How Europe is killing makers and micro-entrepreneurs

Posted by l-one-lone 14 hours ago

How Europe is killing makers and micro-entrepreneurs(lectronz.com)

1095 points | 673 commentspage 7

theplumber 13 hours ago|

The reason for this mess is because individual countries want to retain some kind of control over the whole thing such as VAT/tax investigations and implementation of the laws. In a way it’s the “worst” of both worlds federated and individual countries but somehow still better than the latter.

rjsw 12 hours ago||

The new EU regulation on Digital Product Passports may have similar effects on small businesses.

I was expecting that they would build the "passport" on top of existing design standards but that doesn't seem to be the case, the recent webinar on it doesn't go into much detail though.

xyzelement 12 hours ago||

EU has a double-whammy problem that the average citizen is old, and the more ambitious youth has moved to London, Switzerland, or the US.

So those who remain are statistically too old or non-ambitious to think regulatory friction applies to them, and they are right.

charlieyu1 13 hours ago||

Is it actually a bad thing? From Asia I definitely see so much shady business practices from small businesses. Customer protection is non-existent. Keeping small businesses in drive prices down, but also drive wages down. I don’t think this is a compromise that many people would be happy with.

carlosjobim 13 hours ago||

You're right, and this is also why we should only allow accomplished piano players to play the piano.

delfinom 13 hours ago|||

Small businesses result in innovation. There is little innovation from big business whose entire mission becomes profit maximization once sufficiently large enough. The little guys are that ones that come with new ideas and move fast to grow it. This is the entire story of startups in the US, silicon valley and more.

Big business also drives down wages way more than small businesses. When you are one of the few major employers in an industry, there is zero need to pay more while sucking in profit. Sure, maybe you could get an union involved but you are still subservient to the same employer who no longer has to respond to any labor market pressure other than quelling the union once in awhile.

runarberg 13 hours ago||

I am from Europe and I think this complaint is misplaced. Europe is currently speeding towards neo-liberalism at lightspeed and shows no sign of slowing down. The beneficiaries are primarily the CEOs and big corporations. The workers are certainly not the ones benefiting from the status quo, especially if you look at the stripping down of consumer protection which is starting to look like completely absent in the continent. And on top of everything you have mass austerity, stripping away any social safety net.

However I do not see favoring smaller entrepreneurs over the status quo as something which will improve matters at all. It feels saying our problem is that we have the wrong capitalists. We just need to swap out our old capitalists, get new ones in, and hand them the exploited wealth, and then everything will be good.

What Europe needs is a focus on workers. Enough with capitalism already.

cm2012 7 hours ago|||

Is europe liberalizing its labor laws at light speed?

runarberg 4 hours ago||

I wouldn’t say so. Labor laws are still strong in the continent (at least in the more unionized parts of the continent), though salaries are very stagnant and not keeping up with the mountain rise in the cost of living.

Unions are still strong, but they have been focusing less and less on consumer protection, there are still some victories, like increased holiday/sick pay, parental leave, and gender equality. But compared to the rapid loss of consumer protection, these victories are coming to few and to far apart.

Urahandystar 13 hours ago|||

Workers need businesses or their is no work. Favouring smaller enterprenuers get more workers.

runarberg 12 hours ago||

Businesses need workers a lot more then workers need businesses. And Europes whole deal is to shift this power imbalance in favor of the the businesses. This has to stop.

deliciousturkey 13 hours ago||

One additional problem is that this reduces options as a consumer in smaller EU countries. Smaller ships no longer are willing to take on the risk and bureaucracy of selling to smaller markets, meaning only a few, large players remain. Like Amazon, Temu, Aliexpress, or larger local companies.

andai 9 hours ago||

Hmm, I wonder who could have predicted this.

Maybe the corporations who pushed the laws?

I have no info here, just thinking "what would I do if I was a wealthy corporation?" Dig a deeper moat!

dec0dedab0de 8 hours ago||

All regulations end up being scheme’s to protect incumbents. Especially when the incumbent is ostensibly, and loudly against the regulation.

st-keller 12 hours ago||

They don’t think, that they are killing innovation! I was told that they measure „innovation“ by „patents granted“ - and if you see it that way, only big enterprises can be innovative! And i bet most bureaucrats never worked at a startup!

avereveard 7 hours ago||

not all regulation is bad regulation. micro packaging is waste, and waste is an issue in europe. the problem stem when you get conglomerate unfairly competing from deregulated countries, applying maximum legal optimization to skirt regulations that smaller player cannot evade. THAT is the problem to fix.

vibe_that_works 13 hours ago|

If you are a small maker and looking for the loophole here, this is it: "PPWR excludes an object where it is genuinely an integral part of the product, necessary to contain/support/preserve it throughout its lifetime and intended to remain with it."

alephnerd 13 hours ago|

It isn't a loophole - this was done on purpose.

De minimis and the previous packaging regulations were used as a tariff bypass by Chinese platforms like PDD and SHEIN, which led to their crackdown over the past 24 months [0][1]

[0] - https://www.ft.com/content/067ba5bb-4da3-42fc-a57b-9dd27a8f9...

[1] - https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/eu-probes-shein-over-...

vibe_that_works 13 hours ago||

Let me spell out the loophole: Just don't use packaging. Redesign your product so it comes in a sturdy container that makes it integral part of the product itself and completely side steps the obligations here.

Scoundreller 6 hours ago||

I'm going to get a lot of packages packed in a cat box, aren't I?

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