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…
How Europe is killing makers and micro-entrepreneurs
61–70 of 1001 posts
Re: How Europe is killing makers and micro-entrepreneurs
#62It 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.
Sounds like a great opportunity for folks to sue you for exactly that. Same with the imprint requirement in Germany. There are people out there looking for small businesses without an imprint to extract some money from them.
Re: How Europe is killing makers and micro-entrepreneurs
#63This 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 i…
Your device tends to need to be causing problems, that the FCC then go and track down, and then come back to you. That is (hopefully, depending on the kind of device) extremely unlikely.
As for Ali stuff, probably lots of it is not tested but still comes with a FCC label - but if it is shipped from overseas, who is going to take responsibility for it? Nobody… So there is nothing they can do except fine the person who bought it if it’s really causing problems (and usually I doubt they’d even do that if the user wasn’t intentionally doing something they shouldn’t have been, they are just told to stop and maybe the device would be seized/ destroyed)
Re: How Europe is killing makers and micro-entrepreneurs
#64Laws 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
#65Re: How Europe is killing makers and micro-entrepreneurs
#66It 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.
Re: How Europe is killing makers and micro-entrepreneurs
#67Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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.
Re: How Europe is killing makers and micro-entrepreneurs
#68Re: How Europe is killing makers and micro-entrepreneurs
#69I 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.
Re: How Europe is killing makers and micro-entrepreneurs
#70FTR. 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.
As far as I'm concerned the only way you could say this is "killing" any business is if the business in question has, as you said, spent the last decade just assuming they could sell things wherever with no oversight.