - goes after individuals who don't pay their TV license and determine the who by triangulating unlicensed TVs via radio trucks and inspectors looking in your windows.
The TV license is silly but the detector van situation is bogus, at least in the present day; really they just blanket mail demand letters to every address in the database on the assumption that everyone watches TV.
> Europeans absolutely want to do it by the book
Again on HN, I don't think conflating Europe and all Europeans into a uniform culture works. This might be true of Germany but as you get further from Berlin it is .. less so.
(Famous story from the Greek debt crisis of using satellite photos to find swimming pools and therefore people who were probably underpaying income tax, which was at such poor compliance levels the state was struggling)
Depends on what Europe you mean. Europe can be quite different depending on where you are. I wouldn't say northern Europe wants to do it by the book all the time like the Germans.
Quite common to view Europe as all the same, but Europe varies much more than what US does.
I don't really have this experience. A lot of business I have worked with followed the "let's just do it and figure out the risk later" approach. In highly regulated environment it was different, but then looking for ways to squirt around the rules was the game. See for example the CumCum (don't blame me, it was called like that) tax-evasion scheme put in place by french banks.
Perhaps one explanation is personal bankruptcy? At least in Scandinavia/Finland this is an unknown concept. You mess up your business (Ireland has EPR fines upto 500ke) and end up paying company loans for the rest of your life.
I find this hard to discuss among others as it often results in heated discussions, but in my experience, Europeans have a completely different understanding of what is considered "rude" so much that I struggle to work with a vast majority of them.
That's not to say that there aren't extremely nice people all other Europe... there are. But I'm still caught off guard when hearing them say some things nonchalantly that would get them fired in the US.
Not sure if it's a pattern but when I interviewed with an EU company recently, they explicitly asked if I was married and if I had kids. They explained it as they had a "European mindset towards weekends and holidays" and they expected me to NOT be online.
I was fine with the mindset but never expected to get those questions in an interview, as it'd be illegal in the States.
Maybe it's super convenient for you in the moment, but the aggregate effect is pretty bad. If everyone just ignores laws because they're too much hassle and they don't expect to get caught, enforcement becomes incredibly difficult. You end up with loads of laws that technically exist but are only selectively enforced, which is a pretty serious problem.
Yeah, I always ignore them, first in my own country (NL) and after that in EU. Even if they fine (which they don't for small companies/persons), they will not spend money/efforts to cash the fine anyway, especially across borders. I had a few useless fines in the 35 years of my company, never will pay them.
Sounds like a great opportunity for folks to sue you for exactly that. Same with the imprint requirement in Germany. There are people out there looking for small businesses without an imprint to extract some money from them.
As they should. As a customer, I want to be able to hold a business accountable, and the minimum requirement for that is being able to identify the legal person responsible for that business.
Yes, I too want the smallest Twitch streamer to have to put their exact home address publicly on the internet so they have no protection from weirdos and stalkers. If a post box would suffice, sure, I'd be down. But that's explicitly not allowed.
But regardless, kinda OT. I was just trying to make a point that ignoring a law isn't without consequences.
This has its own issues. Big bad actors can now split their activities between more smaller companies to avoid some regulation. I've seen it happening.
Selective enforcement is just tyranny, but what I think they were getting at is a minimum size enshrined in law. I don't think it's a great idea, really highlights how arbitrary this all is and presents a risk of advantaging the worst actors more than real makers, but it's a valid way forward.
Laws like this are a good idea but its too burdensome for small companies so it cripples innovations and small businesses. Only applying it to larger companies let's it apply to only the companies who have the largest impact and also can afford compliance, while not stifling small businesses. Not perfect but I think it's a decent tradeoff.
That would just add tons of extra paperwork and a much larger administrative system to vet all the sizes of companies. IRL they will probably not even be enforcing this widely (like GDPR) but the costs will still be imposed on any business wanting to sell in Europe.
Is there room for a company in the EU to spend some time doing the research as to what packaging is able to be used across all the different countries, then selling affordable packaging that meets those standards across the board? And also publish resources for how to effectively package stuff? A genuine question, I’m not from Europe. It just seems like something that would benefit everyone and help make this less of an issue. Or maybe this is the responsibility of the postal systems themselves? If you’re gonna mandate a certain way of doing things, at least give people the tools to do it the way you want them to.
Yes there are some middlemen , but that’s really shouldn’t be necessary. That becomes just a sort of racket business. The main problem isn’t what packages should be, it’s that businesses must get a license in every single EU member they want to send a package to. That’s just insane, and there is no unified portal. Some countries don’t even yet have a portal.
One additional problem is that this reduces options as a consumer in smaller EU countries. Smaller ships no longer are willing to take on the risk and bureaucracy of selling to smaller markets, meaning only a few, large players remain. Like Amazon, Temu, Aliexpress, or larger local companies.
Europe has been steadily eradicating freedom and entrepreneurial spirit for the past 50 years. They will suffer badly many years later. They are slowly walking to disaster, but nobody cares. Go on, downvote me for telling the obvious truth :)
These blog posts often allude that the EU regulatory bodies are just slightly incompetent or short-sighted and these fragmented national models happen by accident. But unfortunately that's not the case: The EU pretends to be a single-market and almost mantra-like the EU officials keep repeating it. But the fact of the matter is that there is neither a single market nor is the European public ready for one. If there was a true single market (like the US has one) - then this would very quickly lead to massive changes in the labour market. Imagine all the Romanian construction companies suddenly building office buildings in Madrid. Or countless Polish architects suddenly undercutting the much more expensive architects in Milano. Whether they know it or not, Europeans would like to have all the benefits of a single market (mostly more competitive pricing) without any of the downsides (massive labour shifts) - but that option doesn't exist. So what they do is harmonize regulation for a few big corporations, while all the smaller companies (and their employees) still get to keep their national moats.
In most EU countries law, this one is also considered as "solid business", regardless if you are incorporated or not:
If you are running on a level with focus one some revenue, if you are doing it somehow regularly and if you have at least some infrastructure to look like you are a corporate (billing system, customer care or similar), then you may fall under corp rules, even if you are not acting as an entity.
If you are a small maker and looking for the loophole here, this is it: "PPWR excludes an object where it is genuinely an integral part of the product, necessary to contain/support/preserve it throughout its lifetime and intended to remain with it."
De minimis and the previous packaging regulations were used as a tariff bypass by Chinese platforms like PDD and SHEIN, which led to their crackdown over the past 24 months [0][1]
Let me spell out the loophole: Just don't use packaging. Redesign your product so it comes in a sturdy container that makes it integral part of the product itself and completely side steps the obligations here.
Maybe we need to start charging the packaging materials explicitely on the invoice as individual items such as they become part of what the customer has ordered.
The socialist state of the EU is why god invented tax planning and the possibility to open your company abroad.
I've been doing business in the EU a long time, and in order to be successful you need to:
1. Never follow all the rules. Focus on your business and customers, and ignore/pay someone to deal with the rest if it ever becomes reality.
2. Start your company in a low cost, low tax jurisdiction. There are plenty of them in the forgotten corners of the EU, or why not a US LLC.
But I think the EU will implode in a decade or two and return europe to a state of innovation and profitability. The nationalist trend will lock any decision making in the EU, and the EU:s deep state will take care of the rest, enriching itself at the cost of the tax payer. The result... countries will leave or just silently start to ignore the EU rules, and then block any legal moves the EU tries to attempt at the EU level.
that's why it only makes sense so think in broader terms, and a broader level regulatory capture absolutely exists.
the problem is that to solve regulatory capture in the EU parts of governments would have so go to war against corporations on the part of SMBs. but... governments in Europe de facto don't even recognize the right to exist of SMBs, basically _nothin_ of the large swath of government contracts fall to misc small businesses that would be perfectly capable to deliver on them at even 4x the quality standard corrupto-corpos do... probably there's some positive counteexamples in the weapons industry recently since we've realized we really do need quality weaponry at great value "by yesterday morning", but besides that... govs _HATE_ both SMBs and startups-from-unkowns (god forbit bootstrapped...).
FTR. The whole PPWR process started back in 2015, there was a public consultation period in 2020-21, the new rules were entered into force in February 2025 and now the general application happened. So there was plenty of time to prepare, as far as I can see. People that run a business in the EU and now claim to be surprised, they, well, surprise me.
You must be a fellow German. No where else in the world does the objection that bad legislation has been discussed (very negatively I might add, look up the results from consultation period you quoted) for 10 years have any merit on discussion whether that legislation fulfills its purpose.
So what if businesses "had time to prepare"? Its not the governments / especially the EUs job to waste the time of small businesses.
MISTER PROSSER: But Mister Dent the plans have been available in the planning office for the last nine months!
ARTHUR DENT: Yes! I went round to find them yesterday afternoon. You’d hadn’t
exactly gone out of your way to pull much attention to them have you? I mean, like actually telling anybody or anything.
MISTER PROSSER: The plans were on display.
ARTHUR DENT: Ah! And how many members of the public are in the habit of casually dropping around the local planning office of an evening?
MISTER PROSSER: Er – ah!
ARTHUR DENT: It’s not exactly a noted social venue is it? And even if you had popped in on the off chance that some raving bureaucrat wanted to knock your house down, the plans weren’t immediately obvious to the eye were they?
MISTER PROSSER: That depends where you were looking.
ARTHUR DENT: I eventually had to go down to the cellar!
MISTER PROSSER: That’s the display department.
ARTHUR DENT: With a torch!
MISTER PROSSER: The lights, had… probably gone.
ARTHUR DENT: So had the stairs!
MISTER PROSSER: Well you found the notice didn’t you?
ARTHUR DENT: Yes. It was on display in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet, stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying “Beware of the Leopard”.
It also surprises and bewilders me that businesses (usually tech or tech adjacent) apparently expect and have for some time expected the ability to do business internationally completely without friction. Which is less something I think is a good or bad idea, and far more just simply an unrealistic one. If you want to sell in a given set of countries, I would think it a given that you would have to deal with the regulations and business laws in each of those given countries. The fact that you want to sell hacker/DIY products to people in less developed markets is admirable, certainly, but it doesn't change that. It's an unsolved problem precisely because it's kind of a pain in the ass to do compliance work across a large number of them. It's why large companies have entire departments devoted to regulatory compliance.
As far as I'm concerned the only way you could say this is "killing" any business is if the business in question has, as you said, spent the last decade just assuming they could sell things wherever with no oversight.
What an interesting point of view considering the discussed post. One of the main pillars of the EU its is single-market policy, you would very well expect businesses to be built on the premise of frictionless trade within these borders. And im not sure which market exactly you're calling "less developed"?
It's typical eco-suicide: give eurocrats more power and fake work to do, pretend most recycling regulations aren't scams, and practically destroy trade between countries in the union because you need one representative in every single country you want to sell anything in. As if adding a 5 (soon to become 7€) fee (plus tax) for every line of item (not package) outside the union wasn't enough. It is also quite obvious both must've been heavily lobbied by major retail groups through EuroCommerce.
Feedback for this utterly deranged regulation can be seen below, over 5k entries by many businesses in EU:
My father had to give up selling cat houses from one smaller EU country to others because of the new packaging regulations. Hard to believe the EU has not foreseen this being impossible to deal with for micro-businesses. Honestly his friend who is doing Photovoltaics is also now forced to stop shipments to most other EU countries due to this law. I assume we are talking about hundreds of thousands of small businesses.
Sometimes I wonder if the lawmakers in EU are brain dead. The whole point of economic union is that free movement of goods without custom tax and this new rule is practically a custom tax for each country.
Story of European regulations. At some point you have to concede that they are incompetent and unaccountable. What do they care if they depress economic integration and growth in Europe? No one will ever be blamed for diffuse bureaucratic costs that drag down the whole Eurozone.
I even resent people giving them credit for "well, the idea was laudable..". No. Again and again they introduce make-the-world-a-better-place regulations, and whoever opposes these or asks about tradeoffs or whether they are meaningfully useful must be a crazed libertarian or industry lobbyist who wants to poison the people.
I remember how smug Europeans were about the American PATRIOT act. Who could be so stupid to be fooled by such propagandist framing of laws? Well, here in the EU that happens frequently. The commission just has to wrap its degrowth policy in saving-the-world names and off we go. (See also the EU Supply Chain Act, i.e. Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive, aka expensive paperwork for a good conscience)
The article is asking for MORE regulation and MORE integration. As in, dear EU, please do not allow member states to make own rules about this, but make one from the central headquarters.
What is amazing is that this goes so much against the concept of the EU. The EU was founded on the principles of four freedoms, Free movement of goods, Free movement of persons, Freedom to provide services, and Free movement of capital.
The EU even have a SME Test to maker sure small business are not overburdened by regulations.
Also there are thousands of lobbyists fighting for small businesses. Yes, this law will probably eventually be thrown out for small businesses but after how many years is a big question, and how many small businesses have lost there businesses.
And the law was devised by Ripa di Meana, who had been a member of the Italian Communist Party and the green party.
It’s hard to overthrow actual free markets. Small business is too sympathetic.
But if you pass enough well-meaning regulations and strangle all the small businesses with good intentions, it’s much easier to overthrow a crony-capitalist oligopoly of megacorps, which is exactly the end game.
EU member states want all the benefits of integration without giving anything up, especially things that they consider aspects of national sovereignty.
* * *
I'll give you an example.
I'm from Romania. In Romania in 1990 there were no private enterprises, so everything was state owned. There was a HUGE demand for commerce/retail, so small local businesses popped up. They were very basic because everything was brand new and expertise was extremely scarce. No one knew anything about modern supermarkets, supermarket chains, banks, loans, credit lines, basically everything related to modern market economies.
As Romanian headed for EU integration, foreign invested started... investing. In retail that meant that because Romania is fairly populous by EU standards, everyone was tempted by a potentially big and growing pie that was almost void of serious competition.
So we ended up with Lidl (German), Kaufland (German), Metro (German), Carrefour (French), Mega Image (Romanian, bought by Delhaize: Belgian), DM (German), Cora (French), Auchan (French), Profi (Romanian, bought by Delhaize: Belgian), Selgros (Swiss), Penny (bought by REWE: German), etc.
I moved abroad somewhere close to both France and Germany. At a company I worked for, I had both French and German coworkers.
At some point the Germans were talking about Kaufland and I started chatting with them about it. Some French people mentioned Auchan and I replied to that too. After a few more replies about German and French supermarket chains, one of them said: how do you know so much about both French and German supermarket chains?
And I told them:
We're right next to Germany and German supermarkets stop at the border. There is no Aldi in France. Most French people in the neighboring French towns haven't even been in an Aldi.
We're also next to France and French supermarkets stop at the border. There is no Carrefour in Germany. Most German people in the neighboring German towns haven't even been in a Carrefour.
In Romania your big companies bought everything local (or displaced it), there are hardly any locally owned stores so I guess the upside is that I know all your supermarket chains.
* * *
Repeat this for banking, IT, whatever. Europe is super economically segregated even with the EU operating. Each country has all sort of hidden protections for its local businesses. I can't really tell you what they are exactly, but in practice you can feel them. Each country has its own version of X, Y, Z businesses. Small versions of everything, instead of few really big and competitive businesses at a global level.
This even impacts US companies. You can't get a European Netflix subscription. You fly from Romania to France and when you land and connect your tablet to the internet, your Romanian Netflix account switches over to France and they delete Mad Men from your downloaded episodes because Netflix France hasn't licensed Mad Men (old example).
Language, payroll-rules and tax-rules alone can be enough to prevent a business from expanding into a market. Even when there is no foul intent, just different set of rules.
I am from Brazil and it is not unusual for companies to operate only within certain states because of this. Even though Brazil is a single country with a single language and mostly federal rules about things, there is still enough variance of laws from one state to another to cause problems.
Then you hear about Canada which has tariffs between its own provinces, but not to the US. Meaning some products are cheaper across the US border than across a province border. Figuring out how much to pay in taxes alone can be a blocker...
This is not an EU-only problem, any large single market will have friction in its internal divisions. It tends to be worse in the EU because the countries have a lot more sovereignty though (enforcement agencies tend to be local, not federal for example).
> Then you hear about Canada which has tariffs between its own provinces, but not to the US.
Canada doesn't have, and should not have, the level of ambitions the EU should have. We're talking about EU 450 million people (500+ million if the UK rejoins at some point) vs Canada 35 million.
The EU should go toe to toe with the US and China. The EU is utterly dominated by US software companies and by Chinese green tech companies (batteries, solar panels, EVs).
I feel for you, but the points you're making seem to be contradictory. You don't like that European companies bought out Romanian ones, yet at the same time you don't like that Europe has small versions of everything for each country instead of big mega-corps like Carrefour and Aldi? Or perhaps you're OK with mega-corps, and just want some of them to be Romanian?
> I feel for you, but the points you're making seem to be contradictory.
No, that is actually one of the points, I'm glad someone wanted it.
I, too, want to have my cake and eat it, too. This is a contradiction that can't easily be resolved.
I'd want Romanian sovereignty AND the convenience of big companies with lots of economic power. I guess, to your direct comment, yeah, I'd be happy enough with a few European "champions" out of hundreds being Romanian.
Personally, I lean more towards EU federalism so this cognitive dissonance is probably 30-70 towards big companies, because I think otherwise the EU will be crushed by outsiders.
I think this is true for a lot of Balkan countries that joined EU. I was in Croatia recently and was super surprised to see Lidl and DM stores there. Even more surprised to see the prices of items in those stores were almost same as in Berlin
I'm not saying that the boundary is a 20km high wall of fire nothing can go through.
I'm saying that:
1. the direction is mostly big countries -> smaller countries, and very rarely big countries -> other big countries or even rarer, smaller countries -> big countries.
2. 20+ years after the EU has started, the level of high level integration is still pitiful.
If I go into the Carrefour in Sallanches (FR) then I will buy a completely different set of products to those that I would buy in the Carrefour in Aosta (IT), the two are 80km apart.
Yes, that’s exactly what we want. The single market should be finalized. And we should move towards having a European equivalent of Delaware corps, and unified systems.
Basically, yes. The EU needs a lot more power to force through an actual single market. Especially a single digital market. That's why the US is crushing EU tech companies. Licensing (especially content), patents, totally different tax systems, addressing all of the EU as a small company is basically impossible.
My experience as a software engineer in EU was horrible. I wish I could say it was something out of a horror movie, but it would be too frustrating to watch.
I joined a major cryptocurrency project, saw its market cap briefly increase to $4 billion. I worked on it like crazy for 2 years whilst, unbeknownst to me, the founders began to sabotage their own project and ensure that it would slip out of the CMC rankings; I believe this was done to lower their public profile (and reduce scrutiny). But it all happened under the watchful, approving eyes of EU regulators. I also witnessed other crypto projects which I knew to be scams receive funding from the EU commission, then the same founders raised money again after running the previous project into the ground with nothing to show. Also, the founders of the project I joined defamed me and my team with outright lies to sabotage my spin-off project when we worked to improve the tech independently.
Now I'm back in my home country, literally working for a bank, the antithesis of crypto, even though I find it immoral.
It's a human fallacy to think that the one who opposes evil is good. In reality, any entity with any kind of power is almost certainly evil; always has been and probably always will be.
This sort of BS - which is why the UK left the EU by the way, happens on EVERYTHING. By nature, the EU is an extra layer of bureaucracy which can only exist by: 1.hiring 2. producing regulations to justify its existence.
I have quietly seen it dismantle anything that worked in European countries, all while being called a fascist or far-right extremist for doing so. Well, here is the result.
If you try to sell to China, Australia, UUSS and Colombia and Russia for example, you also need to comply with the regulations of each of those countries (and pay Tarifs in some).
To ease the collaboration between humans the European Union was created. But the European Union is not a country. Is the earth only collection of countries that agree to collaborate together to levels no other countries have in the world History.
It's success is so big, that people expects to act as an independent country, and complain when discovering Europe is indeed several countries. WTF!
It's not the first. It's not even the first in Europe: the first was the UK, Belgium and Switzerland came after. There are and have been others around the world throughout history too: the CSA, the first USA, the USSR, the UAE, and the Arab League (just to name a few).
Most systems like the EU don't work well after a certain size. I don't know if we can say whether the EU has reached the point where it's unworkable yet.
The thing with the EU is that, worryingly, the less it works, the bigger it becomes (new memberstates, soon, Albania...) and the more power it takes on. This continent is heading for a catastrophic outcome and one must be blind to not see it.
The idea isn't the issue, the implementation is. The EU did the same with VAT previously, where you'd have to register separate businesses in different countries, once you got large enough (which wasn't very large). Now there's a central system to keep track of what goes where and you can sell internally in the EU with no issues.
Something similar needs to happen here, where business report and pay to a central EU system, that then transfers the funds to each country. The problem is that the EU is smart enough to see the environmental problem, but forgets to think about ramifications and doesn't provide the right tools.
I was commenting on the title, the concept is sound yes, but doesn't call the initial idea into question, these measures are necessary to ensure a sustainable civilisation at this point, should be clear to every body really...
Im in the states right now, ive been wanting to leave the US before the empire collapses but i definitely dont want to go to Europe. Even if the economy was functional i dont want to be run over or stabbed or have my future children stabbed, run over or raped by Muslims. So that rules out Europe except maybe turkey which sounds cool culturally but their economy is even worse than Europe. Honestpy id like to go build a cabin homestead in the wilderness where i dont have to deal with burro rats but there isnt any wilderness left. So idk maybe ill go buy an abandoned home in rural japan and live my best homesteading solarpunk life.
From the title alone, I'd expect a typical think-piece from someone (possibly outside the EU) about overregulation, "the solution is no regulation at all", etc. Instead, it's a solid critique of the recent packaging/packaging waste regulation debacle, from a constructive angle. The first section hits the nail on the head: "a good idea, a terrible implementation".
Unfortunately, this feels like a frequent refrain when it comes to the EU. And even more unfortunately, even just this ever-so-slightly-more-nuanced take seems to frequently be drowned out by the two extremes -- "all regulation is bad and we need pure unadulterated free market capitalism" or "all capitalism is bad and we need pure unadulterated regulation" -- which are by far the two loudest voices in the room.
The OP has some good suggestions about this particular regulation (which should definitely be considered! Fix things are broken; don't just throw the baby out with the bathwater!), but I'd personally be interested to see things that try to understand and treat the root cause instead of yet another symptomatic regulation. Maybe walking further down the path towards federalization? Iunno, but if I had a dime for every time I've thought "good idea, bad execution" as an EU resident... I'd have a lot of dimes.
I don't know if this EU regulation will work or not (most likely not), but I can share how it is done in China (where package volume is orders of magnitude higher).
China identifies "choke points" most packages pass: large platforms and logistics companies. Yes, Chinese e-commerce is more centralized on Alibaba/JD/PDD etc, but there are actually much more logistics companies in China than in EU.
They also do not introduce these regulations "from tomorrow" (well, sometimes they do, but it's a different topic). E.g. the non-degradable plastic regulation was issued in 2020 to come in effect in 2025. This gives time to prepare and implement (unlike EU border controls mess...)
So now if something is shipped in non-degradable plastic, the logistics company is fined along with the sender. This is much more scalable and easy to implement. Logistics companies might rise their prices a bit in light of expanded work scope, but it would be peanuts compared to every individual seller.
Could EU just ask DHL/Hermes/whatever to charge an additional €1 "for recycling"? Yes, but...
But of course EU is fundamentally different in a way that the politicians need to please the electorate, so nothing is really planned ahead.
Per downthread, this whole crisis arises because of Chinese companies shipping to Europe. The EU Directives are definitely visible in advance, none of this is dropped on people.
One of the biggest problems that I have in the EU is that it's almost federated. EU will pass laws, countries will adopt those laws, but you end up with 20-24 different versions of those laws. With some countries being strict or lenient about the law that everyone agreed to. And a lot it is written from the perspective that large corporations are the only ones who do business throughout the EU. It's completely missed that small entrepreneurs may also want to take part. Modern technology makes it feasible, but old ideas just drags it down.
> It's completely missed that small entrepreneurs may also want to take part
This is by design. It’s the same all over the world. The wealthy are not going to just let you compete
Dunno about that. I live in the US. I can start a small business today and the only thing I'd have to do differently is file an additional form on my taxes next year. Yes, that's a simplification that doesn't apply to every situation, but it is still completely accurate.
Laws are voted by politicians. Do you mean that most EU politicians are puppets of EU corporations?
Its not as bad as in the US I think, but yeah, most of the laws are actually (literally) written by corporations. I wouldn't call them puppets, but EU corps have an outsized influence on the outcome of the process.
That might be one reason they refuse to be open about their financial supports in their various organizations yes. it is very well known unfortunately..
It's usually US corpos that are lobbying all over the EU, it's unlikely that the EU automakers would have lobbied for their destruction
That is the issue across the entire world. Large corporations can easily bear the cost of regulatory laws, environmental requirements, rules, and regulations. They can also go to great lengths to promote an environment that is almost nightmarish for a smaller company or entrepreneur trying to enter the game.
They create barrier after barrier through their lobbying efforts. A good example is having to pay $50,000 for an inspector to come and determine whether your automatic door opens and closes properly, or to verify that your facility does not have a chimney. A friend of mine who owns a business in Niagara Falls, Canada, had to pay around $10,000 for a wind assessment to determine where chimney exhaust would go once released. He didn’t even have a chimney.
Many of these environmental laws are intentionally created and applied to small businesses as well, even when the cost of meeting the requirements is greater than what the business could realistically generate in sales.
The result is that large corporations can absorb these costs, while small businesses and entrepreneurs are often priced out before they even have a chance to compete.
Oh no. It's the mysterious "they"!
The US is wealthier, has more billionaires and has fewer of these barriers for small entrepreneurs. So no, this is not the monocausal explanation that applies equally everywhere.
(YES, the US has regulatory capture, YES the wealthy attempt to use it, YES we should try to eliminate it here too, but it remains true that it is easier to run a small business in the US, while having more billionaires. There are other explanations to the differential here).
Agreed, europe has a culture of "stability" first. The fear of disruption and chaos is larger after two WW and it outsourced the risks of disruption to the US. Basically, use the us as a test-mouse for new ideas and innovations, then when proven safe introduce them and ride those coat-tails to infinity.
> use the us as a test-mouse for new ideas and innovations, then when proven safe introduce them and ride those coat-tails to infinity
What actually happened, and continues to happen, is that Europe and the EU became entirely dependent on US tech and other foreign industry. It wasn't just a matter of "see what works and then copy it domestically". It oursourced basically everything.
>One of the biggest problems that I have in the EU is that it's almost federated
I would argue it's even worse, because with properly designed federated system you get checks and balances to some extent.
There are parts of EU that have almost zero oversight.
Can you elaborate more? When you say "checks and balances" do you mean explicit legal mechanisms or implicit mechanisms like Tiebout-style foot voting? For the latter areas with "almost zero oversight" seem advantages. Also, can you give an example of these low-oversight places and how it manifests? I'm thankful even for some pointers in what to search for.
One example is the effective prohibition on spraying pesticides by air, including drone. Drones allow lower pesticide use than current, legal practices
Yeah, this in between state is really frustrating. I hope we will see a push towards more federalization, but that’s unlikely
Living in Europe, I find that with LLMs, it is possible to navigate the federal & law jungle. However, LLMs don't protect you from institutional envy or the resistance of people trying to block progress simply because it is perceived as 'too modern' or disruptive. I find this the hardest challenge. And I have the feeling during times of general decline, like these, it gets worse.
And it's like there's a uno card that's "increase taxes for freelancers". And they sure like to use it.
I personally hate the "reenact" the old- good times to recreate the prosperity cargo cults. What created those prosperous times, where "characters" that would just do things, and ask for forgiveness by the law later. And that was actually priced into the justice system, by giving the judges a range to verdict from. In a way, the rule of law was much less strict in the 50s and 60s and way more informal.
Even medium-sized corporations are not willing to send products across borders to consumers (say, outside Germany), further destroying the single market.
I think this is a big factor. While I would prefer a more federated US, the US as is is a great market to start in. It's 350M fairly wealthy people under mostly the same tech restrictions. That's a great place to grow.
It's important to remember that even without the fact that big companies basically write the regulations, regulations naturally tend to being effectively regressive wrt company stage/size. Every new one is a hurdle that a bigger company has more resources to overcome.
Ah yes, let’s give the EU and its undemocratic system in which policy formation is heavily filtered through a relatively narrow professional political class, ordinary voters have weak or almost no direct control over major policy choices, dissent encounters administrative/economic punishment, and central institutions possess and use powerful financial means to discipline peripheral governments should have even more centralised power?
And no, just because voting for MEPs is bolted on there as a pressure valve doesn’t suddenly make it all okay when most of the real decisions happen behind closed doors and adherence to the passed laws, no matter how damaging is ensured through financial coercion.
Not a single person voted or agreed to this law, and yet here we are.
> old ideas just drags it down.
Are these old ideas? The broad regulatory apparatus in the EU appears very modern and intentional.
> It's completely missed that small entrepreneurs may also want to take part
There's truth to this but it's an overstatement as it stands. For example, GDPR rules are less strict for small companies.
Because if the EU tried to force countries into single compliance, there would no end of "EU is trampling national interests" and similar screaming.
It's an unwinnable situation. Again, EU-level politics keep assuming everyone (corporations and states) are adults. Unfortunately, everyone are just a bunch of screaming, scheming petulant children.
>Again, EU-level politics keep assuming everyone (corporations and states) are adults. Unfortunately, everyone are just a bunch of screaming, scheming petulant children.
One in four MEPs are involved in scandals [0] ranging from harassment to organized crime and corruption. The European Parliament also remains a free out-of-jail card through abuse of parliamentary immunity, and they do abuse it [1]. EU politics is a circus.
0. https://archive.is/neTOG
1. https://www.politico.eu/article/eu-parliament-accused-overre...
One of the best example is Ursula Von der Leyen. She was sent from Berlin to EU by Angela Merkle because when she was the defence minister of Germany under Merkle’s government there was a huge scandal of offering contracts (https://www.euractiv.com/news/von-der-leyen-admits-mistakes-...)
She was sent to EU so she can do less harm in the future, but the irony is that she became the head of EU.
MEPs in many countries do not actually have immunity.
However, the bigger issue is that european parliament is treated in many countries as essentially dumping ground between national elections.
> there would no end of "EU is trampling national interests" and similar screaming
To just call this "screaming" is to completely dismiss a real and huge problem. The EU is the idea that countries should fuse into economic areas, but the countries are also individual still. Of course there's a lot of friction.
For example, because Greece was in the Euro, they couldn't inflate their currency to compensate for the fact that they gradually outsourced more and more work to Germany, until they had nothing left and hit a financial crisis because their government couldn't borrow more money. That's not mindless screaming.
So you've described Greece as a bunch of scheming petulant children.
"Our plan to be inaccountable didn't work, so we'll try a different scheme instead".
And yes, it's a huge problem. That's why I called the situation unwinnable.
They could neither fix the problem with the policy tools a country with its own currency would have, nor did they have the automatic support from a central budget a region or state of a country would have.
No, the Greeks were cool and calculating, turning an inflating fake fiat currency into hard assets like real estate, while not working or producing anything.
The introduction of the Euro was the start signal for each country to try to inflate as much as they can for their own benefit - since the first inflator gets the best value out of the currency. Idiots are left holding paper currency worth less and less each day. Having to work harder and harder in a never ending spiral.
Including EC, and MEP themselves.
The bigger issue in OP's case is they are dependent on de minimis.
The de minimis crackdown [0] and EPR [1] are both being rolled out because Chinese conglomerates like PDD and SHEIN took undue advantage of that while ignoring European regulators on issues such as dark patterns [2], breaching the Digital Services Act [3], and gacha/engagement mechanisms [4].
Seems European HNers are fine with European regulations until it hurts their niche interests.
[0] - https://www.ft.com/content/102e18d7-d06b-4405-a347-97bb3c373...
[1] - https://www.vereev.com/news/europe-faces-trade-conflict-is-e...
[2] - https://www.ft.com/content/ef72f186-2a02-4c51-927d-2c01ddece...
[3] - https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/eu-says-temu-breach-r...
[4] - https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/eu-probes-shein-over-...
The issue is that those marketplaces got too mainstream, and the average consumer is too stupid.
10-15 years ago if you were importing stuff from China you'd know that the trade off for cheaper prices is that you'd lose your consumer laws protection and you'd be on your own. If you wanted those, then you'd go to your local retailer and pay extra.
A couple of things to note:
1. The EU commission wanted a single central registry
2. It was the member states, via the Council of Ministers, that torpedoed this.
3. The EU now advises its member states to not implement/enforce this
4. Until the correction, which is on its way, can be fully enacted.
So the same old same old: member states do shitty stuff and blame the EU.
This echos the FCC rules in the US, which I believe are gotten around by not complying.
Even if you are not making an intentional radiator, and/or are using datasheet-specified layouts or modules, you still must comply, which makes these businesses non-viable if complying.
I believe Adafruit gets around certifying every device by declaring themselves a cellphone company and being on good terms with regulators. This isn't viable for the sort of businesses and people described by this article.
I'm not sure about the Ali/Amazon products. I'm assuming they just are not complying.
FCC allows suppliers to self-declare conformance with EMI/EMC rules. You’re obviously taking a risk selling stuff if you haven’t had it properly tested so don’t really know if it passes but it’s unlikely to really be an issue for a small maker selling low quantities, especially if any intentional radiators (Bluetooth, WiFi etc.) are already-certified modules.
Your device tends to need to be causing problems, that the FCC then go and track down, and then come back to you. That is (hopefully, depending on the kind of device) extremely unlikely.
As for Ali stuff, probably lots of it is not tested but still comes with a FCC label - but if it is shipped from overseas, who is going to take responsibility for it? Nobody… So there is nothing they can do except fine the person who bought it if it’s really causing problems (and usually I doubt they’d even do that if the user wasn’t intentionally doing something they shouldn’t have been, they are just told to stop and maybe the device would be seized/ destroyed)
Huh. I thought that is actually the EU that allows self declared conformance, rather than the FCC. But looking into this it seems both do?
I recall trying to build some hardware in 2020 and getting discouraged because of the CE/FCC silliness. Even though I could self declare for the EU it seemed like a big risk to do so.
Adafruit sells boards as subassemblies, which don't need individual certification.
https://emcfastpass.com/fcc-rules-kits-subassemblies/
Putting that board into an enclosure and then selling it now makes you the manufacturer, and you must certify that new product.
They'll get adequate feedback in the next elections If this doesn't get stopped, otherwise every business and their peers will likely vote for EU critic parties which means far left or far right.
It appears there is space for "packaging and distribution in EU as a service" business model.
Creators, producers and manufacturers in many fields do not distribute or sell directly to consumers (musicians can't directly upload to Spotify and Apple Music; film producers don't upload to Netflix, writers don't print their books).
A small-time maker may pay a fee to the established distributor of the physical products, who takes care of compliance, and uses their packaging and distribution channels.
PPWR is an EU catastrophe.
Firstly for the reasons outlined in the article: it essentially makes being a micro/small business in the EU impossible, if your market is other EU countries.
Secondly because it validates insidious populist views that the EU institution is useless and incompetent at a fundamental level.
The legislation is so ABSURDIST that the EU have actually asked companies to ignore the law that they just implemented. I can assure you it is difficult to ignore a law that comes with a €200000 fine for non-compliance.
Gosh I hate it when politicians are useless and incompetent, since it just validates the false populist propaganda that politicians can be useless and incompetent, which is clearly not true (even in cases when politicians actually are useless and incompetent, which they of course cannot be, since that is evil propaganda).
This is a great read and I can extend this argument really to any small business. Tax filing, VAT, bookkeeping, privacy, consumer, workplace and sectoral requirements frequently impose a disproportionately large cost on microbusinesses. EU is more and more split along the enterprise and VC backed line, and everyone in between has disproportionate costs. My barber in Stockholm often complains about this - the amount of money they would need to earn to overcome all these costs is staggering. So they often do lots of gigs on the side.
UK has similar rules but, as with pretty much all other similar regulations, there are de minimis carve-outs:
≤ £1m turnover: no packaging EPR obligation, regardless of packaging volume.
£1m turnover + >25 tonnes of packaging: small producer obligations.
£2m turnover + >50 tonnes: large producer obligations.
The EU has been removing de minimis thresholds because 'China' can easily 'exploit' them. They're kind of right, but it's obviously an insanely stupid situation when someone selling something as a hobby, or just starting up on their own gets dragged into this.
The UK tends to be much more sensible than the EU and the main EU countries (France, Germany, Italy).
I agree, though it's not a very difficult challenge. There's still some nonsense here too like for example the TV License
This is actively preventing me from sending packages to other countries as a maker. No matter how small the risk is, I don't want to risk a 5000 euro fine for sending a small amount of packages to other EU countries.
Really sorry you’re experiencing this, that whole regulation rollout is a complete mess. The leadership should be sacked for such an incompetent regulation, it’s insane how much troubles they are creating for small businesses.
Another small business owner reported their experience in this Reddit thread, looks really bad: https://www.reddit.com/r/europe/comments/1vrz88a/comment/p4i...
I’m as pro-EU as one can get but that’s a mistake we should solve asap
Some people did the same when VATMOSS was introduced.
Do you not cross the street given the risk of being hit by a bus?
Fortunately, buses are not invisible and you can look for a bus before crossing a street to gauge and control your risk of being struck by one.
... but you can still fail to notice one, and you can gauge and to some degree control your risk of being fined.
In fact, if you sell 10 hobby prototype boards to other hobbyists, you probably have a higher risk of getting hit by a bus on the way to the post office than you do of being fined.
Umm akchully, not crossing a highway to avoid being hit is a perfectly sane course of action.
except he said "street" not "highway"
The complaint is totally understandable, BUT the examples do not make sense. Arduino did not start as some dude selling less than 10 boards a year, but as an educational tool, which THEN ramped up to 100s of boards produced every day.
If your perspective is "I may sell 10 boards this year, maybe", your target is some local/national maker-faire, not a EU marketplace.
I think makers with such limited productions will just fly under the radar (if you sell so little, it's likely you probably won't need to incorporate or declare taxes in a lot of EU countries). If they sell 100s of products across EU, they probably have at least one over-worked accountant taking care of existing compliance stuff.
As someone living in the tiny country of Estonia with just about 1.2 million residents, this worries me. No one but the biggest online shops in the EU will bother with the paperwork for such a small market. I'm expecting my import options to drop sharply in the coming years because of this.
I believe the view layed out in the article is wrong. The German Wikipedia has an article about the PPWR. One Paragraph is saying: "The distributor must verify that the manufacturer and, where applicable, the importer have fulfilled their requirements, that all necessary markings are affixed to the packaging, and that the manufacturer is registered in the producer register pursuant to Article 44." That does not sound like you are responsible for registering yourself but you need to purchase your packaging from registered vendors and you need to verify that. Sound reasonable to me.
I've seen some conflicting claims on this law and to me it sounded like it affects mostly producers of packaging, but everyone else seems to be complaining about it too. Did everyone actually read the law or is this a game of telephone?
> Did everyone actually read the law or is this a game of telephone
It's HN - everyone did the latter.
The terminology is confusing. Under the PPWR, a “producer” is not necessarily someone who manufactures packaging. The regulation also covers businesses selling packaging or packaged products directly to end users in another Member State. So a maker shipping a board in an envelope can indeed be the packaging producer for EPR purposes.
as the whole world crushes small entities one has to wonder whether the EU would be the saviour or not. Apparently not. With its rules, they merely help crush small business as per usual.
I heard in the 50s an american could just startup a business installing septic tanks. But now the same person would need a myriad of regulations to be met, heavy equipment use mandated, all of which raise overhead to a level where its impossible to get off the ground.
I always felt the EU were the "good guys", IE not allowing corps to steam roll everyone, what with their rules fining poor behvaiour such as privacy violations, chargers being non standard etc.
However the same problem exists in weird ways you wouldnt even imagine.
For example if someone walks into a small "mom and pops" coffee shop and accuse the owner of "ejecting them due to harrasment reasons", that results in a court case, which can bankrupt the whole margin thin enterprise.
You might say, wait how on earth would a random troublemaker get funding to take a cafe to court, and for what benefit? For one its easier for a settlement to be reached regardless of fault that benefits the claimant than a long court process.
Now how could claimants have the resources? Unbelievably it turns out there are free national non profit corporations that will take any claim for free to court for situation mentioned above.
So what happens in the end? The small coffee shops cant survive but the larger corps who can afford the random payouts are fine, the competition seems to go away on its own and the claimants are happy with what amounts to random payouts for little work.
Please look it up it, and correct me if im wrong, I only know this from some little research into the forays of why small coffee shops find it hard to survive in western landscapes and risks, as I wanted to open my own coffee shop!
In summary, as always the road to ruin is paved with good intentions. So the EU trying to help a little guy in a specific context, ends up creating a situation that makes all small coffee shops non profitable.
I have no solutions.
> I heard in the 50s an american could just startup a business installing septic tanks. But now the same person would need a myriad of regulations to be met, heavy equipment use mandated, all of which raise overhead to a level where its impossible to get off the ground.
You can still do such businesses, but the red tape and other requirements are enourmous: health department and construction applications, soil tests, inspections, manufacturing requirements, and so on. The additional costs and delays are passed on to customers.
It's not just septic tanks, it's all areas of construction and one of the reasons why in many states (like New York and California) it's impossible to make low-cost housing anymore, or (like in Florida) new regulations governing old construction are leading to sky-high reserve requirements and condo fees.
There's also the phenomenon of people just ignoring the laws or bypassing them. For your septic tank example, in Alabama or one of the other southern states states people with low cost prefab houses ("double wides") don't want to pay $10,000 to dig a trench for a septic tank, so they just run sewer hoses deep into the woods or ditches. https://www.epa.gov/septic/surface-discharge-raw-wastewater-...
> Please look it up
You’re the one making the claim, so please provide sources for your fantastical scenario. By your logic there should be no small coffee shops across the EU, yet this is verifiably and patently untrue.
You should do your own research and I don’t want to take up space on HN but I’m happy to take a look can you name what exactly you found hard to believe? It’s been known for decades small business can’t survive legal landscape as easily as large corps.
If you are confused by the statement there are no small coffee shops - are you living in Europe? From first hand experience coffee shops survive less than a couple years on any high street , yet there is a Starbucks on every street corner and it’s a well known fact small coffee shops operate on almost non existent margins.
uhh no, if you're the one making an argument the burden is on you to provide actual sources and not say "trust me bro, look it up."
You're trying to argue how school children argue, aim a little higher if you want to convince people that know how to read.
> You should do your own research
Sure, but you should also understand that “look it up” is the escape words of every inane claim. “The Earth is flat, look it up”; “Reptilians are controlling the world, do your own research”; “Bill Gates is injecting you with mind-control chips, google it”.
You can “do your own research” and “confirm” anything. Which is why the person making the original claim should provide sources, so we can all discuss the same thing and not talk past each other. If your sources are flawed, it’s much easier to reach that conclusion if we’re all looking at the same thing.
> I don’t want to take up space on HN
Don’t worry, a few characters won’t make a difference.
> I’m happy to take a look
Thank you.
> can you name what exactly you found hard to believe?
Certainly. It’s paragraphs 5–8 in your original post. The claim that there are random troublemakers regularly employing free national non-profit corporations in the EU to extort and bankrupt local coffee shops by lying about having been ejected for racial reasons.
And then there is Temu (as a platform). They've done all the necessary EPR/PPWR agreements with various European countries/vendors. It handles all the fees and reporting for Chinese sellers.
This is not new though. "We do not sell to EU end users."
https://pcengines.ch/recycle.htm
"... there are separate registration and recycling schemes for each of the 28+ EU member jurisdictions (and even a few of their provinces). What part of COMMON MARKET was so hard to understand for EU lawmakers ?
Since there is no single registration available, and separate registration would involve mindboggling complexity, bureaucracy and costs, we do not sell to EU end users until the EU gets their act together. Please order from EU based distributors, or as a business customer.
Business customers are expected to meet their obligations by registering in the EU countries they sell in. "
That was already ages ago when I did some sofware for them. 2007 ish if I'm to trust my Linkedin.
Is it actually a bad thing? From Asia I definitely see so much shady business practices from small businesses. Customer protection is non-existent. Keeping small businesses in drive prices down, but also drive wages down. I don’t think this is a compromise that many people would be happy with.
Small businesses result in innovation. There is little innovation from big business whose entire mission becomes profit maximization once sufficiently large enough. The little guys are that ones that come with new ideas and move fast to grow it. This is the entire story of startups in the US, silicon valley and more.
Big business also drives down wages way more than small businesses. When you are one of the few major employers in an industry, there is zero need to pay more while sucking in profit. Sure, maybe you could get an union involved but you are still subservient to the same employer who no longer has to respond to any labor market pressure other than quelling the union once in awhile.
I am from Europe and I think this complaint is misplaced. Europe is currently speeding towards neo-liberalism at lightspeed and shows no sign of slowing down. The beneficiaries are primarily the CEOs and big corporations. The workers are certainly not the ones benefiting from the status quo, especially if you look at the stripping down of consumer protection which is starting to look like completely absent in the continent. And on top of everything you have mass austerity, stripping away any social safety net.
However I do not see favoring smaller entrepreneurs over the status quo as something which will improve matters at all. It feels saying our problem is that we have the wrong capitalists. We just need to swap out our old capitalists, get new ones in, and hand them the exploited wealth, and then everything will be good.
What Europe needs is a focus on workers. Enough with capitalism already.
I imagine what will happen in practice is that the makers will simply ignore the law and hope not to get prosecuted or audited?
Odd that there not already is a minimum threshold in place.
This would even apply when selling a few electronic knik knaks on ebay?
It is possible to ignore laws if it's too much bother to comply with them... it's hard to imagine the authorities will come after someone for mailing out 10 anti-static bags.
The problem is that even this has a chilling effect on innovation:
1.It will dissuade some people from starting in the first place because it's one more hurdle. Even if in practice people don't comply, the existence of that complexity will dissuade some people.
2.Even if nobody is being prosecuted for mailing 10 anti-static bags, what is the number at which you do comply? And once you do, will you be held accountable for everything that came before?
That's a very American mindset. I've worked across both the US and EU at a variety of companies with customers, partners, etc and it's a clear pattern:
- Americans are usually willing to skirt the rules and figure it out later. This comes with risk but is ideal when you're early stage, low stakes, and you couldn't follow the rules anyway.
- Europeans absolutely want to do it by the book and will be shocked if you suggest otherwise. Being process oriented is great for high stakes industries where lives and safety are on the line but destroys startups, likely slowing or even killing innovation.
There is no floor to the level of "petty" that can happen here: the UK - granted, not the EU - goes after individuals who don't pay their TV license and determine the who by triangulating unlicensed TVs via radio trucks and inspectors looking in your windows.
The TV license is silly but the detector van situation is bogus, at least in the present day; really they just blanket mail demand letters to every address in the database on the assumption that everyone watches TV.
> Europeans absolutely want to do it by the book
Again on HN, I don't think conflating Europe and all Europeans into a uniform culture works. This might be true of Germany but as you get further from Berlin it is .. less so.
(Famous story from the Greek debt crisis of using satellite photos to find swimming pools and therefore people who were probably underpaying income tax, which was at such poor compliance levels the state was struggling)
Depends on what Europe you mean. Europe can be quite different depending on where you are. I wouldn't say northern Europe wants to do it by the book all the time like the Germans.
Quite common to view Europe as all the same, but Europe varies much more than what US does.
I don't really have this experience. A lot of business I have worked with followed the "let's just do it and figure out the risk later" approach. In highly regulated environment it was different, but then looking for ways to squirt around the rules was the game. See for example the CumCum (don't blame me, it was called like that) tax-evasion scheme put in place by french banks.
Perhaps one explanation is personal bankruptcy? At least in Scandinavia/Finland this is an unknown concept. You mess up your business (Ireland has EPR fines upto 500ke) and end up paying company loans for the rest of your life.
Do they not have LLCs?
Of course, but when getting bank loan(for the llc) to get started you have to give personal collateral.
Do regular tv’s transmit?
The old CRTs do, yes. Not so much with LCDs.
But unfortunately, I may be wrong and bought into an urban legend/bit of propoganda:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Television_licensing_in_the_Un...
I find this hard to discuss among others as it often results in heated discussions, but in my experience, Europeans have a completely different understanding of what is considered "rude" so much that I struggle to work with a vast majority of them.
That's not to say that there aren't extremely nice people all other Europe... there are. But I'm still caught off guard when hearing them say some things nonchalantly that would get them fired in the US.
> But I'm still caught off guard when hearing them say some things nonchalantly that would get them fired in the US.
I'm intruiged, can you give an example?
Not sure if it's a pattern but when I interviewed with an EU company recently, they explicitly asked if I was married and if I had kids. They explained it as they had a "European mindset towards weekends and holidays" and they expected me to NOT be online.
I was fine with the mindset but never expected to get those questions in an interview, as it'd be illegal in the States.
wtf are u talking about? some examples would be in order...
Likely not, but would you want the extra risk and the stress involved, that maybe one day you will find a expensive letter in your box?
It depends on how expensive that letter is.
Maybe it's super convenient for you in the moment, but the aggregate effect is pretty bad. If everyone just ignores laws because they're too much hassle and they don't expect to get caught, enforcement becomes incredibly difficult. You end up with loads of laws that technically exist but are only selectively enforced, which is a pretty serious problem.
How would you then have backpressure against bad laws?
Great way for larger companies to knock you their smaller competitors by hiring a firm to vet they follow the rules
Yeah, I always ignore them, first in my own country (NL) and after that in EU. Even if they fine (which they don't for small companies/persons), they will not spend money/efforts to cash the fine anyway, especially across borders. I had a few useless fines in the 35 years of my company, never will pay them.
You risk that someone wants to make an example of you. You might run for mayor and your past is dig up and exaggerated
Don't hold your breath.
Sounds like a great opportunity for folks to sue you for exactly that. Same with the imprint requirement in Germany. There are people out there looking for small businesses without an imprint to extract some money from them.
As they should. As a customer, I want to be able to hold a business accountable, and the minimum requirement for that is being able to identify the legal person responsible for that business.
Yes, I too want the smallest Twitch streamer to have to put their exact home address publicly on the internet so they have no protection from weirdos and stalkers. If a post box would suffice, sure, I'd be down. But that's explicitly not allowed.
But regardless, kinda OT. I was just trying to make a point that ignoring a law isn't without consequences.
Yeah I'm betting on that as well
In the end, it's mail being sent.
Laws like this really need to only be enforced for companies of certain sizes.
This has its own issues. Big bad actors can now split their activities between more smaller companies to avoid some regulation. I've seen it happening.
That's the tradeoff for allowing smaller companies flexibility to thrive without being swamped in regulations and fees.
that's fair game though. Either way they waste money on administrative overhead, which seems to be the goal of this whole procedure
Selective enforcement is a tyranny generator.
How about the law doesn’t exist if it doesn’t actually make sense?
The law makes sense, the details where things don't make sense
Selective enforcement is just tyranny, but what I think they were getting at is a minimum size enshrined in law. I don't think it's a great idea, really highlights how arbitrary this all is and presents a risk of advantaging the worst actors more than real makers, but it's a valid way forward.
Laws like this are a good idea but its too burdensome for small companies so it cripples innovations and small businesses. Only applying it to larger companies let's it apply to only the companies who have the largest impact and also can afford compliance, while not stifling small businesses. Not perfect but I think it's a decent tradeoff.
That would just add tons of extra paperwork and a much larger administrative system to vet all the sizes of companies. IRL they will probably not even be enforcing this widely (like GDPR) but the costs will still be imposed on any business wanting to sell in Europe.
Is there room for a company in the EU to spend some time doing the research as to what packaging is able to be used across all the different countries, then selling affordable packaging that meets those standards across the board? And also publish resources for how to effectively package stuff? A genuine question, I’m not from Europe. It just seems like something that would benefit everyone and help make this less of an issue. Or maybe this is the responsibility of the postal systems themselves? If you’re gonna mandate a certain way of doing things, at least give people the tools to do it the way you want them to.
Yes there are some middlemen , but that’s really shouldn’t be necessary. That becomes just a sort of racket business. The main problem isn’t what packages should be, it’s that businesses must get a license in every single EU member they want to send a package to. That’s just insane, and there is no unified portal. Some countries don’t even yet have a portal.
One additional problem is that this reduces options as a consumer in smaller EU countries. Smaller ships no longer are willing to take on the risk and bureaucracy of selling to smaller markets, meaning only a few, large players remain. Like Amazon, Temu, Aliexpress, or larger local companies.
Europe has been steadily eradicating freedom and entrepreneurial spirit for the past 50 years. They will suffer badly many years later. They are slowly walking to disaster, but nobody cares. Go on, downvote me for telling the obvious truth :)
Are these rules actually that destructive, or are we witnessing astroturfing campaign?
These blog posts often allude that the EU regulatory bodies are just slightly incompetent or short-sighted and these fragmented national models happen by accident. But unfortunately that's not the case: The EU pretends to be a single-market and almost mantra-like the EU officials keep repeating it. But the fact of the matter is that there is neither a single market nor is the European public ready for one. If there was a true single market (like the US has one) - then this would very quickly lead to massive changes in the labour market. Imagine all the Romanian construction companies suddenly building office buildings in Madrid. Or countless Polish architects suddenly undercutting the much more expensive architects in Milano. Whether they know it or not, Europeans would like to have all the benefits of a single market (mostly more competitive pricing) without any of the downsides (massive labour shifts) - but that option doesn't exist. So what they do is harmonize regulation for a few big corporations, while all the smaller companies (and their employees) still get to keep their national moats.
The workaround here tends to be simple: Don't sell stuff as a incorporated business. Only do that once you cross a certain level of revenue.
But as with anything here in Europe, check your laws.
>Don't sell stuff as a incorporated business. Only do that once you cross a certain level of revenue.
Are you saying to sell as an individual? People don't do that because if you ever get sued, it puts your personal assets at risk.
In most EU countries law, this one is also considered as "solid business", regardless if you are incorporated or not:
If you are running on a level with focus one some revenue, if you are doing it somehow regularly and if you have at least some infrastructure to look like you are a corporate (billing system, customer care or similar), then you may fall under corp rules, even if you are not acting as an entity.
If you are a small maker and looking for the loophole here, this is it: "PPWR excludes an object where it is genuinely an integral part of the product, necessary to contain/support/preserve it throughout its lifetime and intended to remain with it."
It isn't a loophole - this was done on purpose.
De minimis and the previous packaging regulations were used as a tariff bypass by Chinese platforms like PDD and SHEIN, which led to their crackdown over the past 24 months [0][1]
[0] - https://www.ft.com/content/067ba5bb-4da3-42fc-a57b-9dd27a8f9...
[1] - https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/eu-probes-shein-over-...
Let me spell out the loophole: Just don't use packaging. Redesign your product so it comes in a sturdy container that makes it integral part of the product itself and completely side steps the obligations here.
Maybe we need to start charging the packaging materials explicitely on the invoice as individual items such as they become part of what the customer has ordered.
The socialist state of the EU is why god invented tax planning and the possibility to open your company abroad.
I've been doing business in the EU a long time, and in order to be successful you need to:
1. Never follow all the rules. Focus on your business and customers, and ignore/pay someone to deal with the rest if it ever becomes reality.
2. Start your company in a low cost, low tax jurisdiction. There are plenty of them in the forgotten corners of the EU, or why not a US LLC.
But I think the EU will implode in a decade or two and return europe to a state of innovation and profitability. The nationalist trend will lock any decision making in the EU, and the EU:s deep state will take care of the rest, enriching itself at the cost of the tax payer. The result... countries will leave or just silently start to ignore the EU rules, and then block any legal moves the EU tries to attempt at the EU level.
Europe would rather regulate companies out of existence than grow them.
Whining on the order hand is always easy.
Regulatory capture in this case.
They need proportionality and size/qty exemptions
Regulatory capture doesn't exist. Only corrupt and/or incompetent regulators.
all people are somewhat corrupt or incompentent.
that's why it only makes sense so think in broader terms, and a broader level regulatory capture absolutely exists.
the problem is that to solve regulatory capture in the EU parts of governments would have so go to war against corporations on the part of SMBs. but... governments in Europe de facto don't even recognize the right to exist of SMBs, basically _nothin_ of the large swath of government contracts fall to misc small businesses that would be perfectly capable to deliver on them at even 4x the quality standard corrupto-corpos do... probably there's some positive counteexamples in the weapons industry recently since we've realized we really do need quality weaponry at great value "by yesterday morning", but besides that... govs _HATE_ both SMBs and startups-from-unkowns (god forbit bootstrapped...).
FTR. The whole PPWR process started back in 2015, there was a public consultation period in 2020-21, the new rules were entered into force in February 2025 and now the general application happened. So there was plenty of time to prepare, as far as I can see. People that run a business in the EU and now claim to be surprised, they, well, surprise me.
You must be a fellow German. No where else in the world does the objection that bad legislation has been discussed (very negatively I might add, look up the results from consultation period you quoted) for 10 years have any merit on discussion whether that legislation fulfills its purpose.
So what if businesses "had time to prepare"? Its not the governments / especially the EUs job to waste the time of small businesses.
MISTER PROSSER: But Mister Dent the plans have been available in the planning office for the last nine months!
ARTHUR DENT: Yes! I went round to find them yesterday afternoon. You’d hadn’t exactly gone out of your way to pull much attention to them have you? I mean, like actually telling anybody or anything.
MISTER PROSSER: The plans were on display.
ARTHUR DENT: Ah! And how many members of the public are in the habit of casually dropping around the local planning office of an evening?
MISTER PROSSER: Er – ah!
ARTHUR DENT: It’s not exactly a noted social venue is it? And even if you had popped in on the off chance that some raving bureaucrat wanted to knock your house down, the plans weren’t immediately obvious to the eye were they?
MISTER PROSSER: That depends where you were looking.
ARTHUR DENT: I eventually had to go down to the cellar!
MISTER PROSSER: That’s the display department.
ARTHUR DENT: With a torch!
MISTER PROSSER: The lights, had… probably gone.
ARTHUR DENT: So had the stairs!
MISTER PROSSER: Well you found the notice didn’t you?
ARTHUR DENT: Yes. It was on display in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet, stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying “Beware of the Leopard”.
Do you assume regular people spend time on EU portals reading legislation proposals?
Yes, we are surprised to find out how foolish and counterproductive some legislation can be.
It also surprises and bewilders me that businesses (usually tech or tech adjacent) apparently expect and have for some time expected the ability to do business internationally completely without friction. Which is less something I think is a good or bad idea, and far more just simply an unrealistic one. If you want to sell in a given set of countries, I would think it a given that you would have to deal with the regulations and business laws in each of those given countries. The fact that you want to sell hacker/DIY products to people in less developed markets is admirable, certainly, but it doesn't change that. It's an unsolved problem precisely because it's kind of a pain in the ass to do compliance work across a large number of them. It's why large companies have entire departments devoted to regulatory compliance.
As far as I'm concerned the only way you could say this is "killing" any business is if the business in question has, as you said, spent the last decade just assuming they could sell things wherever with no oversight.
What an interesting point of view considering the discussed post. One of the main pillars of the EU its is single-market policy, you would very well expect businesses to be built on the premise of frictionless trade within these borders. And im not sure which market exactly you're calling "less developed"?
The whole point of the EU single market is to remove that friction
As usual, throwing babies out with the bath water
These things are going to be sent by mail. You could just have the postal service charge a few extra cents.
It's typical eco-suicide: give eurocrats more power and fake work to do, pretend most recycling regulations aren't scams, and practically destroy trade between countries in the union because you need one representative in every single country you want to sell anything in. As if adding a 5 (soon to become 7€) fee (plus tax) for every line of item (not package) outside the union wasn't enough. It is also quite obvious both must've been heavily lobbied by major retail groups through EuroCommerce.
Feedback for this utterly deranged regulation can be seen below, over 5k entries by many businesses in EU:
https://ec.europa.eu/info/law/better-regulation/have-your-sa...
And don't forget to fill in all the administrative paperwork on how your business addresses climate change; LGBTQIA+ issues; men/women parity; etc !
Seems like a problem Lectronz could solve for its makers.
Unfortunately, "Lectronz now generates roughly the equivalent of one modest salary."
How is CrowdSupply, US based, managing?
My father had to give up selling cat houses from one smaller EU country to others because of the new packaging regulations. Hard to believe the EU has not foreseen this being impossible to deal with for micro-businesses. Honestly his friend who is doing Photovoltaics is also now forced to stop shipments to most other EU countries due to this law. I assume we are talking about hundreds of thousands of small businesses.
Sometimes I wonder if the lawmakers in EU are brain dead. The whole point of economic union is that free movement of goods without custom tax and this new rule is practically a custom tax for each country.
> A good idea, a terrible implementation
Story of European regulations. At some point you have to concede that they are incompetent and unaccountable. What do they care if they depress economic integration and growth in Europe? No one will ever be blamed for diffuse bureaucratic costs that drag down the whole Eurozone.
I even resent people giving them credit for "well, the idea was laudable..". No. Again and again they introduce make-the-world-a-better-place regulations, and whoever opposes these or asks about tradeoffs or whether they are meaningfully useful must be a crazed libertarian or industry lobbyist who wants to poison the people.
I remember how smug Europeans were about the American PATRIOT act. Who could be so stupid to be fooled by such propagandist framing of laws? Well, here in the EU that happens frequently. The commission just has to wrap its degrowth policy in saving-the-world names and off we go. (See also the EU Supply Chain Act, i.e. Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive, aka expensive paperwork for a good conscience)
The article is asking for MORE regulation and MORE integration. As in, dear EU, please do not allow member states to make own rules about this, but make one from the central headquarters.
What is amazing is that this goes so much against the concept of the EU. The EU was founded on the principles of four freedoms, Free movement of goods, Free movement of persons, Freedom to provide services, and Free movement of capital.
The EU even have a SME Test to maker sure small business are not overburdened by regulations.
Also there are thousands of lobbyists fighting for small businesses. Yes, this law will probably eventually be thrown out for small businesses but after how many years is a big question, and how many small businesses have lost there businesses.
And the law was devised by Ripa di Meana, who had been a member of the Italian Communist Party and the green party.
> And the law was devised by Ripa di Meana, who had been a member of the Italian Communist Party and the green party.
how ironical
It’s hard to overthrow actual free markets. Small business is too sympathetic.
But if you pass enough well-meaning regulations and strangle all the small businesses with good intentions, it’s much easier to overthrow a crony-capitalist oligopoly of megacorps, which is exactly the end game.
yes, and go back to communism 2.0. because that worked so well the last time it was tried.
> And the law was devised by Ripa di Meana, who had been a member of the Italian Communist Party and the green party.
Why am I not surprised. But to me the worse is the 400 something rubberstamps this crap got
This is a direct result of national politics.
EU member states want all the benefits of integration without giving anything up, especially things that they consider aspects of national sovereignty.
* * *
I'll give you an example.
I'm from Romania. In Romania in 1990 there were no private enterprises, so everything was state owned. There was a HUGE demand for commerce/retail, so small local businesses popped up. They were very basic because everything was brand new and expertise was extremely scarce. No one knew anything about modern supermarkets, supermarket chains, banks, loans, credit lines, basically everything related to modern market economies.
As Romanian headed for EU integration, foreign invested started... investing. In retail that meant that because Romania is fairly populous by EU standards, everyone was tempted by a potentially big and growing pie that was almost void of serious competition.
So we ended up with Lidl (German), Kaufland (German), Metro (German), Carrefour (French), Mega Image (Romanian, bought by Delhaize: Belgian), DM (German), Cora (French), Auchan (French), Profi (Romanian, bought by Delhaize: Belgian), Selgros (Swiss), Penny (bought by REWE: German), etc.
I moved abroad somewhere close to both France and Germany. At a company I worked for, I had both French and German coworkers.
At some point the Germans were talking about Kaufland and I started chatting with them about it. Some French people mentioned Auchan and I replied to that too. After a few more replies about German and French supermarket chains, one of them said: how do you know so much about both French and German supermarket chains?
And I told them:
We're right next to Germany and German supermarkets stop at the border. There is no Aldi in France. Most French people in the neighboring French towns haven't even been in an Aldi.
We're also next to France and French supermarkets stop at the border. There is no Carrefour in Germany. Most German people in the neighboring German towns haven't even been in a Carrefour.
In Romania your big companies bought everything local (or displaced it), there are hardly any locally owned stores so I guess the upside is that I know all your supermarket chains.
* * *
Repeat this for banking, IT, whatever. Europe is super economically segregated even with the EU operating. Each country has all sort of hidden protections for its local businesses. I can't really tell you what they are exactly, but in practice you can feel them. Each country has its own version of X, Y, Z businesses. Small versions of everything, instead of few really big and competitive businesses at a global level.
This even impacts US companies. You can't get a European Netflix subscription. You fly from Romania to France and when you land and connect your tablet to the internet, your Romanian Netflix account switches over to France and they delete Mad Men from your downloaded episodes because Netflix France hasn't licensed Mad Men (old example).
Language, payroll-rules and tax-rules alone can be enough to prevent a business from expanding into a market. Even when there is no foul intent, just different set of rules.
I am from Brazil and it is not unusual for companies to operate only within certain states because of this. Even though Brazil is a single country with a single language and mostly federal rules about things, there is still enough variance of laws from one state to another to cause problems.
Then you hear about Canada which has tariffs between its own provinces, but not to the US. Meaning some products are cheaper across the US border than across a province border. Figuring out how much to pay in taxes alone can be a blocker...
This is not an EU-only problem, any large single market will have friction in its internal divisions. It tends to be worse in the EU because the countries have a lot more sovereignty though (enforcement agencies tend to be local, not federal for example).
> Then you hear about Canada which has tariffs between its own provinces, but not to the US.
Canada doesn't have, and should not have, the level of ambitions the EU should have. We're talking about EU 450 million people (500+ million if the UK rejoins at some point) vs Canada 35 million.
The EU should go toe to toe with the US and China. The EU is utterly dominated by US software companies and by Chinese green tech companies (batteries, solar panels, EVs).
TL;DR in EU, "strong" countries protected their national companies; weaker or smaller ones didn't
=> short term gain, free profits for eg FR or DE companies being allowed to devour other smaller countrie's markets
=> big country corpos get used to "almost free lunch"
=> big EU corpos fail to innovated and become uncompetitive globally
=> US ans CN corpos try instead to come with their increased efficiency and innovation at the EU market
=> EU freaks out and throws random restrictions and fines and regulations
=> only the most aggressive and ruthless CN (Temu etc) and US companies get through
=> they mostly rape the s out of EU markets
=> EU tries to protect its markets but its institutions have been regulatorly captured
=> [dark spiral goes on and on...]
I feel for you, but the points you're making seem to be contradictory. You don't like that European companies bought out Romanian ones, yet at the same time you don't like that Europe has small versions of everything for each country instead of big mega-corps like Carrefour and Aldi? Or perhaps you're OK with mega-corps, and just want some of them to be Romanian?
> I feel for you, but the points you're making seem to be contradictory.
No, that is actually one of the points, I'm glad someone wanted it.
I, too, want to have my cake and eat it, too. This is a contradiction that can't easily be resolved.
I'd want Romanian sovereignty AND the convenience of big companies with lots of economic power. I guess, to your direct comment, yeah, I'd be happy enough with a few European "champions" out of hundreds being Romanian.
Personally, I lean more towards EU federalism so this cognitive dissonance is probably 30-70 towards big companies, because I think otherwise the EU will be crushed by outsiders.
Don't know about Carrefour and Auchan in Germany, but there are plenty of Aldis and Lidls in France, at least in the Paris region.
I think this is true for a lot of Balkan countries that joined EU. I was in Croatia recently and was super surprised to see Lidl and DM stores there. Even more surprised to see the prices of items in those stores were almost same as in Berlin
Very interesting! Also, I would trade Aldi for Carrefour in less than a second.
There are a lot of Aldi in France (also Lidl, also Action (Netherlands)...) Not sure of your point.
There are ALDI stores in France, I don't know which ALDI without looking it up. Carrefour has stores in Italy and Spain.
> Carrefour has stores in Italy and Spain.
And Auchan has stores in Spain (Alcampo).
I'm not saying that the boundary is a 20km high wall of fire nothing can go through.
I'm saying that:
1. the direction is mostly big countries -> smaller countries, and very rarely big countries -> other big countries or even rarer, smaller countries -> big countries.
2. 20+ years after the EU has started, the level of high level integration is still pitiful.
People don't want complete integration.
If I go into the Carrefour in Sallanches (FR) then I will buy a completely different set of products to those that I would buy in the Carrefour in Aosta (IT), the two are 80km apart.
So, the complain is that there is no harmonization and you want more centralized harmonization, basically?
Yes, that’s exactly what we want. The single market should be finalized. And we should move towards having a European equivalent of Delaware corps, and unified systems.
Basically, yes. The EU needs a lot more power to force through an actual single market. Especially a single digital market. That's why the US is crushing EU tech companies. Licensing (especially content), patents, totally different tax systems, addressing all of the EU as a small company is basically impossible.
Except that US also has pretty fragmented state law, doesn't it?
Not anything like this. The closest thing is charging local sales tax.
For the last time EU!= Europe, there are plenty more countries outside Brussels overach ffs
My experience as a software engineer in EU was horrible. I wish I could say it was something out of a horror movie, but it would be too frustrating to watch.
I joined a major cryptocurrency project, saw its market cap briefly increase to $4 billion. I worked on it like crazy for 2 years whilst, unbeknownst to me, the founders began to sabotage their own project and ensure that it would slip out of the CMC rankings; I believe this was done to lower their public profile (and reduce scrutiny). But it all happened under the watchful, approving eyes of EU regulators. I also witnessed other crypto projects which I knew to be scams receive funding from the EU commission, then the same founders raised money again after running the previous project into the ground with nothing to show. Also, the founders of the project I joined defamed me and my team with outright lies to sabotage my spin-off project when we worked to improve the tech independently.
Now I'm back in my home country, literally working for a bank, the antithesis of crypto, even though I find it immoral.
It's a human fallacy to think that the one who opposes evil is good. In reality, any entity with any kind of power is almost certainly evil; always has been and probably always will be.
This sort of BS - which is why the UK left the EU by the way, happens on EVERYTHING. By nature, the EU is an extra layer of bureaucracy which can only exist by: 1.hiring 2. producing regulations to justify its existence. I have quietly seen it dismantle anything that worked in European countries, all while being called a fascist or far-right extremist for doing so. Well, here is the result.
How much bullshit!
If you try to sell to China, Australia, UUSS and Colombia and Russia for example, you also need to comply with the regulations of each of those countries (and pay Tarifs in some).
To ease the collaboration between humans the European Union was created. But the European Union is not a country. Is the earth only collection of countries that agree to collaborate together to levels no other countries have in the world History.
It's success is so big, that people expects to act as an independent country, and complain when discovering Europe is indeed several countries. WTF!
It's not the first. It's not even the first in Europe: the first was the UK, Belgium and Switzerland came after. There are and have been others around the world throughout history too: the CSA, the first USA, the USSR, the UAE, and the Arab League (just to name a few).
Most systems like the EU don't work well after a certain size. I don't know if we can say whether the EU has reached the point where it's unworkable yet.
The thing with the EU is that, worryingly, the less it works, the bigger it becomes (new memberstates, soon, Albania...) and the more power it takes on. This continent is heading for a catastrophic outcome and one must be blind to not see it.
Unfortunate choice of words, implies these people are being literally murdered...
It's funny, because what's actually, literally killing people is pollution...
The idea isn't the issue, the implementation is. The EU did the same with VAT previously, where you'd have to register separate businesses in different countries, once you got large enough (which wasn't very large). Now there's a central system to keep track of what goes where and you can sell internally in the EU with no issues.
Something similar needs to happen here, where business report and pay to a central EU system, that then transfers the funds to each country. The problem is that the EU is smart enough to see the environmental problem, but forgets to think about ramifications and doesn't provide the right tools.
I was commenting on the title, the concept is sound yes, but doesn't call the initial idea into question, these measures are necessary to ensure a sustainable civilisation at this point, should be clear to every body really...
In Europe air pollution, while much higher than the United States, is at a hundred year low.
slightly off topic wouldn't you say?
Is it literally killing the majority of Europeans? How many deaths comes from an Arduino box?
Europe's smart people are going to have to move to another country to be entrepreneurs. That's going to kill Europe faster.
> Europe's smart people are going to have to move to another country to be entrepreneurs
Watch the stats please, the contrary is happening right now, plenty of American talents coming to Europe.
Im in the states right now, ive been wanting to leave the US before the empire collapses but i definitely dont want to go to Europe. Even if the economy was functional i dont want to be run over or stabbed or have my future children stabbed, run over or raped by Muslims. So that rules out Europe except maybe turkey which sounds cool culturally but their economy is even worse than Europe. Honestpy id like to go build a cabin homestead in the wilderness where i dont have to deal with burro rats but there isnt any wilderness left. So idk maybe ill go buy an abandoned home in rural japan and live my best homesteading solarpunk life.
jfc the level of delusion is astronomical here... stop watching Fox News buddy...
Please share said stats with us
https://www.bruegel.org/analysis/how-much-research-talent-co... for an analysis and https://www.euractiv.com/opinion/europes-battle-for-american...
Nothing definitive but it's still early in the exodus
They're probably not coming to be entrepreneurs though.
Good post, bad title.
From the title alone, I'd expect a typical think-piece from someone (possibly outside the EU) about overregulation, "the solution is no regulation at all", etc. Instead, it's a solid critique of the recent packaging/packaging waste regulation debacle, from a constructive angle. The first section hits the nail on the head: "a good idea, a terrible implementation".
Unfortunately, this feels like a frequent refrain when it comes to the EU. And even more unfortunately, even just this ever-so-slightly-more-nuanced take seems to frequently be drowned out by the two extremes -- "all regulation is bad and we need pure unadulterated free market capitalism" or "all capitalism is bad and we need pure unadulterated regulation" -- which are by far the two loudest voices in the room.
The OP has some good suggestions about this particular regulation (which should definitely be considered! Fix things are broken; don't just throw the baby out with the bathwater!), but I'd personally be interested to see things that try to understand and treat the root cause instead of yet another symptomatic regulation. Maybe walking further down the path towards federalization? Iunno, but if I had a dime for every time I've thought "good idea, bad execution" as an EU resident... I'd have a lot of dimes.
Well, maybe if anything coming from the EU is "good idea, bad execution", the solution should be to get rid of this bureaucracy altogether then.