Posted by l-one-lone 13 hours ago
But as with anything here in Europe, check your laws.
If you are running on a level with focus one some revenue, if you are doing it somehow regularly and if you have at least some infrastructure to look like you are a corporate (billing system, customer care or similar), then you may fall under corp rules, even if you are not acting as an entity.
Are you saying to sell as an individual? People don't do that because if you ever get sued, it puts your personal assets at risk.
So many entrepreneurs (who can because software businesses) are leaving EU
Also, for those small cases, why not put responsibility (for any harm) more directly into both the customers and producers? For example, if a producer of a new low-volume product somehow manages to get a lot of waste packaging into the environment, they could be held responsible and pay a fee, or probably who discarded was the consumer, so the consumer in this case should be held responsible. I get that large corporations should be held to higher standards, and take stronger preemptive measures and follow stricter compliance rules.
I think the same should apply for all sorts of regulations, like electrical safety, radio emissions, etc.. If you're designing and selling a small product, you can and should take responsibility for what happens to it (in the case it is found your device bad design/construction itself caused injury, of course). Maybe the only thing you should be obliged to do was put a large sticker like 'WARNING: Prototype-class device. By opening you accept some RISK OF INJURY from device. Return to source if terms not accepted: (...)' -- that is, both you and the consumer should share some responsibility for trying something experimental.
Probably the overwhelming majority are completely harmless low-voltage devices.
In general, I think outcome-based and performance-oriented regulation is something that should be more widespread. Like, there should be in the worst case two options: (1) You follow a strict set of rules and guidelines that dictate how companies in your industry type should operate (specially important for high-risk stuff like nuclear plants, large civilian housing buildings, etc.); (2) You (instead) take increased resposibility for outcomes of your activity (products, devices, etc.), being liable for any damage at an increased rate.
Unfortunately, because all of us have postponed thinking about solving the problem, now we have a problem and braking is safer than not breaking at all.
In my country we do have advanced collecting systems but it all falls apart when different materials can be prioritised. There were an interesting proposal of having the companies to buy back the recyclable rubbish but that was scraped.
I was up to this. Because they would need to emit in the docs the amount of money the package cost and how much they would pay back, it was possible to track the sources from a fiscal eyes.
I think it was scraped because people already thought on ways of breaking it, instead of giving better alternatives.
I've been doing business in the EU a long time, and in order to be successful you need to:
1. Never follow all the rules. Focus on your business and customers, and ignore/pay someone to deal with the rest if it ever becomes reality.
2. Start your company in a low cost, low tax jurisdiction. There are plenty of them in the forgotten corners of the EU, or why not a US LLC.
But I think the EU will implode in a decade or two and return europe to a state of innovation and profitability. The nationalist trend will lock any decision making in the EU, and the EU:s deep state will take care of the rest, enriching itself at the cost of the tax payer. The result... countries will leave or just silently start to ignore the EU rules, and then block any legal moves the EU tries to attempt at the EU level.
Unless you are a medium to large-sized company, it is very difficult to remain fully compliant with the regulations in most nations now - across fields, from packaging, to agriculture, to food, aviation..
What I find funny is that all of my packaging is re-used. I guess it's still "bad" that I'm sending non-EU packaging to EU, but at a global level, I'm way ahead. Re-using >>> re-cycling.
a 0.05 EUR spring, a 0.05 EUR bolt and a 0.05 EUR LED in the same package = 9 EUR fee
https://commission.europa.eu/news-and-media/news/ensuring-fa...