How Europe is killing makers and micro-entrepreneurs

I don't know if this EU regulation will work or not (most likely not), but I can share how it is done in China (where package volume is orders of magnitude higher).

China identifies "choke points" most packages pass: large platforms and logistics companies. Yes, Chinese e-commerce is more centralized on Alibaba/JD/PDD etc, but there are actually much more logistics companies in China than in EU.

They also do not introduce these regulations "from tomorrow" (well, sometimes they do, but it's a different topic). E.g. the non-degradable plastic regulation was issued in 2020 to come in effect in 2025. This gives time to prepare and implement (unlike EU border controls mess...)

So now if something is shipped in non-degradable plastic, the logistics company is fined along with the sender. This is much more scalable and easy to implement. Logistics companies might rise their prices a bit in light of expanded work scope, but it would be peanuts compared to every individual seller.

Could EU just ask DHL/Hermes/whatever to charge an additional €1 "for recycling"? Yes, but...

But of course EU is fundamentally different in a way that the politicians need to please the electorate, so nothing is really planned ahead.

One of the biggest problems that I have in the EU is that it's almost federated. EU will pass laws, countries will adopt those laws, but you end up with 20-24 different versions of those laws. With some countries being strict or lenient about the law that everyone agreed to. And a lot it is written from the perspective that large corporations are the only ones who do business throughout the EU. It's completely missed that small entrepreneurs may also want to take part. Modern technology makes it feasible, but old ideas just drags it down.

A couple of things to note:

1. The EU commission wanted a single central registry

2. It was the member states, via the Council of Ministers, that torpedoed this.

3. The EU now advises its member states to not implement/enforce this

4. Until the correction, which is on its way, can be fully enacted.

So the same old same old: member states do shitty stuff and blame the EU.

PPWR is an EU catastrophe.

Firstly for the reasons outlined in the article: it essentially makes being a micro/small business in the EU impossible, if your market is other EU countries.

Secondly because it validates insidious populist views that the EU institution is useless and incompetent at a fundamental level.

The legislation is so ABSURDIST that the EU have actually asked companies to ignore the law that they just implemented. I can assure you it is difficult to ignore a law that comes with a €200000 fine for non-compliance.

This echos the FCC rules in the US, which I believe are gotten around by not complying.

Even if you are not making an intentional radiator, and/or are using datasheet-specified layouts or modules, you still must comply, which makes these businesses non-viable if complying.

I believe Adafruit gets around certifying every device by declaring themselves a cellphone company and being on good terms with regulators. This isn't viable for the sort of businesses and people described by this article.

I'm not sure about the Ali/Amazon products. I'm assuming they just are not complying.

I initially learned about this from a luthier and plectrum designer, Hufschmidt Guitars, a one man shop in Switzerland. Some quotes from the update he sent to his customers:

""" For a one-person workshop, the result has been pretty brutal.

[...]

The numbers simply do not work for a micro-business like mine. Even in France and Germany, I send only around 1 to 2 kg of cardboard per year. In some other EU countries, I may send less than 100 g in an entire year. Paying annual compliance costs for one or two parcels makes no economic sense.

[...]

I have therefore decided to maintain EU shipping only to: FRANCE GERMANY """

This is actively preventing me from sending packages to other countries as a maker. No matter how small the risk is, I don't want to risk a 5000 euro fine for sending a small amount of packages to other EU countries.

This is a great read and I can extend this argument really to any small business. Tax filing, VAT, bookkeeping, privacy, consumer, workplace and sectoral requirements frequently impose a disproportionately large cost on microbusinesses. EU is more and more split along the enterprise and VC backed line, and everyone in between has disproportionate costs. My barber in Stockholm often complains about this - the amount of money they would need to earn to overcome all these costs is staggering. So they often do lots of gigs on the side.

UK has similar rules but, as with pretty much all other similar regulations, there are de minimis carve-outs:

≤ £1m turnover: no packaging EPR obligation, regardless of packaging volume.

£1m turnover + >25 tonnes of packaging: small producer obligations.

£2m turnover + >50 tonnes: large producer obligations.

The EU has been removing de minimis thresholds because 'China' can easily 'exploit' them. They're kind of right, but it's obviously an insanely stupid situation when someone selling something as a hobby, or just starting up on their own gets dragged into this.

As someone living in the tiny country of Estonia with just about 1.2 million residents, this worries me. No one but the biggest online shops in the EU will bother with the paperwork for such a small market. I'm expecting my import options to drop sharply in the coming years because of this.

The complaint is totally understandable, BUT the examples do not make sense. Arduino did not start as some dude selling less than 10 boards a year, but as an educational tool, which THEN ramped up to 100s of boards produced every day.

If your perspective is "I may sell 10 boards this year, maybe", your target is some local/national maker-faire, not a EU marketplace.

I think makers with such limited productions will just fly under the radar (if you sell so little, it's likely you probably won't need to incorporate or declare taxes in a lot of EU countries). If they sell 100s of products across EU, they probably have at least one over-worked accountant taking care of existing compliance stuff.

It appears there is space for "packaging and distribution in EU as a service" business model.

Creators, producers and manufacturers in many fields do not distribute or sell directly to consumers (musicians can't directly upload to Spotify and Apple Music; film producers don't upload to Netflix, writers don't print their books).

A small-time maker may pay a fee to the established distributor of the physical products, who takes care of compliance, and uses their packaging and distribution channels.

This is not new though. "We do not sell to EU end users."

https://pcengines.ch/recycle.htm

"... there are separate registration and recycling schemes for each of the 28+ EU member jurisdictions (and even a few of their provinces). What part of COMMON MARKET was so hard to understand for EU lawmakers ?

Since there is no single registration available, and separate registration would involve mindboggling complexity, bureaucracy and costs, we do not sell to EU end users until the EU gets their act together. Please order from EU based distributors, or as a business customer.

Business customers are expected to meet their obligations by registering in the EU countries they sell in. "

That was already ages ago when I did some sofware for them. 2007 ish if I'm to trust my Linkedin.

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.

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.

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.

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

I've seen some conflicting claims on this law and to me it sounded like it affects mostly producers of packaging, but everyone else seems to be complaining about it too. Did everyone actually read the law or is this a game of telephone?

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.

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.

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..

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.

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.

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!

as the whole world crushes small entities one has to wonder whether the EU would be the saviour or not. Apparently not. With its rules, they merely help crush small business as per usual.

I heard in the 50s an american could just startup a business installing septic tanks. But now the same person would need a myriad of regulations to be met, heavy equipment use mandated, all of which raise overhead to a level where its impossible to get off the ground.

I always felt the EU were the "good guys", IE not allowing corps to steam roll everyone, what with their rules fining poor behvaiour such as privacy violations, chargers being non standard etc.

However the same problem exists in weird ways you wouldnt even imagine.

For example if someone walks into a small "mom and pops" coffee shop and accuse the owner of "ejecting them due to harrasment reasons", that results in a court case, which can bankrupt the whole margin thin enterprise.

You might say, wait how on earth would a random troublemaker get funding to take a cafe to court, and for what benefit? For one its easier for a settlement to be reached regardless of fault that benefits the claimant than a long court process.

Now how could claimants have the resources? Unbelievably it turns out there are free national non profit corporations that will take any claim for free to court for situation mentioned above.

So what happens in the end? The small coffee shops cant survive but the larger corps who can afford the random payouts are fine, the competition seems to go away on its own and the claimants are happy with what amounts to random payouts for little work.

Please look it up it, and correct me if im wrong, I only know this from some little research into the forays of why small coffee shops find it hard to survive in western landscapes and risks, as I wanted to open my own coffee shop!

In summary, as always the road to ruin is paved with good intentions. So the EU trying to help a little guy in a specific context, ends up creating a situation that makes all small coffee shops non profitable.

I have no solutions.

I can attest to this. People say the Netherlands is among the best countries to be an entrepreneur. The visa policies for starting a business are good. But man, the whole tax system, shares, and holding management—belasting breathing up your neck—is horrible when I am trying to do firefighting. You never know when you might get hit by a tax bill. The tax system is built towards benefitting large organizations, and they can afford expensive tax consultants who can help them dodge it. The VC ecosystem is limited and not risk averse.

Having operated in multiple geographies, US is really business friendly.

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 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.

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.

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.

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?

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

> a fragmented national model

These approaches will waste billions upon billions of Euros for no good reason. It’s already so stupid that even things like VAT rates are per-country.

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?

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?

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...

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.

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.

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.

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)

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.

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.

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.

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 :)

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/...