How Europe is killing makers and micro-entrepreneurs

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.

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.

>A good idea, a terrible implementation

Idea is terrible, implementation is WAI.

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."

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.

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.

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?

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 :)

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

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.

my exact same conclusion

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.

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/...

As usual, throwing babies out with the bath water

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

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.

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

> 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.

My father had to give up selling cat houses from one smaller EU country to others because of the new packaging regulations. Hard to believe the EU has not foreseen this being impossible to deal with for micro-businesses. Honestly his friend who is doing Photovoltaics is also now forced to stop shipments to most other EU countries due to this law. I assume we are talking about hundreds of thousands of small businesses.

Sometimes I wonder if the lawmakers in EU are brain dead. The whole point of economic union is that free movement of good without custom tax and this new rule is practically a custom tax for each country.

Regulatory capture in this case.

They need proportionality and size/qty exemptions

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.

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.

Seems like a problem Lectronz could solve for its makers.

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!

How is CrowdSupply, US based, managing?

> 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)

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).

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

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.

> 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?

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.

Whining on the order hand is always easy.

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.

Wait until Cyber Resilience Act kicks in.

Another daily round EU FUD.

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

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

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.

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.

Is it me or is this submission being pushed artificially? 54 points in 30 minutes without comments

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

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!

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...