6 ms·

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 th

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EU commission chooses what laws to propose for the parliament to vote, if it wasn't satisfactory they could have just withdrawn it.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.
- deno 1mo ago
  It is enforceable and the financial punishment is severe. There's no US’s LLC equivalent in EU, you basically only have C-Corp/Inc. equivalents (much more expensive to start and operate, both because of accounting and corporation income tax), so most small sellers in EU end up fully liable with their own wealth for the ridiculous up to 200,000€ penalties. Chinese sellers don’t care, sure, but if you live in EU you do care. That said while the financial penalties are in practice still not common they are chilling nevertheless. However, EU is also now starting marketplace level enforcement, so in practice even those Chinese sellers will not be able to sell anything without registration.
  - fy20 1mo ago
    > much more expensive to start and operate, both because of accounting and corporation income tax Assumption. It depends on the country. I know in the UK I opened my limited company for £20 and there is no requirement to have an accountant prepare accounts at my size (and it's simple enough to do yourself). Ok UK is no longer EU, but as I understand Ireland LTD, Latvia SIA, Estonia OU and Poland sp. z.o.o. are similar and can be ran as a non-resident.
    - simgt 1mo ago
      Sadly you can't run them as a non-resident afaik. The member state in which you resides will come after you for taxes if you operate a foreign company. In France the micro-entrepreneur status makes you partially liable, and running a SASU/EURL does require ~200€/m of accounting.
      - deno 1mo ago
        If you actually sell intra-EU and deal with multiple currencies 200€/m would be cheap. I'd expect no less than 1000€/m.
    - deno 1mo ago
      You need to do double entry bookkeeping and prepare annual financial statements for all of those you've mentioned including UK. In addition, you cannot register LTD in Ireland yourself, the Company's secretary must be a different person. So either you are now in business with a friend or you pay someone. For any other member country you also run into a language barrier. Polish "Sp. z o.o." has ~1150€ (5000 PLN) minimal capital requirement. Registering entity with corporation tax requirement in any other country also means you would need to defend its tax residency (practically impossible if you don't actually do business there) or you have to pay corporation tax in the country you are actually operating in. It's doable but now you are dealing with two different tax authorities and potentially pay taxes in different currency and you can't have books in multiple currencies so get to have lots of fun. It's much easier to just register US LLC instead at this point. However if you want to do anything physical not digital you end up having to register and do taxes in your resident country anyway. But you can avoid corporation tax at least and keep limited liability.
mrtksn 1mo ago
It's always like this, EU is in urgent need of becoming a country in some form and local government deal with local stuff only. It shows up in the stats, citizens almost always trust EU more than their governments and want EU to have more power but all this means those local governments becoming less important and therefore no one is really pushing for it. Fingers crossed Trump invades Greenland so things can start moving.
- antiloper 1mo ago
  > It's always like this, EU is in urgent need of becoming a country in some form and local government deal with local stuff only. The lesson is the opposite: The EU needs LESS power, not more. If the member states didn't have a cartel to tyrannize their collective population, this regulation could never have happened. Any single country that would try to enforce this would be on its own.
  - mrtksn 1mo ago
    Nope, less power means the current situation will be the default as each country by default will have their own body and rules to govern instead of one rule and one body that handles the whole continent. Unlike what you appear to believe Europeans are not some libertarian captured by the EU socialist, most europeans do want less wasteful and less harmful packaging.
    - antiloper 1mo ago
      Do most Europeans want all of their E-commerce to be only handled by American and Chinese megacorporations without local players? Because that is the effect of this regulation. Instead of a SME shipping a cardboard box, it will be Amazon or Temu.
      - mrtksn 1mo ago
        You are not arguing in good faith, such a loaded question. I will leave it here, too much BS in one comment to deal with it
antiloper 1mo ago
> member states do shitty stuff and blame the EU. The crooked MEPs also voted in favor of this law. They are just as culpable.
amarcheschi 1mo ago
I haven't followed the legislative process, where can I find that the eu wanted a single registry but the country pushed for national ones? Because i have never read it. I'm not saying it's not true, it's just that it's so hard to follow these things when one is supposed to have a life as well
- Avamander 1mo ago
  You have to use the FOIA-equivalent of your member state to get access to the documents submitted to the EU by your country.
- mpweiher 1mo ago
  There has been reporting on this in many places. Here is one: https://packaging-journal.de/en/eu-commission-wants-to-scrap-authorised-representative-obligation-for-ppwr/ https://packaging-journal.de/en/eu-commission-wants-to-scrap... "According to the Händlerbund, the European Commission's proposal to abolish the requirement has been on the table since December 2025. However, discussions in the Council of the EU were suspended a few weeks ago after a majority of member states spoke out against it." "A restricted version is currently being discussed in the European Parliament. According to this, an exemption is only to apply to micro-enterprises with up to 49 employees and an annual turnover of a maximum of 10 million euros. A first reading is scheduled for October 2026 at the earliest."
  - amarcheschi 1mo ago
    Ok ty
  - deleted 1mo ago
    [deleted]
  - pembrook 1mo ago
    If you need to both: a) exempt companies with under 50 employees to not kill small business AND b) are okay with doing so, ie. there's little consequences from exempting companies from this Then this is the mark of a terrible piece of legislation. What problem are we actually addressing here by creating another fee collecting, headache inducing registration regime and the 684th enforcement bureaucracy in the EU over yet another trivial consumer issue? Yes, single use plastics aren't great. Incentivize companies to move away from them by creating positive market incentives instead of creating an anti-productive, full time packaging Stasi. It's almost as if the people attracted to a career in government can only imagine their subjects responding to the stick, even though the carrot is often far more persuasive. This is the classic downfall of all economic central planning. The problem with this particular topic is it's a religious one for many in the urban monoculture. They don't ultimately care about packaging waste, they care about punishment and repentance for humanity's existence. We've angered the gods and must repent via punitive measures! To incentivize good behavior is antithetical to that, even if it is more effective at actually doing the thing.
conradfr 1mo ago
> A couple of things to note: I have Claude Code PTSD.
izacus 1mo ago
Meanwhile in a neighbouring conversation thread people are attacking Van Der Leyen as she's at fault for democratic member states torpedoing the good approach. Apparently it's undemocratic when elected governments of their countries destroy a good solution and then blame others.

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.

deno 1mo ago
It is enforceable and the financial punishment is severe. There's no US’s LLC equivalent in EU, you basically only have C-Corp/Inc. equivalents (much more expensive to start and operate, both because of accounting and corporation income tax), so most small sellers in EU end up fully liable with their own wealth for the ridiculous up to 200,000€ penalties. Chinese sellers don’t care, sure, but if you live in EU you do care. That said while the financial penalties are in practice still not common they are chilling nevertheless. However, EU is also now starting marketplace level enforcement, so in practice even those Chinese sellers will not be able to sell anything without registration.
- fy20 1mo ago
  > much more expensive to start and operate, both because of accounting and corporation income tax Assumption. It depends on the country. I know in the UK I opened my limited company for £20 and there is no requirement to have an accountant prepare accounts at my size (and it's simple enough to do yourself). Ok UK is no longer EU, but as I understand Ireland LTD, Latvia SIA, Estonia OU and Poland sp. z.o.o. are similar and can be ran as a non-resident.
  - simgt 1mo ago
    Sadly you can't run them as a non-resident afaik. The member state in which you resides will come after you for taxes if you operate a foreign company. In France the micro-entrepreneur status makes you partially liable, and running a SASU/EURL does require ~200€/m of accounting.
    - deno 1mo ago
      If you actually sell intra-EU and deal with multiple currencies 200€/m would be cheap. I'd expect no less than 1000€/m.
  - deno 1mo ago
    You need to do double entry bookkeeping and prepare annual financial statements for all of those you've mentioned including UK. In addition, you cannot register LTD in Ireland yourself, the Company's secretary must be a different person. So either you are now in business with a friend or you pay someone. For any other member country you also run into a language barrier. Polish "Sp. z o.o." has ~1150€ (5000 PLN) minimal capital requirement. Registering entity with corporation tax requirement in any other country also means you would need to defend its tax residency (practically impossible if you don't actually do business there) or you have to pay corporation tax in the country you are actually operating in. It's doable but now you are dealing with two different tax authorities and potentially pay taxes in different currency and you can't have books in multiple currencies so get to have lots of fun. It's much easier to just register US LLC instead at this point. However if you want to do anything physical not digital you end up having to register and do taxes in your resident country anyway. But you can avoid corporation tax at least and keep limited liability.

mrtksn 1mo ago

It's always like this, EU is in urgent need of becoming a country in some form and local government deal with local stuff only. It shows up in the stats, citizens almost always trust EU more than their governments and want EU to have more power but all this means those local governments becoming less important and therefore no one is really pushing for it. Fingers crossed Trump invades Greenland so things can start moving.

antiloper 1mo ago
> It's always like this, EU is in urgent need of becoming a country in some form and local government deal with local stuff only. The lesson is the opposite: The EU needs LESS power, not more. If the member states didn't have a cartel to tyrannize their collective population, this regulation could never have happened. Any single country that would try to enforce this would be on its own.
- mrtksn 1mo ago
  Nope, less power means the current situation will be the default as each country by default will have their own body and rules to govern instead of one rule and one body that handles the whole continent. Unlike what you appear to believe Europeans are not some libertarian captured by the EU socialist, most europeans do want less wasteful and less harmful packaging.
  - antiloper 1mo ago
    Do most Europeans want all of their E-commerce to be only handled by American and Chinese megacorporations without local players? Because that is the effect of this regulation. Instead of a SME shipping a cardboard box, it will be Amazon or Temu.
    - mrtksn 1mo ago
      You are not arguing in good faith, such a loaded question. I will leave it here, too much BS in one comment to deal with it

antiloper 1mo ago

> member states do shitty stuff and blame the EU. The crooked MEPs also voted in favor of this law. They are just as culpable.

amarcheschi 1mo ago

I haven't followed the legislative process, where can I find that the eu wanted a single registry but the country pushed for national ones? Because i have never read it. I'm not saying it's not true, it's just that it's so hard to follow these things when one is supposed to have a life as well

Avamander 1mo ago
You have to use the FOIA-equivalent of your member state to get access to the documents submitted to the EU by your country.
mpweiher 1mo ago
There has been reporting on this in many places. Here is one: https://packaging-journal.de/en/eu-commission-wants-to-scrap-authorised-representative-obligation-for-ppwr/ https://packaging-journal.de/en/eu-commission-wants-to-scrap... "According to the Händlerbund, the European Commission's proposal to abolish the requirement has been on the table since December 2025. However, discussions in the Council of the EU were suspended a few weeks ago after a majority of member states spoke out against it." "A restricted version is currently being discussed in the European Parliament. According to this, an exemption is only to apply to micro-enterprises with up to 49 employees and an annual turnover of a maximum of 10 million euros. A first reading is scheduled for October 2026 at the earliest."
- amarcheschi 1mo ago
  Ok ty
- deleted 1mo ago
  [deleted]
- pembrook 1mo ago
  If you need to both: a) exempt companies with under 50 employees to not kill small business AND b) are okay with doing so, ie. there's little consequences from exempting companies from this Then this is the mark of a terrible piece of legislation. What problem are we actually addressing here by creating another fee collecting, headache inducing registration regime and the 684th enforcement bureaucracy in the EU over yet another trivial consumer issue? Yes, single use plastics aren't great. Incentivize companies to move away from them by creating positive market incentives instead of creating an anti-productive, full time packaging Stasi. It's almost as if the people attracted to a career in government can only imagine their subjects responding to the stick, even though the carrot is often far more persuasive. This is the classic downfall of all economic central planning. The problem with this particular topic is it's a religious one for many in the urban monoculture. They don't ultimately care about packaging waste, they care about punishment and repentance for humanity's existence. We've angered the gods and must repent via punitive measures! To incentivize good behavior is antithetical to that, even if it is more effective at actually doing the thing.

conradfr 1mo ago

> A couple of things to note: I have Claude Code PTSD.

izacus 1mo ago

Meanwhile in a neighbouring conversation thread people are attacking Van Der Leyen as she's at fault for democratic member states torpedoing the good approach. Apparently it's undemocratic when elected governments of their countries destroy a good solution and then blame others.