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.

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?

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.

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.

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.

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?"

> 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.

This is really sad to read :(

So many entrepreneurs (who can because software businesses) are leaving EU

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

> 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.

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?

> 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.

> 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.

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.

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-c...

And I stopped selling to all eu countries except Germany and Spain.

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.

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?

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!

my exact same conclusion

This regulation is utterly broken. The only way for a small business is to ignore it completely and hope for the best.

Seriously? You should only ever need to walk to the village market to buy anything, and walk back with your own bag.

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.

The EU is fucking crap, fuck the EU, fuck von der Leyen

Wait until Cyber Resilience Act kicks in.

Another daily round EU FUD.

For the last time EU!= Europe, there are plenty more countries outside Brussels overach ffs

"Since 1975, the US has created 7 companies worth over $1 trillion. Europe has created zero."

......... Yet most of the talent is here

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.

Unfortunate choice of words, implies these people are being literally murdered...

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.

It's funny, because what's actually, literally killing people is pollution...

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.

These things are going to be sent by mail. You could just have the postal service charge a few extra cents.

To comment on a narrow point, a friction point like this is an opportunity for an entrepreneur.

The EU is de-facto controlled by lobbyists. And they don't want the EU to be fixed.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Regulatory capture in this case.

They need proportionality and size/qty exemptions

Overregulation is the number one threat to mankind, bar none.

It's worth messaging EU MPs or talking to them directly.

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...

Seems like a problem Lectronz could solve for its makers.

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

Whining on the order hand is always easy.

Australia is doing the same thing x100

How is CrowdSupply, US based, managing?

>A good idea, a terrible implementation

Idea is terrible, implementation is WAI.

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.

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!

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.

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

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.

> 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)

Please share said stats with us

They're probably not coming to be entrepreneurs though.

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.

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?

There is one thing European countries all agree on: Their lawmakers know it the best, thus all create their own carve outs and exceptions.

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?

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.

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.

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?

Sign a petition rising this issue: https://www.change.org/p/stop-destroying-eu-micro-businesses... (75k signatures already)

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

So, the complain is that there is no harmonization and you want more centralized harmonization, basically?

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".

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.

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.

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."

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.

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!

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.

Are these rules actually that destructive, or are we witnessing astroturfing campaign?

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?

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!

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.

Yes it's about time that Europe becomes a little nicer to startups.

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.

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).

Europe would rather regulate companies out of existence than grow them.

> 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?

> 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.

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)

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.

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?

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.

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/...

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?

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!

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?

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.

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.

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.

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?

All regulations end up being scheme’s to protect incumbents. Especially when the incumbent is ostensibly, and loudly against the regulation.

As usual, throwing babies out with the bath water

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.

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 :)

You can't throw all that red tape and not expect to get a lot of folks tangled to death in it.

This seems a bit too much. It would be better if it only applied to companies over a certain size.

yes, and go back to communism 2.0. because that worked so well the last time it was tried.

I'm going to get a lot of packages packed in a cat box, aren't I?

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.

I wouldn’t say so. Labor laws are still strong in the continent (at least in the more unionized parts of the continent), though salaries are very stagnant and not keeping up with the mountain rise in the cost of living.

Unions are still strong, but they have been focusing less and less on consumer protection, there are still some victories, like increased holiday/sick pay, parental leave, and gender equality. But compared to the rapid loss of consumer protection, these victories are coming to few and to far apart.

People don't want complete integration.

If I go into the Carrefour in Sallanches (FR) then I will buy a completely different set of products to those that I would buy in the Carrefour in Aosta (IT), the two are 80km apart, I have shopped in both multiple times.

I don't think the supermarket example really maps across to the subject of the linked article.

This is not what I said, I said that Canada has internal tarifs between provinces while being in (albeit limited) free-trade agreements with other countries. Making some types of internal trade _more_ bundersome than foreign trade.

Not anything like this. The closest thing is charging local sales tax.

This is very condescending.

Heh... Albert Heijn can not even cross the border between Flanders and Brussels. There are literally two Albert Heijns across the street from Brussels, but if they open shop in Brussels or Wallonia, they will have to provide packaging in French next to Dutch.

That's true. I'd trade Lidl for Carrefour then. I like Albert Heijn too. It's like a successful mix of the grocery store tiers.

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.

If you are interested in the EU killing small companies and 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.

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.

>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.

I imagine what will happen in practice is that the makers will simply ignore the law and hope not to get prosecuted or audited?

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.)

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.

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.

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.

It's typical eco-suicide: give eurocrats more power and fake work to do, pretend most recycling regulations aren't scams, and practically destroy trade between countries in the union because you need one representative in every single country you want to sell anything in. As if adding a 5 (soon to become 7€) fee (plus tax) for every line of item (not package) outside the union wasn't enough. It is also quite obvious both must've been heavily lobbied by major retail groups through EuroCommerce.

Feedback for this utterly deranged regulation can be seen below, over 5k entries by many businesses in EU:

https://ec.europa.eu/info/law/better-regulation/have-your-sa...

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.

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.

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.

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..

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?

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.

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.

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.

Laws like this really need to only be enforced for companies of certain sizes.

Odd that there not already is a minimum threshold in place.

This would even apply when selling a few electronic knik knaks on ebay?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Don't apply* !

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.

As Supreme overlord of Saturn, I soundly dispute your assertion.

Yes, I too want the smallest Twitch streamer to have to put their exact home address publicly on the internet so they have no protection from weirdos and stalkers. If a post box would suffice, sure, I'd be down. But that's explicitly not allowed.

But regardless, kinda OT. I was just trying to make a point that ignoring a law isn't without consequences.

There's a famous website about it, I've been following since 2008: https://www.bbctvlicence.com/

Yes, it appears the "detector vans" are an urban legend/propoganda.

Even more fun, in the lead up to Greece joining the EU, they had to get their government pay under control so they were given monthly caps on what they could pay people. No problem, they created a 13th month.

* As detailed in Michael Lewis' Boomerang: https://amzn.to/4cXJnjE - He's the same guy who wrote The Big Short and Moneyball

> 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.

Again the trope Russia did it is as ridiculous as Trump claiming China rigged US elections. There's simply no real hard evidence that can be examined without partisan bias.

I don't doubt the existence of troll farms either its just that the idea that you can influence online discourse in the manner claimed by both Democrats and Republicans and beyond in a left vs right rivalry is greatly exaggerated and carry their biases.

At the end of the day, you really can't change whatever beliefs that the crowd has had for ages. You can't astroturf Palestinians into changing their view against Israelis and you can't astroturf Israelis into changing their position towards Palestinians.

Courts, lobbying (writing to your MP), campaigning, demonstrations, elections ideally. I know that non-compliance is the path of least resistance, it's just got really bad consequences.

The old CRTs do, yes. Not so much with LCDs.

But unfortunately, I may be wrong and bought into an urban legend/bit of propoganda:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Television_licensing_in_the_Un...

But don't Switzerland or the UK have similarly comfortable lifestyles with less absurd taxation?

What country in Europe are you referring to? Your objections seem to be quite broad and lack focus but seem to be alluding to the specific. Give me an example of what you mean?

I think leadership is hard. I’m not sure I buy the idea that a group of countries should be “hard” on anyone.

> But I'm still caught off guard when hearing them say some things nonchalantly that would get them fired in the US.

I'm intruiged, can you give an example?

wtf are u talking about? some examples would be in order...

Do they not have LLCs?

Yes, but you'd lose childcare benefits in the UK so it's much, much worse if you are a young parent.

To be clear: the question isn't illegal. What is illegal is using it to discriminate against a protected class, so as a result, no interviewer with half a brain will ask those questions.

I think that main difference is, that you look at Europe from outside, I live here and talk to people from mentioned European countries living with these consequences and problems.

One more typical example: we have no big AI company in the EU, because EU was busy being "world first AI regulator" before the industry even started here.

And no, EU is not that rich that it can sustainably pay for policies which make its own energy and industry significantly less competitive with little to no effect on CO2: https://www.climate.gov/sites/default/files/styles/full_widt...

Btw would you be so optimistic about Green Deal and regulation if you too had to pay EU price for petrol of about $8/gal ?

Yes peace since WW2 is great, but we have one war on EU borders and other in Middle East.

Freedom of speech is a bedrock of democracy. I dont thinkt we can bent it for different "noble" reasons or because regulators label smth as hate speech or misinfo. https://prostasia.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/image_2022-...

I think we can agree that we disagree, I wish you well.

100ke might be enough. Once the debt is in enforcement (ulosotto in Finnish), interest can keep accruing at roughly 10%. If your earnings are low, you can pay for years without reducing the principal at all.

Should get a second one, then, if that's the meta.

Important nuance here is that the €3 for packages from China is a temporary solution and will eventually (2028?) be replaced by a more permanent system which _might_ work out more favourable for electronics.

Having said that, the customs duty will go to the EU budget so there's now a direct incentive for the EU to maintain or perhaps even increase this.

The level of border controls hasn't changed, only the technology used to implement it.

Not far small businesses with very small numbers of cross border sales.

Tariffs on, tariffs off. Have you tried turning the White House off and on again?

Yeah, it only took 4 years for them to fix an obvious screw up. Only 4 years. Surely every business can survive that.

I don't think any EU One-stop-shop scheme covers "local" goods sales in other EU member states yet, i.e. an EU company has to register in all EU countries they hold stock in.

That is changing with the Single VAT Registration (SVR) legislation, effective in 2028.

This was 2017-2021. Not sure if One-Stop-Shop covers this as it mentions "cross-border sales" and the problem with Amazon fulfillment and storage was to make all sales local (not cross-border). But maybe it does cover it. I don't know.

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.

>the manufacturer will be the natural or legal person who manufactures packaging or packaged products.

Manufactures packaged products means you buy flat pre-cut card board, fold it, insert the product and then close the box and tape it shut. Even if you bought fully assembled packaging and somehow teleport the product into the packaging, that would still be considered manufacturing a packaged product.

>Seems pretty obvious to me the generic bubble envelope example from the blogpost doesn't make sense because that is generic packaging where the manufacturer has to handle this.

I'm not sure about the part "doesn't make sense" because it could go either way (you disagree with the regulation or you disagree with the example), but what's obvious is that manufacturer is the Greek engineer and he is responsible for the packaging of the product.

Do you realize who Kafkaesque the discussion already has become?

Good god lol

After re-reading, it only specifies the packaging manufacturer is the producer when they are in the same member state as the seller.

If the seller sells to other member states I don't know

Just get some VCs to take the losses for you for a few years /s

The entity that introduces the packaging is responsible for upholding the packaging laws. The manufacturing entity of the packaging is not and cannot be responsible, because it does not decide to which countries the packaging is ultimately sent to.

And even if it worked that way, if you add a CE certified module to your product, the product as a whole still has to be CE certified.

One of the best example is Ursula Von der Leyen. She was sent from Berlin to EU by Angela Merkle because when she was the defence minister of Germany under Merkle’s government there was a huge scandal of offering contracts (https://www.euractiv.com/news/von-der-leyen-admits-mistakes-...)

She was sent to EU so she can do less harm in the future, but the irony is that she became the head of EU.

MEPs in many countries do not actually have immunity.

However, the bigger issue is that european parliament is treated in many countries as essentially dumping ground between national elections.

A depressingly true point.

Nope, read the legislation paper... its like a few hundred pages :D.

In Berlin you can have same quality haircut for 15 euros, for 25 euros or 50 euros, your choice.

Or just ignores them, if it doesn't serve the lobby groups, like for example the EU Water Framework Directive (WFD).

A simple spreadsheet of income & expense is all that's required for most small businesses. Larger companies require full fledged double entry bookkeeping with requirements about charts of accounts -- which usually necessitates paying an accountant, unless you enjoy that particular kind of pain.

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.

It is already €20+ to send something from e.g. Czechia to France.

You can start with the TFA or many given in this comment section.

Exactly, that's why I think it's hilarious that the EU itself is doing it. Clearly it's just incompetence not malice, but...

That makes sense given the structure of the society, no? If you were to build an organization whose purpose was a predictable amount paid out to the senior most members committed ahead of time for an indefinite period, you would prioritize predictable income. In the ideal, your contracts would all be long-term contracts that don’t fluctuate very much.

Any entity that seeks to take risks to earn outsize income increases the income variance and makes it hard to organize your committed payouts. So you are forced (by your priorities) to discourage the entrepreneur and freelancer and encourage the 18-60 salaried employee. Fixed fungible production unit can be used as an input to a machine that produces committed output.

Then you import guest-workers etc. to improve throughput. You are forced by your priorities. Probably the expansion of the US welfare state will meet similar constraints soon enough.

It’s a bit just-so so I think there’s an over-claim in there but I think the seed is there.

I'm not agreeing with everything that this user wrote but for sure the Brexit did not destroy UK's economy. GDP-wise the UK and France always developed very similarly before Brexit and also after Brexit, so it's hard to call it a "desaster".

I still remember the articles saying that Britons will have no food on shelves after Brexit.

Who is the leadership? The Council - then it would be national elections etc for the individual national representatives; the Commission - then it would be the European Parliament.

My mom sometimes buys wool from online wool sellers which often are other 60 year old ladies who really don't know much about the internet or business.

These are affected, too, and will probably all stop selling to other EU countries because how could they ever fully grasp that regulation in all its details.

It's a shame, life and doing business is difficult enough already, and then millions of people get those regulations thrown at them.

They already had a big wave of newsletter closures when the EU's GDPR came around and everyone was scared to handle customer data. Now here's the next round.

Same tax on software, just less visible. A solo browser extension or a tiny site still has store review, OAuth consent, privacy pages, and a different "are we a company" answer in FR vs UK. No parcel, still a lawyer-shaped afternoon before you can take a euro. The FAQ-as-PDF problem is the product.

I think you're supposed to ask forgiveness not permission

How does that jibe with the following paragraph then?

> If company A sells the cardboard boxes to Company C in another Member State, and Company C fills the boxes to transport packaged products, then Company C would typically be the producer in that Member State.

This example makes no mention of whether Company C is a micro-enterprise. This is under transport packaging, not branded packaging.

Why are you unwilling to say the other country?

Don’t worry there’s regulation in the works that will mandate how much air you can have in the box[1]. The EU is on the case.

[1] https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/ALL/?uri=CELEX:52...

Better get used to that. Nearly every time you buy something in Portugal they'll ask you for your tax id so that they can print it on the receipt. This is because this is something you can use for some tax breaks later and also there is some lottery going on I think? Though obviously the original reason for it to exist is to combat tax fraud.

This is also entirely optional for those kind of purchases, and meaningless if you don't have one (which you probably aren't going to if you are just a tourist passing through the country) so you should just not fill that field. I seriously doubt it is mandatory.

One example is the effective prohibition on spraying pesticides by air, including drone. Drones allow lower pesticide use than current, legal practices

Late response as i rarely check HN replies.

European Commission is so disjoined from electorate through many layers of elections, that it can disregard it completely - practically citizens have no input on EC's body. Any legislation originates from there which makes it even worse.

Only guarantee of EC doing their job is their Oath, and vote of no confidence is basically impossible to call, nor there's a way to initiate one from citizens side via for example a referendum. There are no consequences for not following the Oath at all so corrupt EC can easily push things that are favorable for bigger voting blocks, while screwing everyone else and get away with it.

The only measure that citizens have to actually affect EU turned out to be worthless(as SKG initiative has shown) - as Citizens Initiative is not binding at all, and can be disregarded.

EU itself creates a system of double loyalty for every politician - do they pursue national interest or do they jump ship to European ones(including appointed positions)? This erodes national systems of check and balances.

European initiatives are impossible to control nor audit form member state PoV, and it's even worse from citizen PoV. And there's no mechanism to counteract bureaucratic bloat growth, nor rampant lobbying.

European Council is used as a way to launder unpopular legislations and push it onto all member states - like chat control.

Most of the times none of those legislations have been a part of internal political campaigns - and even if they were, they were such in only single member state. There was zero input from citizens, even in forms of voting for their own government.

President of European Parliament can act against parliament itself, again with no mechanism for any consequences(ie best example is pushing chat control vote just before summer vacation this year)

Whole institution of EU after Lisbon Treaty was made with assumption that every member state will pursue their own best interests, MEPs will pursue their own best national interests too. But sadly this created system in which it is difficult to purge any form of corruption(both embezzlement/criminal, pursuing personal interests or being purely ideologically driven without consideration of practicality).

This was done to create resistance to populism, but in practice created system that's extremely resistant to purging corruption.

It doesn't help that EU itself is a very top-down organization. Not in form of dictatorship - it's far from that - but in form of committee driven changes by unelected civil servants that operate like a black box.

and one last thing, not related to checks and balances - EU itself moves at glacial pace and is resistant to change by design - which would be perfectly fine for just a Trade Union. Unfortunately it leads to it both not reacting in time, and pushing initiatives that are already outdated.

I am not sure what is wrong about that: they spend their money and that money falls in the hands of locals. I do not mean it should be the priority of a country (it should be other economic sources) but I do not find it harmful.

Your example of adoption is interesting. I think California has actually influenced other states on efficiency. I wanted to say disproportionately, but perhaps in exact accordance with their economic and political power.

I don't know the details well enough, but I do know that there is an effective anti-fedaralist force in the US wherever federal funding is concerned, as it comes with rules conditions (rules) attached. I would be interested to what extent this acts as a bias toward cooperation in the case of ez pass, given the interstate system.

Means nothing though because no European country can produce the goods an impoverished European can afford to pay for the goods so the local store is just the same Chinese goods shipped to that address other than your home address.

And then everyone started doing it, which meant that your local retailer isn't in business anymore (see local high streets in many countries). The choice you had 10-15 years ago doesn't exist anymore because everyone went for the cheaper price, and now the question is where the extra goes that we used to pay to the local retailer.

This got downvoted but is basically correct. We had a great "grey" market, but the tradeoff for that is having to stay small enough to not be visible.

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.

> All small businesses and solo enterpreneurs that I know who are hit by this are not "in this field". Their field is making jewelry or knitted toys or something similar.

Are they shipping within EU? Then they literally are in the field of shipping within the EU.

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.

The most honest reading of the data is that it was neither bad nor good; that it had no impact on anything whatsoever. Whether you read this as a win for the Leave or Remain factions is in the eye of the beholder.

Exactly. Competent at getting votes (and taking them away from competition) and incompetent at leading and being in power.

> Is 1 year enough for everyone to register in 25 different packaging regulation bodies, appoint representatives, etc etc?..

Also, are those bodies ready for the volume of applicants? They certainly weren't when MDR came in.

> No Chinese company will register in this farce.

What makes you so sure? It really depends on enforcement but your Chinese company sure isn't going to just drop Europe as a market.

The issue isn't just the time, but the fees. It's not free to register, and for small sellers, it can be completely crippling.

There is a big difference between being unable to grow and being uninterested in it. I sincerely doubt most people open a small coffee shop dreaming of expansion. Small coffee shop owners don’t want to be Starbucks. Being small and wanting to stay small is not a failure.

Those will obviously be exempt?

Immigration is a separate problem.

That sounds like a good argument, but if you look at government budgets and where come from and where they go that is not at all what is happening. I mean, there is a core of truth in that the rules allow the upper class to go less-taxed (generally not untaxed). But let's be honest here. If the upper class paid 60% on their income instead of 10%, it would improve government budgets by less than 1% (disregarding things like royal families that own oil company profits or rent out incredible amounts of terrible housing (UK) at essentially 0% tax as a specific exemption in the law)

Which means taxing the rich can make the rich poorer than they currently are and bring more equality. Which is a goal in itself. But it cannot fund EU governments. It cannot fund pensions. Not even a little bit.

Everyone knows what the big problem is: right now close to 35% of working people in the EU work, one way or another (usually in bureaucracies, granted), to take care of children, sick, unemployed or elderly non-working people. Of those groups, the elderly group is going up by about 3% every year, and that will keep going until 2050 or later. In the group of working people there is extreme resistance to actually work with the elderly (meaning physically helping elderly people, those jobs are low-status, low-paid, and generally hated with a passion), even against teaching jobs there is quite a bit of resistance (dropout rates are double digit percentages). So how do we take care of the elderly? Hell: how do we take care of kids?

This problem alone makes me say "we don't just want AI to take our jobs, we NEED AI to take our jobs". Because "we" are sure as hell not going to take them. That doesn't preclude that this needs to be regulated, but obviously just saying no to AI is not what we want. And that's putting it politely.

You mean, it's good to have _even more_ bad regulations?

Or rather, if a little bit of X is bad, why would you want more of X?

Trying to be good faith here:

It was decided that the registration is left to the individual countries (which I personally agree with, at least I think I do). Now the deadline has come and passed and some of the individual countries have not provided easy ways of registering. At what point should which entity done what?

Should I as a SMB been keeping track of the registries for the individual countries and lobbied my government to apply pressure to the other governments to set up the registrations?

Should my representative have lobbied harder to take control away from the individual countries in the union so this issue could not arise? (Should I have done so as an SMB even though I on a personal level agree with the individual registries?)

Because, again, right now we have a law on the books with relatively harsh punishments but nonexistent enforcement, this benefits no one.

How does a Californian company compete with a company in Missouri that has lower labor costs and less overhead/ regulation?

They seem to manage this just fine, but it's a pretty similar scenario. You could also push for standardized business costs and regulations eu wide ofc to help.

You boast about the superior quality of german manufacturing. Or move your manufacturing to eastern Germany where costs are lower.

If you are in Munich, how do you compete with someone from Magdeburg?

Also, quite a lot of German business costs are a self-inflicted wound (too much bureaucracy). Maybe taper down the endless paper war a bit, and throw away the fax machines.

Service in the local language, quick delivery, a local place where people can actually come by to buy or pick up things.

You specialize in things that are more difficult to make in poorer countries - you use your advantages they use theirs. Afterall this is what happened to a lot of Polish industry after we got our EU membership - it died under pressure of already developed competition from countries like Germany.

You don't and that's by design.

The real farce is that you don't get paid for recycling. Really demonstrates that it's a complete charade.

If there was any value in recycling you'd pay some fee for the packaging, and you'd get it right back when you recycle it.

Outside of aluminum cans and bottle it certainly looks like recycling ends up being 'send it to the landfill, but with some extra steps and fees.'

> for which every consumer also pays.

Idk, at least in Germany paper and (plastic) recycling is free. I only have to pay for organic trash and trash to be burned.

The taxes levied also go into the general government fund. Which means they mostly go to paying pensions and social security (unemployment, medical insurance, long-term medical leave, ...)

(... and that is really why this is so staunchly defended)

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.

Ok ty

Back in college (USA) friends would spin up LLCs for the summer just to buy mowers or vans to do yard work. They would hire all the students who didn't get summer jobs. Those hired students would make about 3x a STEM intern makes in western europe today.

Interstate commerce also seems to be vastly easier inside the US in comparison to the alleged single market of the EU. The most companies seem to deal with is California-specific regulations. Meanwhile, most companies in the EU eventually opt to create a ton of subsidiaries, basically one per state, to handle all the localized duties that the EU requires.

Starting a small company in many EU countries is a breeze too e.g. Estonia, Portugal, UK and no doubt many others. The rumoured 'EU Inc' entity should also help close the gap for member countries where incorporating domestically traditionally comes with more friction (e.g. Germany).

No absolutely no. We were selling some electronic stuff on Amazon. We were doing good. But then this came, the registration that become mandatory, took 3 months instead of 3 weeks and then they had no rules and deleted saying our device is not the right category. We closed shop after spending time and money. The system is horrenduos and has not stopped the chinese stuff on the Amazon at all.

There are already places that will take an annual fee for dealing with this bureaucracy for you, as well.

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.

No, we absolutely don't need to give more power to Orbans and other corrupt selfish pricks across Europe to line their pockets at everyones expense and the future of Europe.

> Any single country that would try to enforce this would be on its own.

Actually they'd have no retroactive way to enforce it at all, and the most they'd be able to do would be to charge an import duty on a per-parcel basis, which would ultimately be borne by the importer.

This would be a huge improvement over the utter nonsense they're implementing!

> Universal chargers, removable batteries, open app stores, AI data protections...

The same "protections" also means that the E.U. has no major AI player at all. It seems like all the E.U. can do is tax and regulate what is invented and produced elsewhere.

It’s unlikely because smaller member states wouldn’t want that as they’d be outvoted by bigger members and thus forced to implement laws that might not even make sense in those (smaller) countries.

I don't see federalism ever working - you have thousand of years of grudges within EU that you would have to overcome, plus gigantic cultural differences that lead to completely different ways of life.

Trade union is more likely honestly.

Quite the contrary actually. I take issue with systems LARPing democracy.

There is no such a thing as "representative democracy", that’s antinomic bullshit throw at people to lower it down to powerless populace.

Either citizens have the power, exercise it continuously in practice and are supplied with everything it takes to assume that role properly with all the duties it implies, or there is no democracy beyond empty words.

That's pretty much the situation in the UK if you are a sole trader. If you set up a limited liability company, that's a separate entity and has its own tax reporting requirement, but nothing onerous. I am a sole trader, and manage a small company separately from that.

One thing I have heard of in the USA is the need for a "business licence". I'm not sure what that is or whether it applies to all businesses, so I'm not sure what it would correspond to in the UK. Neither of my businesses needed any licences or permissions to start trading.

And you'd need to line up your own health insurance.

The broad swathe of analyses done to answer the question of "how did the economy change due to brexit?" consistently suggest brexit shrunk the economy. All analyses are biased or flawed in some way because they rely on making a prediction of what the economy would have been if brexit hadn't happened, but that's only a prediction. Since they are flawed, but they are many, the likely truth is in the aggragate of many analyses, just like when we take multiple measurements of a noisy system and take the mean to get a more certain result than any one analysis. If what you're saying is true I would expect there to be some predictions that back up what you're saying exactly, along with a number of predictions that the economy increased in size. That's why I'm asking for evidence of predictions of a larger economy, because it makes your statement far more plausible.

Your point on goods isn't... Good. Services is the majority but goods still make up ~1/3rd of exports, and don't forget we still have to import goods. Brexit affected that too.

truth of this unfortunately depends on the analysis of others, thus when those analyses . The data cannot itself show whether the

In the following

> If Company A manufactures cardboard boxes under the name or trademark of Company B, then Company B will typically become the manufacturer and producer of the boxes in that Member State. However, if Company B is a micro-enterprise, then Company A is manufacturer and the producer in the Member State.

That has the same "typically", so I'd assume it has the same micro-enterprise exemption. Otherwise only branded boxes would be exempt and that'd be pretty weird.

You're somehow under the mistaken idea that the primary issue for businesses is that they don't want to be aware of regulations in all aspects of their businesses. The actual issue that you're sweeping under the rug is that these regulations create a minimum floor on the size of a business.

For example, a CRA self assessment including CE will require around $20k in liquid capital that you need out of pocket even if all you want to do is sell a single piece of jewelry with some electronics embedded into it. Not to mention the indirect costs such as guaranteeing 5 years of security updates.

There is also the issue that PLD for cloud services effectively means that you cannot easily update your software anymore while it is under investigation by a claimant because that could constitute destruction of evidence. This leads to a catch 22 with the CRA, where you are legally obligated to patch a security vulnerability within 72 hours.

The conflict here is that for physical products, the owner receives a unique reproduction of the design plans, whereas with cloud software, the customer is using shared infrastructure that can affect other customers if it is under investigation. So the entire cluster running the software turns into the equivalent of a smartphone. If you want to sell an updated product, you need to sell a new smartphone aka run a new cluster.

No one can reasonable think that someone who makes a few hundred artisan sales a year and ships them within the bloc should be monitoring what rules and regulations are coming down the pipe.

How long should we have to wait to hear objections to a rule before we can implement it?

We did

> 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.

> You should do your own research

Sure, but you should also understand that “look it up” is the escape words of every inane claim. “The Earth is flat, look it up”; “Reptilians are controlling the world, do your own research”; “Bill Gates is injecting you with mind-control chips, google it”.

You can “do your own research” and “confirm” anything. Which is why the person making the original claim should provide sources, so we can all discuss the same thing and not talk past each other. If your sources are flawed, it’s much easier to reach that conclusion if we’re all looking at the same thing.

> I don’t want to take up space on HN

Don’t worry, a few characters won’t make a difference.

> I’m happy to take a look

Thank you.

> can you name what exactly you found hard to believe?

Certainly. It’s paragraphs 5–8 in your original post. The claim that there are random troublemakers regularly employing free national non-profit corporations in the EU to extort and bankrupt local coffee shops by lying about having been ejected for racial reasons.

uhh no, if you're the one making an argument the burden is on you to provide actual sources and not say "trust me bro, look it up."

You're trying to argue how school children argue, aim a little higher if you want to convince people that know how to read.

> What is the solution to your demand for infinite growth on a planet of finite resources?

Um I wrote "lots of problems", not "all problems". Nor did I require infinite growth, not sure where you read that.

Though on a planet with finite resources, what is the point of encouraging women in the west to have more kids because the population needs to be growing again, if otherplace has still more (population) growth than they can handle, so one thing could alleviate the other, win-win. If we were less racist, that is.

It also depends a little on the definition of "growth" of course. Physical growth of course has limits. But services can always improve, so you can get "growth" without more stuff. Depends on what and how you count.

Or you build rockets and go interplanetary, but that's mostly a solution for the Musk cult which I'm not subscribing to.

> Sounds like you use immigrants as a shield for your desire to get yours' before the resources run out and the line can't go up anymore.

I don't get what you are insinuating.

The article states that the registered agent needs to fill out paperwork for each country and pay a registration fee. That's the issue, the fixed costs per country making it cost prohibitive to sell just 2 units shipped to France.

As it should be! Amazon have little control over product packaging.

(But of course this article is right about the insane admin and cost requirements for small companies.)

EU politicians seemed to be fairly captured by corporations generally. Less so than politicians from the countries themselves. Voting turnout for EU representatives is very low compared with voting for local officials. I think its because people know that who they vote for as their chancellor or prime minister can make a big impact on their lives. They see the EU parliament as this distant thing and don't follow it so much. EU representatives therefore don't have as much accountability and can more easily be swayed by lobbying. How else can you explain the whole chat control thing which everyone hates but still keeps getting pushed through. Like who is voting for this a-holes.

The one thing EU politicians hate is disruption. Entrepreneurs are fresh entrants trying to disrupt an existing market. The politicians don't even need to be puppets. The fact that these small startups exist and may even succeed is reason enough.

Its not as bad as in the US I think, but yeah, most of the laws are actually (literally) written by corporations. I wouldn't call them puppets, but EU corps have an outsized influence on the outcome of the process.

That might be one reason they refuse to be open about their financial supports in their various organizations yes. it is very well known unfortunately..

The entire purpose of EU is trade (trading nations don't go to war etc), trade is more or less defined by large corporations, it's through that lens every decision is made and measured.

There are more lobbyists in Brussels that EU public servants. I guess that corpos don't spend this kind of big money for nothing.

It's usually US corpos that are lobbying all over the EU, it's unlikely that the EU automakers would have lobbied for their destruction

Yes and mostly European elite and royal families. Royal families and their friends have strong power across Europe but they are well hidden via media.

Nothing specific to EU here except the specific point is about EU this time. Otherwise just copy paste "most EU politicians are puppets of EU corporations" in some search engine and enjoy, here are the top result of such a search:

https://rednetwork.net/articles/2026/06/how-corporations-set...

https://euvsdisinfo.eu/report/eu-leaders-puppets-of-financia...

https://www.researchgate.net/post/What_are_the_reasons_behin...

https://edwardshepherd.substack.com/p/the-puppets-and-their-...

https://www.lobbycontrol.de/wp-content/uploads/EU-Lobbyrepor...

Now looking up for "EU politicians are prised for their probity and strong attachment to defend their people" here are the top results:

https://www.transparency.org/en/news/political-corruption-in...

https://www.ftm.eu/articles/european-parliamentarians-involv...

https://www.eupublicintegrity.com/what-is-public-integrity-i...

https://www.politico.eu/article/european-union-corruption-pf...

https://www.economist.com/europe/2026/04/29/europes-unpopula...

So even searching specifically for praising information, one will have to dig deep apparently, or maybe go straight to the official propaganda of what the politicians say about themselves (but probably less so about others).

Everyone is free to go as deep as they want (and can afford) and draw their own conclusions.

It's a bad idea to trust Wikipedia for anything that might have a political or ideological slant that would upset the left, which the non-impact of Brexit definitely did. For instance, there are biographical pages on Wikipedia for people who died years ago but Wiki claims they're still alive, because the only websites that reported the death are anti-woke and thus considered not "reliable sources". So they just ... revert any edits stating the person died.

To understand the true state of things you need to look elsewhere these days. Sad, but that's what seems to happen when you rely on volunteer moderators.

That page specifically is citing a lot of "studies" that are just wishcasting by academics, e.g.

> A 2018 analysis by Stanford University and Nottingham University economists estimated that uncertainty around Brexit reduced investment by businesses by approximately 6 percentage points and caused an employment reduction by 1.5 percentage points.

Unemployment continuously fell after the vote in 2016 until it reached record lows. But if you believe Wikipedia you'd think unemployment rose. This is the kind of thing they define as reliable sources.

https://tradingeconomics.com/united-kingdom/unemployment-rat...

Give it time

But it’s the incoherence of the EU support that’s so weird.

Apple ships USB-C phones (a year before required): look at the EU standing up to big tech and forcing consumer-friendly products.

Crazy policies cripple small business and domestic AI? Oh, it’s not the EU’s fault, it’s that evil big tech.

There’s a recurring theme where the EU can do no wrong, despite repeated negative outcomes that only make sense to read as well-meaning but misguided regulatory overzealousness.

There is no way Amazon is lobbying to complexity product distribution in the EU out of some kind of triple bank shot to suppress those €1m/year businesses. The potential downside is nowhere near worth the benefit. This is pure bureaucracy.