721–730 of 1001 posts
>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.
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.
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…
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It should be much higher. The amount of shit that gets shipped from China to Europe (world) is fucking ludicrous, and people should be taxed heavily for the stupid shit they often don't need.
Unfortunately, if you want to fix electronics more often than not China is the only place you can buy spare parts. I don't think buying spare parts to devices counts as "stupid shit".
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 ju…
Really the chances that someone will ask a small company to be compliant are just very low. Of course if you sell something in an envelope nobody will ask you anything, the deal and the reason for this law (that I consider correct) is to address packaging waste from big companies. Of course this law it's complex for nothing, to me, they could have just added the cost of the recycling of the packaging material into th…
So EU has replaced rule of law with a system where every SME is a criminal and enforcement is left to chance or to the whim of the regulator (“oh, you criticized von der Leyen on your website? We cannot prosecute you for this, but let's send some inspectors to check if you are complying with the PPWR”).
Italy works like that for tax compliance. I've read USSR also worked in a similar way. The effect on economy and innovation is always catastrophic.
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Simply not true. The helpful diagram you refer to does not consider the case where company A manufactures the packaging, company B buys the packaging, and then does a B2C delivery to another member state. In that case company B is the producer, even if B is a "micro-enterprise". > the discussion here seems to have a lot of people who are in a big rush to demonize their perceived political opponents on ideological gro…
This whole discussion is the reason innovation it's dead in Europe. The regulations are so complex that you need a team dedicated to navigating the bureaucracy nonsense. Small companies and startups can't do that.
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> “Spain also smashes foreigners owning a property in Spain.” In which way?
Spain charges you tax if you rent the property out. If you don't rent the property out, it imputes a rent and you are charged tax on the imputed rent. The cadastral value is (finger in the air) 40% of the value of the property; you pay (non-eu resident) 24% of between 1.1% and 2% of the cadastral value. So 0.1%-0.2% of property value annually.
You're highlighting how amazingly low that is right?
In the UK (edit: England) unoccupied council tax charges can be in the region of £3000-8000/year (200% of the normal council tax bill)
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They weren't asking for a "single set of laws". "Single market" however is a pre-existing concept recognized as "one of the EU's greatest achievements" [1], and lacking regulations in providing said market is what their critique was about. [1] https://single-market-economy.ec.europa.eu/single-market_en
> "one of the EU's greatest achievements" And it is! People here are always complaining about the EU as if it's a single state, even though it's very clearly in the process of becoming one. It's a long road, we're not sure if we're going to make it all the way to the finish line (but I suspect we will), and we're going to have some happy little (and big) mistakes along the way. But for now it's imperfect, and it migh…
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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.
I'm more inclined to believe the person who backed up their argument with a citation, especially after looking at the document they linked which expressly contradicts you.
> The following provide some typical examples of who the producer of transport packaging is: - If Company A fills the cardboard boxes and sells them to an end user in another Member State, then Company A would typically be the producer in that other Member State.
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> your narrative might make more sense if there were any actual evidence or credibility behind the claims that non-EU states are engaged in anti-EU discourse The uptick I'm talking about is in the last 2 years. At least one Israeli Minister has bragged about them doing it. I don't think you need specific evidence of Russia doing it, it's widely believed to be happening by security professionals. They famously had tro…
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 b…