21 ms·

How Europe is killing makers and micro-entrepreneurs

• TheAtomic 1mo ago
  Seems like a problem Lectronz could solve for its makers.
  • forinti 1mo ago
    Unfortunately, "Lectronz now generates roughly the equivalent of one modest salary."
  • akoboldfrying 1mo ago
    You mean their proposal 3? I assumed that the reason this article exists at all is because that is currently forbidden for some esoteric reason.
• TrackerFF 1mo ago
  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.
  • KellyCriterion 1mo ago
    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.
  • weberer 1mo ago
    >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.
• p0w3n3d 1mo ago
  As usual, throwing babies out with the bath water
• mechazawa 1mo ago
  [flagged]
  • khalic 1mo ago
    Yeah there's very limited anti-tampering in HN. Grok posts are full of bots and fake votes
  • jgilias 1mo ago
    Being a European, I first upvoted, then moved on to read the article. I assume I’m not the only one. And my corner of Europe is relatively not that red-tape-ish. But many places are pretty horrible when it comes to that.
    • deleted 1mo ago
      [deleted]
  • yread 1mo ago
    FWIW, I, a real human, have read it and upvoted it, about 5 minutes after starting to read it.
  • tietjens 1mo ago
    I'm not saying that this is impossible, but it's 3:40 on a Monday in Central Europe right now. I imagine the headline resonates with many readers here.
  • qarl2 1mo ago
    Given how fast your comment is being swarmed, I suspect so. Also seems like exactly the kind of thing Elmo would fund. EDIT: And now it's been censored. What a strange coincidence!
  • jeltz 1mo ago
    Probably not, I think it is mostly real people who upvote based on just the headline with reading it just because the headline agrees with their worldview.
• tdeck 1mo ago
  I imagine what will happen in practice is that the makers will simply ignore the law and hope not to get prosecuted or audited?
• Mashimo 1mo ago
  Odd that there not already is a minimum threshold in place. This would even apply when selling a few electronic knik knaks on ebay?
  • deleted 1mo ago
    [deleted]
• khalic 1mo ago
  It's funny, because what's actually, literally killing people is pollution...
  • echelon 1mo ago
    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.
    • khalic 1mo ago
      > 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.
      • thunspa 1mo ago
        Please share said stats with us
        • khalic 1mo ago
          https://www.bruegel.org/analysis/how-much-research-talent-could-europe-grab-us https://www.bruegel.org/analysis/how-much-research-talent-co... for an analysis and https://www.euractiv.com/opinion/europes-battle-for-american-talent/ https://www.euractiv.com/opinion/europes-battle-for-american... Nothing definitive but it's still early in the exodus
          • thunspa 1mo ago
            I'm sorry, not only is this far from definitive, it's not even a sign of an 'early' exodus. There is not really any exodus, sadly. The US still is significantly more competitive and offers much higher upsides to talented people willing to take risks. I live in the EU and want us to succeed, but I'm skeptical about our ability to compete with America economically and technologically, because we foster a different type of spirit. It would be nice if this didn't matter.
• zarzavat 1mo ago
  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.
  • raverbashing 1mo ago
    Yeah I'm betting on that as well In the end, it's mail being sent.
  • pelagicAustral 1mo ago
    Don't hold your breath.
  • lukan 1mo ago
    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?
    • billyp-rva 1mo ago
      It depends on how expensive that letter is.
  • bluGill 1mo ago
    You risk that someone wants to make an example of you. You might run for mayor and your past is dig up and exaggerated
  • AndroTux 1mo ago
    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.
    • 9dev 1mo ago
      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.
• the__alchemist 1mo ago
  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.
  • stephen_g 1mo ago
    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)
    • dom96 1mo ago
      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.
    • ac29 1mo ago
      > FCC allows suppliers to self-declare conformance with EMI/EMC rules Yes, though they can also ask for your lab results or to inspect your testing facility and hit you with massive fines if it turns out you falsified your compliance documents. As you mentioned this is very rare though - even enforcement actions against non-certified intentional radiators are uncommon.
• sajithdilshan 1mo ago
  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.
  • a34729t 1mo ago
    The practical purpose of the EU is exactly what it appears to be: Jobs for bureaucrats and politicians.
    • tucosan 1mo ago
      I'm sorry, but that's utter bullshit. The EU project was and is a significant growth motor for the member states. That's why even Canada is contemplating to become part of the union. But yes, bureaucracy and bad implementation of useful regulation a real issue.
• gerikson 1mo ago
  Unfortunate choice of words, implies these people are being literally murdered...
• Robin_f 1mo ago
  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.
  • catigula 1mo ago
    [flagged]
    • sokoloff 1mo ago
      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.
      • Hizonner 1mo ago
        ... 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.
      • tygon 1mo ago
        Schrodinger's Bus: You do not know if you will be hit until you are already in the street. I feel like there is some promise in naming a band this, but it is unfortunate it so often is what people have to deal with when bringing an item to market.
    • throw-the-towel 1mo ago
      Umm akchully, not crossing a highway to avoid being hit is a perfectly sane course of action.
      • fitsumbelay 1mo ago
        except he said "street" not "highway"
• watwut 1mo ago
  So, the complain is that there is no harmonization and you want more centralized harmonization, basically?
  • oblio 1mo ago
    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.
    • izacus 1mo ago
      Except that US also has pretty fragmented state law, doesn't it?
      • weberer 1mo ago
        Not anything like this. The closest thing is charging local sales tax.
        • izacus 1mo ago
          Environmental laws ("The California Effect"), payroll laws, payment laws, rules about what to sell and where are also different, aren't they?
  • dgellow 1mo ago
    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.
• uxhacker 1mo ago
  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.
  • sajithdilshan 1mo ago
    > 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
    • cobbzilla 1mo ago
      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.
      • sajithdilshan 1mo ago
        yes, and go back to communism 2.0. because that worked so well the last time it was tried.
  • raverbashing 1mo ago
    > 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
  • KellyCriterion 1mo ago
    Not quite exactly: -- 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. -- If you take a look at first paragraphs of the EU contracts, they sate above all these: ----------- Article 3 (ex Article 2 TEU) 1. The Union's aim is to promote peace, its values and the well-being of its peoples. 2. The Union shall offer its citizens an area of freedom, security and justice without internal frontiers, in which the free movement of persons is ensured in conjunction with appropriate measures with respect to external border controls, asylum, immigration and the prevention and combating of crime. 3. The Union shall establish an internal market. It shall work for the sustainable development of Europe based on balanced economic growth and price stability, a highly competitive social market economy, aiming at full employment and social progress, and a high level of protection and improvement of the quality of the environment. It shall promote scientific and technological advance. It shall combat social exclusion and discrimination, and shall promote social justice and protection, equality between women and men, solidarity between generations and protection of the rights of the child. It shall promote economic, social and territorial cohesion, and solidarity among Member States. It shall respect its rich cultural and linguistic diversity, and shall ensure that Europe's cultural heritage is safeguarded and enhanced. 4. The Union shall establish an economic and monetary union whose currency is the euro. ... ---- So its only about free movement of people in the beginning, goods and services are much later in the docs
• oblio 1mo ago
  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).
• yardie 1mo ago
  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.
  • silon42 1mo ago
    Even medium-sized corporations are not willing to send products across borders to consumers (say, outside Germany), further destroying the single market.
  • alephnerd 1mo ago
    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 Pinduoduo (Temu) and SHEIN took undue advantage of that while ignoring European regulators on issues such as environmental regulations on packaging [2], dark patterns [2], breaching the Digital Services Act [3], and gacha/addictive engagement mechanisms [4]. All of OP's proposals directly conflict with the goal of de minimis taxation and the EPR. Seems European HNers are fine with European regulations until it hurts their niche interests or pocketbook. [0] - https://www.ft.com/content/102e18d7-d06b-4405-a347-97bb3c37318b?syn-25a6b1a6=1 https://www.ft.com/content/102e18d7-d06b-4405-a347-97bb3c373... [1] - https://www.vereev.com/news/europe-faces-trade-conflict-is-epr-the-key-to-reducing-dependence-on-china/ https://www.vereev.com/news/europe-faces-trade-conflict-is-e... [2] - https://www.ft.com/content/ef72f186-2a02-4c51-927d-2c01ddeced05?syn-25a6b1a6=1 https://www.ft.com/content/ef72f186-2a02-4c51-927d-2c01ddece... [3] - https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/eu-says-temu-breach-rules-prevent-sale-illegal-products-2025-07-28/ https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/eu-says-temu-breach-r... [4] - https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/eu-probes-shein-over-sale-illegal-products-addictive-design-2026-02-17/ https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/eu-probes-shein-over-...
    • 1mo ago
• Sol- 1mo ago
  > 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)
  • watwut 1mo ago
    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.
  • soco 1mo ago
    As an American and probably as most Americans you are missing the point that there are no "Europeans", stop saying that. The EU is just a bunch of states which happen to do some things together. And all those "directives" are guidelines for the individual states, which may, and more often that not, may not, implement it that way. Usually they don't because "muh freedom" (I'm sure you get the reference) so it's a chaos EXACTLY BECAUSE no European state wants to submit to some European authority, and even takes pride in doing things DIFFERENTLY, whatever the costs (economical or political).
• forinti 1mo ago
  These things are going to be sent by mail. You could just have the postal service charge a few extra cents.
• leros 1mo ago
  Laws like this really need to only be enforced for companies of certain sizes.
  • SV_BubbleTime 1mo ago
    Selective enforcement is a tyranny generator. How about the law doesn’t exist if it doesn’t actually make sense?
    • some_random 1mo ago
      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.
      • leros 1mo ago
        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.
    • bluGill 1mo ago
      The law makes sense, the details where things don't make sense
    • mmmpetrichor 1mo ago
      there are many federal laws in the US (and im sure other countries) that only apply when your company reaches a certain size. This is the most obvious way to balance regulatory burden on new companies while still enforcing regulations on large companies that have enough resources to comply.
  • dmix 1mo ago
    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.
• AndroTux 1mo ago
  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.
  • drchickensalad 1mo ago
    Sorry for the off topic but I absolutely love the Estonian House in NYC. Wonderful people, events, and food
• 0x_rs 1mo ago
  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-say/initiatives/15352-Packaging-and-packaging-waste-rules-on-national-registers-of-producers/feedback_en?p_id=25704 https://ec.europa.eu/info/law/better-regulation/have-your-sa...
  • lucasRW 1mo ago
    And don't forget to fill in all the administrative paperwork on how your business addresses climate change; LGBTQIA+ issues; men/women parity; etc !
    • A_D_E_P_T 1mo ago
      Fortunately, generating this sort of annoying boilerplate is what LLMs were born to handle.
• jwildeboer 1mo ago
  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.
  • ToucanLoucan 1mo ago
    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.
    • dankben 1mo ago
      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"?
    • dgellow 1mo ago
      The whole point of the EU single market is to remove that friction
  • dankben 1mo ago
    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.
• cientifico 1mo ago
  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!
  • Conan_Kudo 1mo ago
    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.
    • lucasRW 1mo ago
      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.
      • cientifico 1mo ago
        That is not what the numbers suggest. Europe still leads in median quality of life and more healthy markets. If you focus only on economic exploitation: Of course, with customer protection, companies can't do whatever they want. Of course business will develop less in comparison to countries where companies are free to do whatever.
• utopiah 1mo ago
  How is CrowdSupply, US based, managing?
• nbadg 1mo ago
  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.
  • lucasRW 1mo ago
    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.
• roblh 1mo ago
  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.
  • dgellow 1mo ago
    Yes there are some middlemen , but that 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.
• armcat 1mo ago
  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.
  • varispeed 1mo ago
    General view of EU politicians is that working class should be working for big corporations. Running own business is a sin. The big corporations also don't want people to run small business, because they remove themselves from the job market and cannot be hired / exploited. So they lobby EU FOR regulations that ensure people cannot run business.
    • merek 1mo ago
      > Running own business is a sin Shouldn't any wealth creation viewed positively due to tax, not to mention value to consumers/society? Or is the view that people on average produce more value when employed by a large corporation?
      • lnsru 1mo ago
        A self employed person can deduct many things used personally from the taxes in Germany as a business expense. An employed person pays shit ton of taxes and the value added tax. So from pre-tax salary you get only 30% for spending. Lol. It’s slavery.
        • varispeed 1mo ago
          Corporations also deduct things as expenses. Small business or self-employed person don't have any special privileges - au contraire - in many jurisdictions big corporations are not audited at all and have special tax arrangements where they agree with the tax man to pay certain amount of tax. The idea that small business somehow avoids tax is a myth. If you have limited company, your personal spending wont fly past accountant.
• ionwake 1mo ago
  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.
  • Kenji 1mo ago
    [dead]
  • latexr 1mo ago
    > 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.
• kakoni 1mo ago
  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.
  • Urahandystar 1mo ago
    Yup, soon they will offer to handle the compliance for EU sellers for no risk and low and behold the idiots have given away a tax on selling in the single market to another country before they know it.
• vibe_that_works 1mo ago
  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."
  • alephnerd 1mo ago
    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-9dd27a8f9255?syn-25a6b1a6=1 https://www.ft.com/content/067ba5bb-4da3-42fc-a57b-9dd27a8f9... [1] - https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/eu-probes-shein-over-sale-illegal-products-addictive-design-2026-02-17/ https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/eu-probes-shein-over-...
    • vibe_that_works 1mo ago
      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.
      • Scoundreller 1mo ago
        I'm going to get a lot of packages packed in a cat box, aren't I?
• bluegatty 1mo ago
  Regulatory capture in this case. They need proportionality and size/qty exemptions
  • philipallstar 1mo ago
    Regulatory capture doesn't exist. Only corrupt and/or incompetent regulators.
    • dragochat 1mo ago
      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...).
      • philipallstar 1mo ago
        It seems odd to blame lobbying (which you could also "rule of the universe" out of existence by saying everyone lobbies to some extent) when you seem to actually be blaming EU governments for being so hostile to SMBs.
        • bluegatty 1mo ago
          All regulations favour some groups more than others. Exempting small business could easily be viewed as hostile / corrupt regulation disfavouring large entities. These kinds of regulations are usually not even welcome by larger companies, but there is less pushback. 'packaging' isn't the place to use the c-word.
• matt-p 1mo ago
  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.
  • mytailorisrich 1mo ago
    The UK tends to be much more sensible than the EU and the main EU countries (France, Germany, Italy).
    • matt-p 1mo ago
      I agree, though it's not a very difficult challenge. There's still some nonsense here too like for example the TV License
      • bogdan 1mo ago
        The tv license is a bad example and it's in many ways better than in Germany or France. In the UK you can declare you do not watch any national tv and you forego the tax. No such luxury in Germany where as far as I know you can't avoid it. In France it's funded through vat and of course it's priced in so everyone pays anyway.
        • Silhouette 1mo ago
          One significant problem with the TV licence here in the UK is that the people who end up paying it and the people who actually use the services it pays for are now very different groups. The BBC is heavily funded by TV licence fee payers but also provides numerous radio and online services. Many of those are available even to those without a TV licence. Meanwhile people who use few or no BBC services may still have to pay for a TV licence because they watch something else live but the money they're paying is mostly going to be used to support the BBC. Also it's a silly little tax that raises relatively little money, incurs significant overheads in collection, suffers from significant non-payment, and has an aggressive enforcement operation that should clearly be illegal itself for the way it behaves.
• Jskewel 1mo ago
  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.
  • carlosjobim 1mo ago
    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).
    • gmueckl 1mo ago
      Politicians can be quite evil, but in a functioning democracy they need to be at least competent at gathering support and navigating the occasional backstabbing plots to make it to the highest ranks of government. So I'm hesitant to call them totally incompetent.
      • zigman1 1mo ago
        Exactly. Competent at getting votes (and taking them away from competition) and incompetent at leading and being in power.
        • ab5tract 1mo ago
          What is the alternative that you are proposing? When I read something like this all that comes across is a strident desire for totalitarianism.
          • 1mo ago
• deleted 1mo ago
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• deliciousturkey 1mo ago
  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.
• darthcloud 1mo ago
  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.
  • akoboldfrying 1mo ago
    As TFA says, the packing materials themselves cost cents and aren't the problem -- the yearly costs of registering, etc., in each EU country are.
• charlieyu1 1mo ago
  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.
  • runarberg 1mo ago
    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.
    • Urahandystar 1mo ago
      Workers need businesses or their is no work. Favouring smaller enterprenuers get more workers.
      • runarberg 1mo ago
        Businesses need workers a lot more then workers need businesses. And Europes whole deal is to shift this power imbalance in favor of the the businesses. This has to stop.
    • cm2012 1mo ago
      Is europe liberalizing its labor laws at light speed?
• lucasRW 1mo ago
  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.
• nottorp 1mo ago
  This is not new though. "We do not sell to EU end users." https://pcengines.ch/recycle.htm 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.
  • deleted 1mo ago
    [deleted]
• jcfrei 1mo ago
  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.
  • nonethewiser 1mo ago
    >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. There are several comments suggesting the EU did everything right and member states tanked it but this just feels like the EU operating as intended. The EU is comprised of sovereign nations. This is a normal outcome of what is essentially a P2P network. The central authority is illusory because the EU is not sovereign.
• lccerina 1mo ago
  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.
  • varjag 1mo ago
    It sounds like a pain for any small company, not just individual makers. There are many small manufacturers of boutique equipment that could be sold at dozens units per year, and this would add massive bureaucratic overhead.
• cmiles8 1mo ago
  Europe would rather regulate companies out of existence than grow them.
• abc123abc123 1mo ago
  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.
• quincy_jones 1mo ago
  For the last time EU!= Europe, there are plenty more countries outside Brussels overach ffs
• gryzzly 1mo ago
  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.
• IsTom 1mo ago
  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?
  • alephnerd 1mo ago
    > Did everyone actually read the law or is this a game of telephone It's HN - everyone did the latter.
  • l-one-lone 1mo ago
    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.
    • IsTom 1mo ago
      Having looked into FAQ[1] it seems that it's mostly the case if you sell in branded packaging and are >10 people or >2M eur revenue. [1]https://op.europa.eu/en/publication-detail/-/publication/ad14cb8f-8d4f-11f1-9262-01aa75ed71a1 https://op.europa.eu/en/publication-detail/-/publication/ad1...
      • kakoni 1mo ago
        According to the PPWR rules, if you (as a webshop) package your shipment in non-branded box and send it from another EU country to another, then you are considered to be manufacturer(=you were the first to bring this into market) and EPR/PPWR rules apply. There is no exemption for this.
        • anigbrowl 1mo ago
          I'm more inclined to believe the person who backed up their argument with a citation, especially after looking at the document they linked which expressly contradicts you.
• jongjong 1mo ago
  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. Also, the founders of that project defamed me and my team with outright lies to sabotage my spin-off project when we worked to improve the tech independently. 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.
• blks 1mo ago
  Are these rules actually that destructive, or are we witnessing astroturfing campaign?
  • Semaphor 1mo ago
    My impression is that the rules make sense. For big companies. Sadly there are no limits whatsoever, so the same thing that’s easy for big companies, is essentially impossible for smaller ones. I’ve seen several smaller bands in the EU stop sending merch to any country in the EU not their own, because they don’t know how to handle this.
  • akoboldfrying 1mo ago
    TFA laid out exactly how destructive it is. It would wipe out the 50% of Lectronz sellers who sell < 10 items per year, and thus Lectronz itself, not to mention anyone else (e.g., artists) who only sell a handful of items a year. What wasn't clear? Do you not find those claims plausible?
• srg0 1mo ago
  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.
  • gmueckl 1mo ago
    Good idea, except that the regulation (as I understand it) prevents this. The company sending out the packaging to the customer is the one who has to register. It's possible to hire consulting to set this up, but the fees don't go a way or get distributed over a broader set of shoulders.
  • nonethewiser 1mo ago
    >It appears there is space for "packaging and distribution in EU as a service" business model. What a fucking nightmare
• aristofun 1mo ago
  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 :)
  • Ylpertnodi 1mo ago
    After so long living in each EU country, your 'obvious truth' is neither obvious or truthful..
    • aristofun 1mo ago
      That is exactly why. You are blind to your own problems :)
      • Scharkenberg 1mo ago
        This is very condescending.
        • aristofun 1mo ago
          Sometimes truth is not sweet, sorry. And there is no point in sugarcoating even if I'm mistaken, we are all grown ups here. If european innovative companies and small businesses flourish in 10 years - I'll be the first to apologize and admit the mistake. But there are just no signs of it today. While plenty of signs and data supporting my point.
• IronyMan1 1mo ago
  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.
  • l-one-lone 1mo ago
    Unfortunately, for direct cross-border sales, the regulation explicitly makes the seller the "producer" in the customer’s Member State, and requires registration there. Buying an envelope from a registered Greek supplier does not register the seller in Germany or France.
    • IronyMan1 1mo ago
      OK you are right, i looked at a different regulation. But, i still do not understand why i cannot buy pregistered packaging for the whole EU? Or why i cannot register in one country for all Cross Border sales. I mean there are minimum standards imposed by the EU and the packages need to have a mark. So why is it like that? Even more 1 years after the draghi report....
• mstaoru 1mo ago
  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.
  • pjc50 1mo ago
    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.
    • mistrial9 1mo ago
      > this whole crisis arises because of hmm that is not systems thinking there.. there are more layers than that!
    • mstaoru 1mo ago
      I think this directive was from Feb 2025? Is 1 year enough for everyone to register in 25 different packaging regulation bodies, appoint representatives, etc etc?.. I also fail to see how this will stop Chinese companies from shipping to Europe. No Chinese company will register in this farce.
      • 1mo ago
• myst 1mo ago
  Whining on the order hand is always easy.
• mpweiher 1mo ago
  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.
  • Saline9515 1mo ago
    The EU commission chooses what laws to propose for the parliament to vote, if it wasn't satisfactory they could have just withdrawn it.
  • Turneyboy 1mo ago
    Why would the implementation of this not simply be a fee that the mail carriers have to impose? Isn't that by far the simplest solution that removes any and all bureaucracy for almost everyone and still catches 99% of the cases?
    • Yizahi 1mo ago
      It's all about PR. If EU formulates the new law like they are fighting against pollution and plastic garbage, it sounds nice enough to the electorate who are content with greenwashing and won't investigate much. And 99% of population won't ever a hear a word about real issues by the sellers, to them sellers would quietly and imperceptibly start disappearing. But a direct fee sounds more like a tax hike and the same electorate ordering packages from foreign shops would definitely remember that.
  • codingbot3000 1mo ago
    Good point. If I were a small seller I would just ignore this, like many sellers on Temu do. Before you get into trouble, someone must take notice that you did not register for the recipient fiefdom's protectionism racket. And if that happens, it is not sure that you really are in trouble. As with the GDPR, this kind of regulation is almost unenforcable in practice.
• rramon 1mo ago
  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.
  • seydor 1mo ago
    The EU executive doesn't hold general elections
    • rramon 1mo ago
      They're fanning Brexit-like situations all over the EU though. Those parties (e.g. the far right Afd in Germany) are EU critic and would rather have their own version of the EU with like minded countries. Or Varoufakis (far left, previously at Valve) in Greece for example, also EU critic.
• enether 1mo ago
  Sounds a bit like registering and reported to each country's VAT system, which almost no online creators do (even ones making hundreds of thousands of online subsription revenue)
  • hmpetleva 1mo ago
    In my country I don't think you need to register until you make €85k for B2C for domestic payments. If you need to register, all different VATs across EU are handled by a single VAT OSS registration. My €20/mo accounting subscription includes it as standard (even though I don't need it).
• tk781 1mo ago
  Is this killing the makers or the marketplace? Can the micro-entrepreneurs still list/sell via larger marketplaces? I can see how this is killing the micro-marketplace though.
• sdfonw 1mo ago
  I'm sorry I don't buy this. A "micro-entrepreneur" should be trusted to design a product complying with the regulations of 27 member states but cannot be bothered by the packaging requirements? My guess is that most of the products on this website simply do not comply with the norms and regulations they ought to, thus why care if they don't comply to waste management either.
  • dwedge 1mo ago
    You don't generally have to pay a bureaucracy tax to each of the member states to do business there. At some point we might as well just bring back tariffs and do away with the overhead of the EU
• varispeed 1mo ago
  Isn't this double dipping? Consumers typically already pay for waste disposal to their local government. That said, the EU and West in general through corruption like to pass legislation that ensures only big corporations can afford to comply with.
• Kudos 1mo ago
  Anti-EU regulation sentiment really seems to have an uptick in line with widespread availability of LLMs. The EU isn't perfect, but the catastrophising I read feels mostly like astro-turfing attempts at destabilisation. It's probably more easily noticed from inside the EU.
  • 21asdffdsa12 1mo ago
    Stability - on the defense, is like goal-keeping in soccer. You can protect the goal 99.99% and still loose. And therein lies the crux! The EU does not attack, it seems to think that waiting for the old world to return is enough - basically a extended hibernation to another episode of good times. But maybe this is it. Maybe good times, made via surplus bribery by innovation and innovators will not come around for a while. So what do you call a strategy that relies on something hopefully to come, that you are unable to produce or even articulate you need.
  • unfamiliar 1mo ago
    What do LLMs have to do with it?
    • Kudos 1mo ago
      What do automated content generators have to do with astro-turfing?
  • benoau 1mo ago
    > feels mostly like astro-turfing attempts at destabilisation Well it is certainly the perfect conditions for it, the EU is surrounded by friends and enemies alike who openly seek to break it up and the biggest companies in the world are doing everything they can to defy and undermine regulation efforts.
  • Argonaut998 1mo ago
    I agree. I say this as a eurosceptic myself. HN and Twitter make it seem like the EU is borderline third world that is moments away from collapse. Germany is the third largest economy in the world. The EU as a bloc is the second largest economy in the world. While lagging considerably behind the US and China in services, it still is among the leaders in energy and manufacturing. It’s in decline, but it’s really not anything that can’t be fixed. Certainly not anywhere HN/Twitter like to make it out to be. The EU is facing a two-front information war. A strong EU doesn’t benefit the US, Russia or China. Having said that, a lot of US criticisms that are propagandised against the EU are mostly fair criticisms, the EU makes it easy for its adversaries to propagandise low hanging fruit (such as the bureaucracy on display here)
• igsomething 1mo ago
  Doesn't this new law overlap with the existing system? A manufacturer within the EU is already paying taxes, which in part should be used for managing waste. If they buy the packaging materials from another EU company, well that company is also paying taxes already. If they are importing from outside the EU, the packaging material pays taxes.
• bitlad 1mo ago
  I can attest to this. People say the Netherlands is among the best countries to be an entrepreneur. The visa policies for starting a business are good. But man, the whole tax system, shares, and holding management—belasting breathing up your neck—is horrible when I am trying to do firefighting. You never know when you might get hit by a tax bill. The tax system is built towards benefitting large organizations, and they can afford expensive tax consultants who can help them dodge it. The VC ecosystem is limited and not risk averse. Having operated in multiple geographies, US is really business friendly.
  • stoltzmann 1mo ago
    >the whole tax system, shares, and holding management You don't have to set up a holding management structure for your company. It's there if you want to, but why make it complicated if you don't want a complicated structure? If you're small, a simple eenmanszaak will suffice - which you can fill online, and then complete within an hour at the KvK. >belasting breathing up your neck Honestly I never had any issues with the belastingdienst, as long as you file your reports every quarter/year, and you're willing to pay the taxes you owe. Any time I ever had issues, I just had to talk with one of their inspectors, go over my paperwork, and we sorted it out there. When I had issues with paying, it was one phone call to defer it for 2 years and set a payment scheme.
• deleted 1mo ago
  [deleted]
• scotty79 1mo ago
  > The main idea of EPR is sensible: businesses that place packaging on the market should help finance its collection and recycling. Wouldn't it be better to put the burden on packaging manufacturers?
• motbus3 1mo ago
  I understand the package complains, and I understand how it undermines the maker scenario. I think smartly using the scale of things might be helpful, but they are targeting Qualcomm and not Arduino users. Unfortunately, because all of us have postponed thinking about solving the problem, now we have a problem and braking is safer than not breaking at all. In my country we do have advanced collecting systems but it all falls apart when different materials can be prioritised. There were an interesting proposal of having the companies to buy back the recyclable rubbish but that was scraped. I was up to this. Because they would need to emit in the docs the amount of money the package cost and how much they would pay back, it was possible to track the sources from a fiscal eyes. I think it was scraped because people already thought on ways of breaking it, instead of giving better alternatives.
• theplumber 1mo ago
  The reason for this mess is because individual countries want to retain some kind of control over the whole thing such as VAT/tax investigations and implementation of the laws. In a way it’s the “worst” of both worlds federated and individual countries but somehow still better than the latter.
• KronisLV 1mo ago
  > a fragmented national model These approaches will waste billions upon billions of Euros for no good reason. Having different VAT rates per-country already leads to overcomplication in so many places.
• rjsw 1mo ago
  The new EU regulation on Digital Product Passports may have similar effects on small businesses. I was expecting that they would build the "passport" on top of existing design standards but that doesn't seem to be the case, the recent webinar on it doesn't go into much detail though.
• kodoman 1mo ago
  For any one interested in how deep these sort regulatory capture laws go in the EU, they can look at the deforestation laws on Agri. Pointlessly difficult for small farmers and medium and commodity traders to cooperate with demanding highly accurate coordinates for plots of land using specialized GPS devices and companies to plot the perimeter of the farm being very difficult to comply with getting the devices in place and plotting none of this actually stopping bad actors who simply lie about the origin of the commodities. I am some one who thinks environmental protection is important but these laws pretend to solve the issue while do very little and just add all these pointless tasks that become easy once you own lots of farm land like say nestle (though they pretend that it's the big players who are going to have a hard time). I deeply hate the EU but love Europe as a European, I hope Europe breaks from the chains of this pointless post war project.
• like_any_other 1mo ago
  Meanwhile you still can't buy most food without tons of plastic wrapping it, unless you go to a farmer's market. The only problem this regulation actually addresses is not enough paperwork being generated.
• pkphilip 1mo ago
  These sorts of regulations are killing not just companies in Europe but across most of the world. Unless you are a medium to large-sized company, it is very difficult to remain fully compliant with the regulations in most nations now - across fields, from packaging, to agriculture, to food, aviation..
  • Scoundreller 1mo ago
    As a small-time Canadian ebay seller trying to pivot to not-US... it's not a good time. What I find funny is that all of my packaging is re-used. I guess it's still "bad" that I'm sending non-EU packaging to EU, but at a global level, I'm way ahead. Re-using >>> re-cycling.
• _ink_ 1mo ago
  Is this not a business idea? Like register for packaging waste schemes in every country and sell it to small companies for some profit? Or doesn't it work this way?
• k310 1mo ago
  Opinion: Big companies are (secretly) in favor of regulation, because it burdens small competitors to the point of failure. Ain't it the case everywhere?
  • deleted 1mo ago
    [deleted]
• devld 1mo ago
  Wait until Cyber Resilience Act kicks in.
• retinaros 1mo ago
  at this stage europe is a machine for politicians to become wealthy through corruption, mass immigration, censorship, mass media control. that is why they hate X and are now fighting to ban it.
• blueSky1989 1mo ago
  I initially learned about this from a luthier and plectrum designer, Hufschmidt Guitars, a one man shop in Switzerland. Some quotes from the update he sent to his customers: """ For a one-person workshop, the result has been pretty brutal. [...] The numbers simply do not work for a micro-business like mine. Even in France and Germany, I send only around 1 to 2 kg of cardboard per year. In some other EU countries, I may send less than 100 g in an entire year. Paying annual compliance costs for one or two parcels makes no economic sense. [...] I have therefore decided to maintain EU shipping only to: FRANCE GERMANY """
  • tumetab1 1mo ago
    I'm not sure the "anti-geo-fencing" rules will not collide with this in the near future. The EU constantly pushes that either you sell to all EU-member-states at the same price or nothing at all.
• deno 1mo ago
  If you actually sell electronics you also need to register for electronic recycling (WEEE or equivalent) in each member state you sell to and the costs are even greater than PPWR costs alone. Probably 5x more at least.
  • uehdheb 1mo ago
    Yea. My guess is that the people complaining now are not in compliance with current regulations as well
• maestroquirk 1mo ago
  "Since 1975, the US has created 7 companies worth over $1 trillion. Europe has created zero." ......... Yet most of the talent is here
• fidotron 1mo ago
  You really have to wonder what Xi Jinpeng thinks of all this. The extent to which China can appear to do nothing while the west kills itself is just unbelievable. How could you possibly respect people that can't get out of their own way so repeatedly?
  • niceguy1827 1mo ago
    I think it popped up maybe a year or two ago on youtube/reddit but there was this meme that goes: "China: do nothing, profit".
  • vachina 1mo ago
    He simply doesn’t think about it. It’s none of his business and there are higher priorities to think about.
• gekkekoe 1mo ago
  full disclosure: I'm a micro-entrepreneur and I suspended all orders to other EU countries. The PPWR is causing a lot of buzz, but they are missing the main point for a market place such as lectronz. PPWR is only for packaging and shipping material. There's something similar called WEEE* for electronics. It's when you need to pay a fee at the end of the product life cycle. This is very similar to PPWR, you need to register in each member state to be able to sell electronics. The solution is also a one stop shop. But Lectronz fail to also mention this. I would argue that this is an even bigger issue than PPWR since it's already in place. Even if the PPWR is solved it's still nearly impossible to sell electronics to other EU member states. Someone has been sleeping when these regulations were being discussed... [*] https://environment.ec.europa.eu/topics/waste-and-recycling/waste-electrical-and-electronic-equipment-weee_en https://environment.ec.europa.eu/topics/waste-and-recycling/...
• geremiiah 1mo ago
  EU also recently introduced a 3 euro fee on all packages from China. Maybe well intentioned but it puts a huge markup, when a thinker wants to buy a very specific 0.05 euro spring from AliExpress or something along those lines.
  • Scoundreller 1mo ago
    nonono, it's 3 Euro per tariff classification. a 0.05 EUR spring, a 0.05 EUR bolt and a 0.05 EUR LED in the same package = 9 EUR fee https://commission.europa.eu/news-and-media/news/ensuring-fairness-and-safety-eur3-customs-duty-low-value-parcels-2026-06-29_en https://commission.europa.eu/news-and-media/news/ensuring-fa...
• jurschreuder 1mo ago
  I don't know but I highly suspect this law will mainly effect people drop shipping from China and will benefit companies like us who for moral reasons work to re-shore production. When I get packages from Europe it's always is recyclable cardboard while from China it's always wrapped in plastic. When I get packages from Europe or the USA it's always branded so the company responsible is always clearly shown, while from China it's usually brandless.
• potatoking 1mo ago
  The EU still believes in fair markets so I don't really see a valid suggestion in the article.. Every US or Chinese seller to the EU can be de minimus, etc, so the EU lowering its standards for consumers and the environment helps mostly foreign vendors who have lower standards to meet in employment, etc.
• st-keller 1mo ago
  They don’t think, that they are killing innovation! I was told that they measure „innovation“ by „patents granted“ - and if you see it that way, only big enterprises can be innovative! And i bet most bureaucrats never worked at a startup!
• tokai 1mo ago
  Another daily round EU FUD.
• xyzelement 1mo ago
  EU has a double-whammy problem that the average citizen is old, and the more ambitious youth has moved to London, Switzerland, or the US. So those who remain are statistically too old or non-ambitious to think regulatory friction applies to them, and they are right.
• alex_john_m 1mo ago
  Oh boy, another LLM generated article posted here as part of an anti-EU astroturfing campaing everyone takes for truth. Does anyone actually bothers to read the actual regulation these days? Yes it start applying starting August 12, 2026, but let's review the bloody requirements AFTER READING THE REGULATION, shall we? Let's see what it says about recycling: - All packaging must be designed for recycling by 2030. - Plastic packaging must include mandatory minimum recycled plastic content targets for 2030 and 2040. - Per capita packaging waste must drop by 5% by 2030, 10% by 2035, and 15% by 2040 (compared to 2018 levels). All these are sensible and the darn paper gives companies time to get with the program. It says so in the regulation black on white! For all the makers, small businesses and so on: You don't make your own packaging, you buy your bags and boxes from a dedicated supplier or get them from the delivery companies you use. Buy them from someone who makes them or use a delivery company that provides packaging according to the new rules. You have until 2030! I run a small business and It took me about 6 months to get into compliance. - Dangerous chemicals like cancer-causing PFAS in food-contact packaging are strictly restricted. Duh! Do we really need to complain about this? Seriously? - Packaging must be as light and small as possible, eliminating empty space and useless layers. This is the only thing that seems ambiguous, some things are fragile, some are not, but maybe companies should be more reasonable with package sizes. If your packaging supplies has only one package size, find someone else. A 5 cm trinket doesn't need a 5mx5m box. Yes I've used the metric system, get over it! - Standardised labels and QR codes for material sorting and disposal take full effect by August 2028 This is meant to make sorting and recycling easier across the whole market and you have 2 years to get into compliance! In my case, all delivery companies in my area already solved this and I get the QR codes already printed on the labels. Most complains I've read in these comments are weird, missing the point and just posted to say the same thing: EU bad, EU bad, America good! America good! They're the same complains I read In any thread around here when it comes to EU regulations. Maybe someone need to change their openclaw prompts from time to time!
• phazerfamza 1mo ago
  as a european, the biggest problem with the EU is the actual EU, the core idea is good, but they have massive over reach and way to much power, they are supposed to be there for european countries, instead it's the other way around.
• moezd 1mo ago
  There is one thing European countries all agree on: Their lawmakers know it the best, thus all create their own carve outs and exceptions.
• phazerfamza 1mo ago
  aah Europe and the EU. If we don't know how to do something properly, we just create new rules and regulations, or simply just add another tax, that's the european way.
• kmeisthax 1mo ago
  > Exempt small-volume sellers and micro-enterprises from cross-border packaging obligations. The threshold would apply only to producers that are below a specific volume of waste and/or a specific yearly turnover. AFAIK this exists SOMEWHERE in the PPWR regulation but it only applies for EU small businesses that are buying packaging from another business in the same country. If you're outside the EU you are expected to do 100% of the bureaucracy regardless of size. My gut tells me that EU PPWR compliance will wind up having a cheap turnkey solution for small businesses eventually, but the way this regulation is written today seems to specifically foresee and preclude turnkey compliance.
• maratc 1mo ago
  This could be easily solved if the EU sold tiny prepaid certificates-of-compliance that one could affix on the package itself (to show the fees were paid.) Larger weight package would incur higher fees. The post office then could stamp these certificates to prevent second use.
• throwawayffffas 1mo ago
  While the regulation is really stupid and could be done much better with either a one stop shop or with simply taxing/complying in the country of origin instead of destination. It opens a very clear market opportunity for LECTRONZ themselves. Stop bitching and start doing the shipping and selling, you probably have the volume all the micro entrepreneurs will ship to you, comply with a single jurisdiction and you take on the task of complying with all the other ones. The EU just printed you a licence to be a middleman, the words you are looking for are thank you.
• sunrising 1mo ago
  my exact same conclusion
• george_max 1mo ago
  I run a small hardware startup, InfiShark Tech -- we sell affordable battery-powered cybersecurity hardware worldwide. Europe has been by far the hardest market for us. The costs in this article are understated for products like ours. This is not just for packaging -- they have separate compliance schemes for electronics (WEEE). If selling products with batteries, you must comply with separate battery regulations. If you pass a certain threshold or contain specific chemicals within your product, you must also comply with the REACH regulation. They work almost exactly the same the article describes, but often with higher costs. Additionally, you must have CE certification for your hardware product. There is no threshold. This means going to a lab and testing RF capabilities, and for wireless / Bluetooth devices it can cost $1,500-$8,000. You can self-certify but it is risky. We pay 800-2,000 EUR per country annually for the authorized representative (AR) and producer responsibility organization (PRO) fees. The AR's task is to hold some documents and provide them to the government when requested -- but that's it. We can do this for free. There's no reason the costs should be this high -- and I see minimal reason why they should exist in the first place. But we must comply. It is important to understand which regulations and which fees to pay for the product. Therefore it is important to use something like PRONEXA -- a "One-Stop-Shop for simple compliance management". With them, we paid ~800-1,000 EUR per country as a one-off registration fee. Then we pay 975 EUR annually per country to keep compliance. Note that these costs are ONLY to PRONEXA, not to each AR or PRO. They are effectively the middleman between us and the ARs / PROs. The fee stability is quite poor, too. We paid the 2025 annual fees roughly a month before year-end and were charged another full annual fee in February 2026. In November 2025, we paid ~500 SEK for Sweden, and in Feb 2026, we were invoiced ~15,000 SEK for that same line. With all of this burden we only pay the countries ~0.5-50 EUR annually for the actual environmental fees. This only makes sense for the government if that number jumps up to the thousands. I think this contributes to lack of innovation in Europe. Small startups can't ship there, and you are limited to large companies overseas. The fix is dead simple -- just introduce a threshold, or charge a recycling fee upfront with each parcel coming in, depending on the HS code. What they did with IOSS is great. You register with one country, and all parcels under 150 EUR can be sent to all of Europe while being VAT compliant. They could implement the same thing for WEEE, battery regulations, packaging, and REACH. Register with one country and cover the rest. We are barely break-even on some countries, and others we are totally underwater. We decided to do it as a future scaling opportunity, but this first year is quite tough. We are debating if we should continue selling to Europe at this stage.
• metalman 1mo ago
  The new regulations and fee's are awsome good news, we need much more of the same, faster. Everybody needs to chip in and find new ways to regulate ordinary activities and charge fees for them, and to start with all contact or interaction with the goverment should be fee based with a minimum €100 base rate for calling a government number charged to your account as soon as the phone starts ringing, same charge for emails and each return email. Exemptions can of course be applied on a csae by case basis. * Only by working Together™ can we pull the roof down on our heads. * completly serious, lets get it over with.
• brap 1mo ago
  >A good idea, a terrible implementation Idea is terrible, implementation is WAI.
• mkl95 1mo ago
  EU states do an excellent job at tolerating each other, with the odd hiccup. They are also gerontocracies fronted by middle aged leaders focused on pleasing older wealthy people, who last cared about entrepreneurship in the 70s. When you combine it with extremely low birth rates, you get a rotting economy.
• giorgosh4 1mo ago
  Yeah time for EU to change, all these legislation and rules never helped EU to grow. I guess it's up to Gernamy/France to finally figure it out
  • rdm_blackhole 1mo ago
    France is about to have either a very far-right or very far-left president and neither party like the EU very much so I wouldn't count on that. As for Germany, Mertz is disliked greatly and the AFD will most likely win the next state elections in the east which could accelerate his departure. Finally Germany and France are both facing many internal issues including migration, debt and low economic growth prospects. All of this to say that change will not come from there.
    • awigotsky 1mo ago
      Will they allow AFD to win? Hmm...
• lores 1mo ago
  These conversations about EU regulations, bureaucracy or general slowness and carefulness contrasted to American ease of doing business and raising capital always make me think "but... look at the state of America! Is it really something to emulate?"
• herbst 1mo ago
  I ran an online shop from Switzerland. Some years ago packages suddenly returned with the info I need to register with a packaging something company now. I had no idea what's going on, I didn't understand the concept and what they wanted. Apparently there were several companies I could register at pay a fee and it somehow became legal again, none of them looked real it looked like a lot of weird broken fake websites. Germany was just a small market for us so we stopped shipping there. I assume it's better and more clear these days and this probably makes it kinda easier in the long run. However it's a perfect example on how such things don't work if not done properly.
• Freak_NL 1mo ago
  No idea if this applies to the whole of the EU, but the government designated critters responsible for this in the Netherlands mention that business that ship less than 50 tons of packaging material, and don't use single-use plastics are exempt. https://www.verpact.nl/nl/nieuw-bij-verpakkings-epr-zo-regel-je-het-goed https://www.verpact.nl/nl/nieuw-bij-verpakkings-epr-zo-regel...
• deleted 1mo ago
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• gwbas1c 1mo ago
  I would think that someone could make a business that sells "standard" packaging that's registered throughout the EU, and that a small business could use that packaging instead? Perhaps I'm misunderstanding something?
  • nickff 1mo ago
    Each company is required to register and report to each country. If you’re a 2MM EURO revenue company (not that big), and you want to sell one $5 item to Germany, you must be registered, hire a local representative, and file the most comprehensive type of reports. Using standardized packaging might make the reporting a little easier (because the information is nicely organized), but doesn’t help with all the friction and added costs.
• andai 1mo ago
  Hmm, I wonder who could have predicted this. Maybe the corporations who pushed the laws? I have no info here, just thinking "what would I do if I was a wealthy corporation?" Dig a deeper moat!
• deleted 1mo ago
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• iamniels 1mo ago
  PPWR is not the only one. Don't forget WEEE and the battery regulation. Only for VAT we have a single entrypoint, for all other regulations, businesses have to submit for each country. Its simply impossible. On the other hand I estimate that between 50% and 200% of the taxes collected like this are wasted and not applied to their ultimate goals. The average collected amount per submission is so small that you cannot pay the bureaucrats managing the complex submissions from these sums. An entrepreneur told me that they were being audited regarding the battery regulation. Two consultants came over from EY and audited all submissions in depth. They found out that the business overpaid by €10. The entrepreneur of course didn't mind and told them to keep the €10. The EY consultants told the entrepreneur to resubmit, otherwise the business would be fined. I think the government spent more on that audit by EY than the business will ever bring in on fees. On top of this we have the regulations like Intrastat and in the future near-real-time submission of digital invoices to our tax authorities.
  • realityking 1mo ago
    > On the other hand I estimate that between 50% and 200% of the taxes collected like this are wasted and not applied to their ultimate goals. The average collected amount per submission is so small that you cannot pay the bureaucrats managing the complex submissions from these sums. The point of this tax is not to raise revenue bit to disincentivize wate. Since the tax weight based, companies have an incentive to reduce packaging.
    • tsss 1mo ago
      Customers already pay for the disposal. You could achieve the same thing by requiring sellers to list in checkout how much the disposal of their packaging will cost. That's a 10 minute change for Claude Code, but of course then it would not give more money and power to the useless bureaucrats.
      • realityking 1mo ago
        First of all that's a weaker signal to the manufacturer/seller to make changes as it'd only indirectly affect them. It's also moot - in most (all?) European cities you only pay for waste but not recycling (paper, plastic, glas, aluminum, etc.). Those are free and paid for by exactly the kind of recycling fees we're discussing here.
• snowpid 1mo ago
  This thread at worst is a negative example of HN. The blog post is reasonable and constructive, the petition is reasonable, the EU 's packaging law is bad executed on this part (other parts are good like forbidding PFAS on food packages, you cant imagine, this was aloud!) but whuge amout of people (or are these bots?) freak out up to stupid conspiracy theories that EU politics want to beg down small companies with packaging laws(or something). HN moderation totally failed and repeatedly fails on EU policy topics. Sometimes I think these are paid bots by some SV dude, sometimes I think it just frustrated Americans who cant handle that Trump is failing and they become aggressive that US is not the best country or something. But the moderation failure is very very consistent.
  • bitcharmer 1mo ago
    [dead]
• deleted 1mo ago
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• planb 1mo ago
  EU regulation is basically broken beyond repair. And I used to be the biggest proponent of it. When everyone was being angry that they are taking away light bulbs this was a kick starter for LED lighting and I guess Signify (formerly Philips lighting) and Osram wouldn’t exist today if they hadn’t been forced to invest into that field of technology. Unfortunately the EU does not at all understand how the internet works, maybe even how the global economy works today. Their goals are very reasonable and I fully support them, but the legislation around it (DMA, AI Act, GDPR, this new packaging stuff, don’t get me started with whatever everyone calls the cookie law) is just out of touch with how the modern world works. Again, I don’t think this is out of bad intention (not even to give an advantage to EU companies, but that is up to discussion) but mostly just out of a complete lack of understanding of what would really benefit the common EU citizen. The just seem to listen to activist groups and lobbyists aiming for regulatory capture and when trying to find a compromise in between they chose the worst of both worlds.
  • jansan 1mo ago
    I am pretty sure the reason for the ban lightbulbs was to push sales of fluorescent lamps before LEDs would finally take over. It came just when LED lamps were still too expensive to replace the light bulbs, so people were pushed into those crappy fluorescent lamps, only to have them replaced a few years later by the much better LEDs.
• germandiago 1mo ago
  My first decision when building my company was to leave Spain. They smash you very quickly. They do not care if they ruin you via prosecurion or you have to shut down. The tax agency is extremely agressive. The laws favor the agents to extents that are illegal and weven criminal (check the bonus of inspectors). Check Robert Amsterdam work on this, something we all spanish know for a long time.
  • ken666 1mo ago
    Where did you move to, if I can ask?
    • germandiago 1mo ago
      Two countries in South East Asia (one is Singapore) to operate. The business is meant to be b2b SaaS which is quite global. But if I lived in Spain... omg I do not want even to imagine how they would try to prosecute me. So I do not live there and problem solved.
      • Asraelite 1mo ago
        Why are you unwilling to say the other country?
        • germandiago 1mo ago
          Bc it is not definitive and bc it is my right to keep it for me :D
  • TacticalCoder 1mo ago
    Spain also smashes foreigners owning a property in Spain. They see tourists and foreigners (even if they're from the EU) as a gigantic target to squeeze and screw as hard as they can. That's what you get when your economy is based on tourism and rich foreigners owning property there: you have to squeeze those hard for it's basically all you have. Officially tourism is "only" about 15% of the GDP but Spain is a service economy and so many of those services revolve around tourism and foreigner owning properties there. Same for the construction sector: they love it when rich tourists have fancy villas built there. My wife used to own a house there. So did her mom. They sold it all and kissed Spain goodbye once and for all: too disgusted by how the fiscal authorities were treating them. I won't go on vacation there anymore. Both my wife and my daughter speak spanish and yet we don't plan to go there anymore: she's done giving money to Spain to be seen, in return, as a lemon out of which more juice can be squeezed. Vote with your feet and you wallet: when a country tries to fuck you, give it the middle finger.
• bryanrasmussen 1mo ago
  it seems weird to me, because normally legislation of this sort has a minimum amount of revenue required, or company size requirements, but not this one? I mean reading the article it seems not, but if it was just some guy telling me this on the street I would naturally expect they were misinformed and there was a requirement for the law to apply that they had missed in their review of the matter.
  • thinking_cactus 1mo ago
    Definitely believe regulation burden should be proportional to impact. Also, for those small cases, why not put responsibility (for any harm) more directly into both the customers and producers? For example, if a producer of a new low-volume product somehow manages to get a lot of waste packaging into the environment, they could be held responsible and pay a fee, or probably who discarded was the consumer, so the consumer in this case should be held responsible. I get that large corporations should be held to higher standards, and take stronger preemptive measures and follow stricter compliance rules. I think the same should apply for all sorts of regulations, like electrical safety, radio emissions, etc.. If you're designing and selling a small product, you can and should take responsibility for what happens to it (in the case it is found your device bad design/construction itself caused injury, of course). Maybe the only thing you should be obliged to do was put a large sticker like 'WARNING: Prototype-class device. By opening you accept some RISK OF INJURY from device. Return to source if terms not accepted: (...)' -- that is, both you and the consumer should share some responsibility for trying something experimental. Probably the overwhelming majority are completely harmless low-voltage devices. In general, I think outcome-based and performance-oriented regulation is something that should be more widespread. Like, there should be in the worst case two options: (1) You follow a strict set of rules and guidelines that dictate how companies in your industry type should operate (specially important for high-risk stuff like nuclear plants, large civilian housing buildings, etc.); (2) You (instead) take increased resposibility for outcomes of your activity (products, devices, etc.), being liable for any damage at an increased rate.
• raffael_de 1mo ago
  isn't that what cyberpunk is in terms of a political something (as opposed to just an aesthetic)? f EU and its bureaucrats, f the corps and its shills ... about time we're going rogue now .. HACK THE PLANET!
• vlyan 1mo ago
  >The main idea of EPR is sensible: businesses that place packaging on the market should help finance its collection and recycling. it is not sensible at all because businesses and individuals who dispose of that packaging already pay for the privilege.
  • dbdr 1mo ago
    The problem now is that it's the producer that decides what the packaging is, but it's the consumer (or the state) who pays for the collection and recycling. By making the producer pay for it, you give them an incentive to make it more efficient.
    • mbq77 1mo ago
      Except there is no incentive whatsoever; it is just pay bureaucrats with your consumer's money, so they can report improvement in fake eco-points. Most garbage collection money sinks have pricing like 1000 EUR yearly forever + 0.01 EUR per ton of arbitrarily unsustainable trash.
      • dvdkon 1mo ago
        > pay bureaucrats with your consumer's money Once the consumer has paid, it's your money now. The incentive is clear, less packaging means more money you keep. That only big producers will actually see the per-ton payments as significant instead of just having to pay absurd registration fees is a separate issue.
        • mbq77 1mo ago
          Literally, no; as a small producer, I would have to pay (yearly, per country!) WEEE and PPWR money regardless of my sales, while per-volume costs are so low that the optimisation of a product footprint is meaningless. There is no de minimis though, I have to fill out forms that I have produced like 0.8 kg of cardboard and 0.3 kg of e-waste, yet collected nothing since none of my users would like ever use 1:1 rule to send me an out-of-life USB dongle while buying a new one.
• dec0dedab0de 1mo ago
  All regulations end up being scheme’s to protect incumbents. Especially when the incumbent is ostensibly, and loudly against the regulation.
• svobodamartin 1mo ago
  History will see last years as EU that turned Europe -suicidal for own energy industry and economy via green deal without real impact for the world (see EU vs World/ China CO2 emisions chart) -demographically/socially suicidal via open borders and stupidly generous social benefits for immigrants instead of supporting own families -going back in time via overregulation of every aspect of our lives -becoming police state/s via overcontrol -hypocritical via outsourcing industries and making carbon footprint in other parts of the world -internally weak via not protecting european values over immigrants "rights" and terror mongering (p.e. Xmas markets canceled on many places) -supresing democracy via online censorship (DSA) -juicing own people via over-taxation (exit taxes and unrealized gains taxes) -being stowaway in terms of own external security (majority of states didn't fulfill NATO requirements in terms of GDP's percentage spent on military...well this actually is one thing that improves over the years, but Europe needed a kick from east and west to becoming adult here after years of underspending) All in all, EU controlling Europe is committing civilizational suicide, living off past merits which results/capacity are running low while morally lecturing the rest. At the same time also destroying the very foundations that made Europe prosperous. History will likely look back at us as we/Europe voluntarily chose decline. ps. the fact that I had to check if any claim made is not illegal, shows how far with censorship we already are. Freedom of speech cant be regulated without being lost.
  • reillyse 1mo ago
    Little hysterical no? Everywhere has their problems, I think Europe is doing fine. Where do you think is a model society ?
    • Razengan 1mo ago
      Uranus, where I have announced myself as undisputed leader.
      • reillyse 1mo ago
        In light of your unilateral pronouncement, I’d like to deliver my own message to all the loyal residents of Anuses everywhere… this too shall pass.
• deleted 1mo ago
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• martin_a 1mo ago
  Newly established laws are always like a pendulum. It swings to one side, overreaching and overcomplicating things, and then back to the other side where restrictions are loosened or removed. Anybody remembers the EU platform for dispute resolution? It's gone after 10 years because nobody used it. PPWR in 10 years will probably be something like: Sign up for a recycling system in your country and pay for the packaging you've brought into the market. Also have icons on the packaging so people know how to recycle them. (Except in France, they'll surely require some crazy stuff as always.)
• avereveard 1mo ago
  not all regulation is bad regulation. micro packaging is waste, and waste is an issue in europe. the problem stem when you get conglomerate unfairly competing from deregulated countries, applying maximum legal optimization to skirt regulations that smaller player cannot evade. THAT is the problem to fix.
• nelox 1mo ago
  Seriously? You should only ever need to walk to the village market to buy anything, and walk back with your own bag.
• thinking_cactus 1mo ago
  I think in the future we should think less about fine-based regulation, and more about easy access to education, and assistance in compliance. It's much better for the environment (and the economy) that someone doesn't pollute, for example, than that someone pollutes than pays (a potentially large) fine. So if you want to make a product, there should be readily available, easy to read and follow, guides to make your product compliant. For products with large sales volumes or higher risk, the procedures of course should be more thorough, allowing some more complexity. I think even free consults offered by governments could be a great idea, much better to have consultants before violating a law, than waste money with a lot of inspectors. Also stimulating people to solve problems (many times using technology) is another benefit.
  • dmix 1mo ago
    So basically the "pyramids of support" in the responsive regulation idea https://johnbraithwaite.com/responsive-regulation/ https://johnbraithwaite.com/responsive-regulation/
• diogenescynic 1mo ago
  Same thing applies to California except at the most elite levels. Yes you can get your tech start up funded, but try opening a car wash... the taxes and regulations are overly burdensome for small businesses.
• anigbrowl 1mo ago
  A simpler solution (which the author doesn't seem to consider) is just putting hte cost on the packaging vendors, who will of course pass it on to their customers. So the price of a padded bag or whatever will rise perhaps 20 cents, but the person mailing goods from their micro-storefront doesn't have to worry about that.
• anigbrowl 1mo ago
  Thanks to tomis who posted the EU FAQ on the topic below: https://op.europa.eu/en/publication-detail/-/publication/ad14cb8f-8d4f-11f1-9262-01aa75ed71a1 https://op.europa.eu/en/publication-detail/-/publication/ad1... None of this applies to companies that are micro-enterprises or use generic rather than branded packaging. There's a helpful diagram on page 13. The author of this article seems to have imagined a worst-case scenario based on either a misunderstanding or misrepresentation of the EU rules; the discussion here seems to have a lot of people who are in a big rush to demonize their perceived political opponents on ideological grounds.
  • veeti 1mo ago
    Simply not true. The helpful diagram you refer to does not consider the case where company A manufactures the packaging, company B buys the packaging, and then does a B2C delivery to another member state. In that case company B is the producer, even if B is a "micro-enterprise". > the discussion here seems to have a lot of people who are in a big rush to demonize their perceived political opponents on ideological grounds. No, it is the opposite. There are a whole lot of people trying to rationalize something crazy. Nevertheless, countless online shops in the EU run by small business have already closed thanks to these regulations. Even if your assertion that this is a giant misunderstanding were true, the damage is already done.
    • vanviegen 1mo ago
      > Nevertheless, countless online shops in the EU run by small business have already closed thanks to these regulations. Do you happen to have a source for that?
      • veeti 1mo ago
        You can start with the TFA or many given in this comment section.
        • gusgus01 1mo ago
          The article is actually saying they've had record sign ups this year and as far as I can see doesn't make any comment about a decrease in sales in the last 2 weeks since the implementation of this regulation. There is a first hand report of someone stopping their shipping really far down on this post, and then someone on that chain links to a reddit comment from someone as well. I'm sure there's probably a few comments I missed, but idk if I'd say there's proof of countless here or in the article. It does seem like it'd have a chilling effect if the article's interpretation is correct, and other comments here also stated that the EU commission wanted to have a central registry to minimize the overhead.
• rrmdp 1mo ago
  This is really sad to read :( So many entrepreneurs (who can because software businesses) are leaving EU
• jongjong 1mo ago
  The problem here is that government regulations don't work. Only punishment works and punishment should be based on number of infringements. So if some poorly discarded packaging is found in a forest by a government official, they can document it. At the end of the year, the companies involved in the making of the improperly discarded products would be fined some amount proportional to the number of recorded infringements and magnitude of infringements (e.g. total weight) to cover clean up costs pertaining to that particular source of waste.
• deleted 1mo ago
  [deleted]
• Tomis02 1mo ago
  It's worth messaging EU MPs or talking to them directly.
• imnotr0b0t 1mo ago
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• greatgib 1mo ago
  This is with stupid half backed regulations like that that Europe industrial base is collapsing and that voters in most countries are turning their vote to nationalist parties. Life is already difficult everywhere nowadays, and instead of having European institutions lifting weights on the citizen shoulders, like they did for the single space for telecom or payments a decade ago, they are now actively harming citizen with everyday new political regulations that are not asked by the population but mostly pushed by lobbies. Like chat control. Here, in this case, it doesn't look so, but a few big manufacturers and retailers like Amazon are congratulating themselves to have been able to ensure that there is a high barrier to entry to sell any product over there when it is effortless for them as they already have all the logistic and representatives in place.
• dostick 1mo ago
  > Assigning an official PETI petition number usually takes several weeks. If this is how it works in the EU bureaucracy, then there’s no hope.
• A_D_E_P_T 1mo ago
  Uh, guys, the EU left a huge loophole. The law applies to all companies that "makes transport packaging available for the first time on the territory of another Member State, directly to end users." (I've checked and there's definitely no exemption for micro entities.) The loophole is in the words "for the first time" and "another Member State." So. You are in Italy. You want to ship a parcel to Germany. If you buy generic packaging off-the-shelf from a German supplier, and then you ship the parcel in that packaging, the regulation does not apply to you, as that specific packaging material was already "made available" in the territory of the destination Member State before you used it. Therefore you cannot be the party making that packaging unit available there "for the first time." It was already available in that member state via a different company. You bought it. You used it. You'd need to buy boxes and bubble-wrap from 27 member states and keep them inventoried, but that's pennies compared to actual regulatory compliance -- I mean, the paperwork and fees.
• andix 1mo ago
  This regulation is utterly broken. The only way for a small business is to ignore it completely and hope for the best.
• kazinator 1mo ago
  > Introduce an EU-wide de minimis threshold. You would think there de facto already is one? A small time operator shipping a few boards here and there can do it completely under the radar, not even aware that these rules exist. If it pops into my head to make a circuit board, put it into bubble wrap and mail it to someone, I'm just gonna wake up, take a shower, have a coffee and then proceed to do that, and not think about anything else.
• theonejvo 1mo ago
  Australia is doing the same thing x100
• podocarp 1mo ago
  Being responsible for collection is such a dumb way to do it. Collection doesn't even occur. Can someone explain to an outsider what these laws are motivated by? They seem so far removed from reality. Isn't a flat tax on all packaging like plastic bags in supermarkets going to be more efficient?
• emsign 1mo ago
  There's one problem: Nationalist parties in Europe hate EU-wide solutions and they are becoming more and more popular. It will hurt our economies but these parties thrive on lies anyway and deep down voters their voters want to "see the world burn".
• raffraffraff 1mo ago
  How about adding a return packaging cost and have the empty package sent back to the country of origin so that you can drop it into your own recycling bin?
• komatsu 1mo ago
  Sign a petition rising this issue: https://www.change.org/p/stop-destroying-eu-micro-businesses-immediate-moratorium-on-cross-border-epr-fees https://www.change.org/p/stop-destroying-eu-micro-businesses... (75k signatures already)
  • W3zzy 1mo ago
    I feel like it would've been a better choice to start this petition on the EU's platform. https://commission.europa.eu/get-involved/engage-eu-policymaking/petition-eu_en https://commission.europa.eu/get-involved/engage-eu-policyma...
• SanjayMehta 1mo ago
  > He has just become a packaging waste producer in four countries. This is the part which is confusing. If the EU was a real union, then this would not be a problem, the selling point would be it's a union, all countries are the same. It appears from the outside that the only united thing about the regulation is that there is a regulation, and then each country goes off and does its own thing. So why have an EU at all? Very strange.
• timonoko 1mo ago
  You voted for this. And there no mechanism you can fix it. If you now vote for something else, they just cancel the results and make you vote again.
• Shihan 1mo ago
  There is way too much regularization in Europe. I get it, we want to be clean, nice and modern. But everything has a cost, there needs to be some balance.
• m000 1mo ago
  I've been following the PPWR in news and social media. Everybody is lamenting about the micro-enterprises that see their business squashed, but mostly because they are involved in one. I do empathize with them and really want to see these small business surviving and thriving. But then, in the context of discussion, nobody asks what matters: Cui bono? To me, this looks like a direct handout to Amazon and similar (big) enterprises: Pay a % "Amazon tax" to have your fulfilment handled by them, and your PPWR problem goes away. And PPWR comes a short month after another Amazon-friendly legislation: The €3 per item-kind customs duty for items shipped from outside EU. Obviously, direct shipping from China had been undercutting Amazon-and-similar prices, were you willing to wait for a couple of weeks for your package to arrive. The new duty drastically changed the balance in the delivery time vs price calculation. So, we have a streak of 2 legislations in a matter of a couple of months, benefiting a specific business model, and conveniently timed just before (€3 duty) and during (PPWR) the European Parliament recess. Coincidence much?
  • mordae 1mo ago
    It is not. Big European business always get what they want. Which tends to be maintaining status quo.
    • jorisw 1mo ago
      Blanket statement, no backup
  • logronoide 1mo ago
    Obviously, you have never dealt with Amazon as a merchant. You still need to be compliant with PPWR, no matter you sell on Amazon, eBay, Aliexpress or the street corner.
    • tecleandor 1mo ago
      But one of those is not like the others. If you sell on Amazon, via the "Fulfilled by Amazon" system... Wouldn't be Amazon the one required to comply with PPWR? They're putting the stuff in boxes and all that stuff... (I have no idea)
• deleted 1mo ago
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• logronoide 1mo ago
  As a retro hobbyist that sells worldwide I wrote about this mess weeks ago: https://sidecartridge.com/blog/2026/08/10/ppwr-eu-vs-small-companies/ https://sidecartridge.com/blog/2026/08/10/ppwr-eu-vs-small-c... And I stopped selling to all eu countries except Germany and Spain.
• shevy-java 1mo ago
  The EU is de-facto controlled by lobbyists. And they don't want the EU to be fixed.
• rickdeckard 1mo ago
  As I keep reading about "no prior warning", "effective immediately", "nothing being planned ahead", etc.: 1. This regulation was SIGNED in Dec.2024 [0], the average lead-time for the final document is 13-17 MONTHS, so work on this regulation started in 2023. 2. The law went into effect in Feb.2025 and is only being ENFORCED from Aug.2026 [0] 3. The owner of this regulation is the Directorate-General for Environment (DG-ENV), which consists of members from many European Countries [1], closely working with local representatives those local government assigned to work in the EU. This is not a blame on anyone in EU not knowing about this (!) The point is that NOTHING was rushed here by the EU. Local representatives of the countries had PLENTY of time to contribute and influence the regulation, PLENTY of time to consult the public and local experts to work out the best local solution, PLENTY of time to prepare locally for the enforcement. If there's a feeling that this wasn't done, then the pressure needs to be put on the LOCAL government. It is too popular in local politics to frame the EU as an "external force" outside of anyone's influence of which the country is suffering from, while celebrating yourself for everything actually achieved by the Union of the European countries. --> If citizens don't reject "Anti EU" sentiments and scapegoat-narratives from local governments and political parties, and demand the acknowledgement, participation and responsibility of procedures in the European Union, the pressure is not applied at the point where the problem can be resolved. [0] https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/ALL/?uri=OJ:L_202500040 https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/ALL/?uri=OJ:L_202... [1] https://commission.europa.eu/about/departments-and-executive-agencies/environment_en https://commission.europa.eu/about/departments-and-executive...
  • stnikolauswagne 1mo ago
    Im about as Pro EU as they come, but the problem is that lobying local governments does not help in this case. Im from Germany, we have no issues getting registration in Germany done, however when we looked into it there was quite frankly no way of getting for example the polish registration done. As citizen of Germany I cannot really lobby the local polish government, so we are basically barred from that market by EU Regulations. We are now in some sort of weird limbo where there is some weird language from the EU comission that they discourage punishment until some issues are ironed out so a good portion of our market segment just ignores the rules.
• rukshn 1mo ago
  I feel Europe is a bubble waiting to burst. Recently I was giving a lecture on digital health regulation and 90% of people were pro regulation in general not just for digital health. It’s something hard for them to understand that too much regulation is not good and a balance should exist
• shafyy 1mo ago
  This is insane. I have following the PPWR for years now and it one of the most lobbied regulations in EU history (I was told by people on the ground in Brussels). My company provides reusable ecommerce packaging to online shops. And in the last draft, they introduced an exception for the re-usable packaging for eecommerce for cardbaord. Like, really? Why do we have that paragraph at all if it excludes cardboard?
• prolly97 1mo ago
  For every time the EU implements a new regulation... and sees it fail horribly... it seems as if their collective minds concludes that the reason is for not having even more central control. Soon we will have our own, European, Gosplan. Comrades.
• mbq77 1mo ago
  The funny thing is that Lectronz is selling electronics, which already have to be compatible with WEEE (crossed bin icon), which is similar to PPWR, requires hefty fees separately in each member state, and CE (CE icon), which in turn requires expensive EMC testing and a shitload of paperwork. It can work in practice because the enforcement apparatus is almost non-existent.
• regularfry 1mo ago
  If, in my outbound package, I include a prepaid return envelope with instructions to post the packaging back to me, does that get me out of registration requirements?
• smarri 1mo ago
  To comment on a narrow point, a friction point like this is an opportunity for an entrepreneur.
• capibara13 1mo ago
  Yes it's about time that Europe becomes a little nicer to startups.
• wim 1mo ago
  This is par for the course when it comes to EU regulation unfortunately. The EU should really make a choice here: either there can be EU-wide regulation but Member States can't impose their own implementations or overlapping/competing national laws, or regulation should be left to Member States. You can't have both and pretend to be a single market.
• PowerElectronix 1mo ago
  You can't throw all that red tape and not expect to get a lot of folks tangled to death in it.
• mcbg1541 1mo ago
  This seems a bit too much. It would be better if it only applied to companies over a certain size.
• ricardobeat 1mo ago
  The idea that sellers, especially small businesses, need to pay a fee to compensate for their packaging is already an insult. We already pay 50%+ income tax, 19% VAT on every purchase, how come the costs are not already included in public services? What’s next, charging a pollution fee from bicycle riders for their rubber particles?
• zoobab 1mo ago
  If you are interested in the EU killing small companies and economic suicide: https://ffii.org/unified-patent-court-is-100x-more-expensive-and-an-sme-killer-europe-is-commiting-an-economic-suicide/ https://ffii.org/unified-patent-court-is-100x-more-expensive... This is an article from 2021, but in the meantime, after the complaints of small companies, countries made the matter even worse by *increasing* the court fees even more, citing the inflation over 10 years. You see there is hope in this corrupt world, not to mention that the people who decide do it for themselves, states don't want to spend more so they send the bill to companies that have to litigate.
• yason 1mo ago
  Recycling fees for and managing packaging ought to be delegate-able to a packaging company. I.e. could buy a pre-made, EU-stamped and PPWR pair-for box of size WHD for a slightly higher price, put your stuff in it and ship it. The box already includes the whatever recycling fees and bureaucracy charges when the box was purchased by you. If you manufacture something complicated that requires you to roll your own packaging then you're responsible for the recycling fees but you probably can already deal with it at that stage.
• anaidenov 1mo ago
  The EU consists of member states pursuing two contradictory goals: improving long-term economic efficiency by building a pan-European single market, and protecting local inefficiencies to preserve short-term political stability. Once the first goal ceases to be about improvement and becomes a matter of survival, the second will lose its importance (and the cycle -- "low taxes and barriers - growth - seems safe to tax, regulate and spend more - stagnation" -- will begin again).
• minervacap2022 1mo ago
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• erlich 1mo ago
  Australia has 28M people and isn't part of any supranational union. Same with many other countries. Why are Europeans so obsessed with this integration?
• p1dda 1mo ago
  The EU is fucking crap, fuck the EU, fuck von der Leyen
• _the_inflator 1mo ago
  I like the pundits, who sit in their office chair, who never did anything that involves business, not even organized a charity nor event, but want to lecture a maker about how wrong he is and how he can comply with EU regulation. This is the trademark of the EU: free market means, guys in office chairs lecture makers, how to play their game. Imposing more regulation is of course helpful, because it enables more state employees to lecture others. This is so bogus and wrong, it is FBR. The new EU regulation makes you track like a spy on a package in a foreign country and report about its whereabouts - while open borders and controls are very lax for other things. Let that sink in: picture it that you personally watch and report what happens to every package you use. What a joke. How comes, human kind survived 100.000 years without the ingenious of the EU? And the best part: Regulators tell the states to ignore their law... What a place to be...
• bitcharmer 1mo ago
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• antonvs 1mo ago
  Option #1 seems simplest. Option #3 discriminates against individuals who sell direct, without using a marketplace. A possible option #4 is: establish EU-wide rules that can optionally be applied to cross-border transactions. I.e. a seller could choose to follow the EU-wide rules when selling into another country. This doesn't require countries to change their own internal rules.
• manganate06 1mo ago
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• jierka 1mo ago
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• ShadowandPath 1mo ago
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• silexia 1mo ago
  Overregulation is the number one threat to mankind, bar none.
• peteforde 1mo ago
  Austria: Federal Environment Agency / approved dual system. P €810 + W €1,110 = €1,920/yr. Battery: +€1,110. Belgium: IVC/CIE; Fost Plus for household packaging / Valipac for commercial packaging. P €585 + W €585 = €1,170/yr. Battery: +€585. Bulgaria: Executive Environment Agency / Ecopack or another approved system. P €375 + W €990 = €1,365/yr. Battery: +€1,195. Croatia: FZOEU / RPPO. P €780 + W €1,315 = €2,095/yr. Battery: +€1,315. Cyprus: Green Dot Cyprus or applicable national system. P €375 + W €910 = €1,285/yr. Battery: +€910. Czechia: Ministry of Environment / EKO-KOM. P €385 + W €1,110 = €1,495/yr. Battery: +€910. Denmark: Danish Producer Responsibility / approved PRO. P €1,110 + W €925 = €2,035/yr. Battery: +€730. Estonia: Pakendiregister / approved PRO. P €385 + W €775 = €1,160/yr. Battery: +€775. Finland: Producer Responsibility Register / Rinki. P €810 + W €925 = €1,735/yr. Battery: +€925. France: ADEME/SYDEREP; normally Citeo or Leko. P €585 + W €985 = €1,570/yr. Battery: +€790. Germany: LUCID/ZSVR plus a dual-system contract; WEEE: Stiftung EAR. P €360 + W €1,185 = €1,545/yr. Battery: +€705. Germany illustrates why the service price and actual environmental fee should not be confused: LUCID registration itself is free and one current small-volume packaging example is only about €39–€41/year if handled directly. Greece: EOAN/EMPA / HERRCO. P €790 + W €985 = €1,775/yr. Battery: +€910. Hungary: national registration / MOHU. P €1,120 + W €1,185 = €2,305/yr. Battery: +€985. Ireland: EPA / Repak as applicable. P €585 + W €1,170 = €1,755/yr. Battery: +€1,170. Italy: CONAI and relevant consortium. P €805 + W €1,305 = €2,110/yr. Battery: nominally +€1,305, although this provider offers a WEEE+battery bundle. Latvia: State Environmental Service / approved recovery system. P €1,290 + W €1,365 = €2,655/yr. Battery: +€1,375. Lithuania: GPAIS / approved PRO. P €780 + W €1,365 = €2,145/yr. Battery: +€1,375. Luxembourg: Valorlux. P €375 + W €1,485 = €1,860/yr. Battery: +€1,500. Malta: ERA / GreenPak or Green MT. P €780 + W €675 = €1,455/yr. Battery: +€675. Netherlands: Verpact; electronics commonly through Stichting OPEN/Wecycle. P €385 + W €385 = €770/yr. Battery: +€385. Poland — Packaging/WEEE registration through BDO and appropriate recovery organisation. P €910 + W €1,110 = €2,020/yr. Battery: +€985. Portugal: APA/SILiamb / Sociedade Ponto Verde or another scheme. P €1,195 + W €1,390 = €2,585/yr. Battery: +€1,390. Romania: AFM / approved OIREP. P €880 + W €1,195 = €2,075/yr. Battery: +€1,195. Slovakia: Ministry/ISOH / ENVI-PAK, NATUR-PACK or equivalent. P €750 + W €1,120 = €1,870/yr. Battery: +€1,125. Slovenia: ARSO / approved PRO. P €1,485 + W €1,615 = €3,100/yr. Battery: +€1,630. Spain: MITECO / Ecoembes. P €790 + W €985 = €1,775/yr. Battery: +€985. This provider also quotes €595 one-time for obtaining the Spanish NIF where required, plus official/apostille costs. Sweden: Naturvårdsverket / NPA. P €810 + W €1,110 = €1,920/yr. Battery: +€505. Using the published list of concierge prices above, covering all 27 EU countries for a batteryless electronic product would cost approximately: Packaging service: €20,290/year WEEE service: €29,260/year Combined: €49,550/year Adding battery compliance using the same provider's à-la-carte figures adds approximately €27,445/year. What is the opposite of something putting a spring in your step?
• DoctorOetker 1mo ago
  Imagine a driver on the highway observing a prominent vehicle (perhaps a big truck, or a fancy sports car) systematically veering too much to the left say, at least according to the observing driver. Now imagine the phenomenon where the observing driver irrationally steers to the right in protest, as if it controls the car in the distance. In Western Europe, Big Tech is basically synonymous in the eye of the beholder to US Big Tech. Is there a name for the phenomenon where perhaps voters, perhaps politicians enact rules that would have screwed over Big Tech Big Shots as if they were enacting US laws? Effectively preemptively punishing local entrepreneurs for the perceived injustices committed by their colleagues across the ocean? This then feeds back into a vicious cycle of stifling local entrepreneurship, increasing transoceanic jealousy / anger towards entrepreneurs and more such laws?
• tzs 1mo ago
  The obvious questions are (1) why didn't they create something like VAT MOSS (or whatever they call the current version), and (2) why no de minimus? I did some searching on Google, and its LLM gave what seemed to be a good summary of the reasons they did not do that. If anyone wants to see that here's the prompt [1]. It also said that they are scrambling to fix this up. Industry coalitions are pushing for something like VAT MOSS for this to be included the upcoming "Circular Economy Act" due later this year. I followed up asking about using an intermediary, similar to how it is often done for dealing with sales tax in the US. Here's the prompt [2] if anyone wants to see that. It gave a seemingly reasonable explanation of why that is much more difficult to do that it is for taxes. [1...] Why didn't they create something similar for this to the VAT MOSS system (that is the old name...I think it is called something else now) they use for VAT which lets you register for VAT in just one country and remit you VAT collected for sales in all countries to that one country and that county's tax authorities deal with giving each country their share? [1...] I'm seeing a lot of small businesses with low sales outside their home country getting really harmed by having to register in each country someone orders from. [1] (Also, why no de minimus rule like I believe they have for VAT)? [2...] With cross border tax issues (not so much in Europe because VAT is simple, but in the US for example where sales tax for online sales is a nightmare due to several thousand different taxing jurisdictions) a common solution is to have an intermediary that is the seller of record. [2...] The transaction is structures so the intermediary buys from the vendor, and the customer buys from the intermediary. The first part is a B2B sale for resale which is usually sales tax exempt making it easy for the vendor. It is the intermediary that sells to the remote customer and deals with the tax nightmare. 2] Could something like that work with the Packaging and Packaging Waste Regulation? If the intermediary was in the same jurisdiction as the vendor, the vendor would only be shipping in country, so would only have to register with their own country. The intermediary would be the one that registers in every country.