Laws like this really need to only be enforced for companies of certain sizes.
How Europe is killing makers and micro-entrepreneurs
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Re: How Europe is killing makers and micro-entrepreneurs
#42This 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…
I think this is true for a lot of Balkan countries that joined EU. I was in Croatia recently and was super surprised to see Lidl and DM stores there. Even more surprised to see the prices of items in those stores were almost same as in Berlin
Re: How Europe is killing makers and micro-entrepreneurs
#43As 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.
Re: How Europe is killing makers and micro-entrepreneurs
#44It 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.
Likely not, but would you want the extra risk and the stress involved, that maybe one day you will find a expensive letter in your box?
It depends on how expensive that letter is.
Re: How Europe is killing makers and micro-entrepreneurs
#45Laws like this really need to only be enforced for companies of certain sizes.
Selective enforcement is a tyranny generator.
How about the law doesn’t exist if it doesn’t actually make sense?
Re: How Europe is killing makers and micro-entrepreneurs
#46This 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…
Very interesting! Also, I would trade Aldi for Carrefour in less than a second.
Re: How Europe is killing makers and micro-entrepreneurs
#47It'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...
Re: How Europe is killing makers and micro-entrepreneurs
#48FTR. 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.
Re: How Europe is killing makers and micro-entrepreneurs
#49How 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!
Re: How Europe is killing makers and micro-entrepreneurs
#50What 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 p…
> And the law was devised by Ripa di Meana, who had been a member of the Italian Communist Party and the green party. how ironical
It’s hard to overthrow actual free markets. Small business is too sympathetic.
But if you pass enough well-meaning regulations and strangle all the small businesses with good intentions, it’s much easier to overthrow a crony-capitalist oligopoly of megacorps, which is exactly the end game.