Earlier quoted context omitted.
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Umm akchully, not crossing a highway to avoid being hit is a perfectly sane course of action.
except he said "street" not "highway"
How Europe is killing makers and micro-entrepreneurs
91–100 of 1001 posts
Re: How Europe is killing makers and micro-entrepreneurs
#92Regulatory capture in this case. They need proportionality and size/qty exemptions
Regulatory capture doesn't exist. Only corrupt and/or incompetent regulators.
Re: How Europe is killing makers and micro-entrepreneurs
#93Odd that there not already is a minimum threshold in place. This would even apply when selling a few electronic knik knaks on ebay?
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Re: How Europe is killing makers and micro-entrepreneurs
#94One 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…
Because if the EU tried to force countries into single compliance, there would no end of "EU is trampling national interests" and similar screaming. It's an unwinnable situation. Again, EU-level politics keep assuming everyone (corporations and states) are adults. Unfortunately, everyone are just a bunch of screaming, scheming petulant children.
Including EC, and MEP themselves.
Re: How Europe is killing makers and micro-entrepreneurs
#95FTR. 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.
Yes, we are surprised to find out how foolish and counterproductive some legislation can be.
Re: How Europe is killing makers and micro-entrepreneurs
#96Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's a very American mindset. I've worked across both the US and EU at a variety of companies with customers, partners, etc and it's a clear pattern: - Americans are usually willing to skirt the rules and figure it out later. This comes with risk but is ideal when you're early stage, low stakes, and you couldn't follow the rules anyway. - Europeans absolutely want to do it by the book and will be shocked if you sug…
I find this hard to discuss among others as it often results in heated discussions, but in my experience, Europeans have a completely different understanding of what is considered "rude" so much that I struggle to work with a vast majority of them. That's not to say that there aren't extremely nice people all other Europe... there are. But I'm still caught off guard when hearing them say some things nonchalantly that…
> 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?
Re: How Europe is killing makers and micro-entrepreneurs
#97This 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.
Really sorry you’re experiencing this, that whole regulation rollout is a complete mess. The leadership should be sacked for such an incompetent regulation, it’s insane how much troubles they are creating for small businesses.
Another small business owner reported their experience in this Reddit thread, looks really bad: https://www.reddit.com/r/europe/comments/1vrz88a/comment/p4i...
I’m as pro-EU as one can get but that’s a mistake we should solve asap
Re: How Europe is killing makers and micro-entrepreneurs
#98How 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 h…
It's not the first. It's not even the first in Europe: the first was the UK, Belgium and Switzerland came after. There are and have been others around the world throughout history too: the CSA, the first USA, the USSR, the UAE, and the Arab League (just to name a few).
Most systems like the EU don't work well after a certain size. I don't know if we can say whether the EU has reached the point where it's unworkable yet.
Re: How Europe is killing makers and micro-entrepreneurs
#99So, the complain is that there is no harmonization and you want more centralized harmonization, basically?
Basically, yes. The EU needs a lot more power to force through an actual single market. Especially a single digital market. That's why the US is crushing EU tech companies. Licensing (especially content), patents, totally different tax systems, addressing all of the EU as a small company is basically impossible.
Except that US also has pretty fragmented state law, doesn't it?
Re: How Europe is killing makers and micro-entrepreneurs
#100Earlier quoted context omitted.
Is it literally killing the majority of Europeans? How many deaths comes from an Arduino box? Europe's smart people are going to have to move to another country to be entrepreneurs. That's going to kill Europe faster.
> Europe's smart people are going to have to move to another country to be entrepreneurs Watch the stats please, the contrary is happening right now, plenty of American talents coming to Europe.
Please share said stats with us