The EU has passed a new packaging regulation, the PPWR. Let me say upfront: there's nothing wrong with the actual goal. Recycling makes sense. I grew up with the yellow recycling bin and the paper bin. And in Germany I've been dutifully paying my dues to the dual recycling system, along with the accompanying paperwork, which looks like it was designed for a moderately serious tax audit. Cumbersome, but doable.
What's being added now is a different category of cumbersome. For every EU country I ship to, I need my own authorized representative on the ground, notarized, with everything that entails. Nine countries means nine representatives, nine notarized appointments, nine times several hundred euros a year, plus ongoing fees to each country's national recycling system, plus the administrative scaffolding around all of it. For a grand total of twenty-three packages across the entire year, I'm looking at a loss that any business consultant would shake their head at.
This is the same EU that once officially regulated how curved a banana is allowed to be. Maybe you remember that one. Apparently Brussels has a special talent for scrutinizing the small stuff down to the last detail while looking away entirely from the big consequences.
Even EU politicians seem to have noticed what they've gotten themselves into. The law had barely taken effect on August 12 before the discussion about exemptions for small shippers like me began. That's commendable, except nothing has been decided to this day. And as long as it's unresolved, the rule applies in full force, draconian penalties for violations included.
So for now, I'm not shipping anything to other EU countries until there's clarity.
For eighteen years, this worked with one click and a shipping label. Now shipping has ground to a halt while some committee keeps meeting somewhere and I sit in Frankfurt waiting for news.
What bothers me about all this is the sheer disconnect from reality: a rule meant for mass importers got slapped onto every single small business owner, apparently without anyone bothering to calculate what that actually means for someone like me. A container ship full of plastic packaging and a hand-signed photo book that goes to Estonia once a quarter are being measured with the exact same yardstick.
Until an exemption for small shippers arrives, if it ever does, I'm no longer offering shipping to EU countries outside Germany. Because it just doesn't work anymore. Nine notaries for twenty-three packages, even I, no fan of crunching numbers, find that absurd. I'm still collecting the requests from abroad though, sorted by country, neatly filed away, so that on the day Brussels comes to its senses, not a single package is left waiting that can't ship out immediately.