I'm not saying that this is impossible, but it's 3:40 on a Monday in Central Europe right now. I imagine the headline resonates with many readers here.
Probably not, I think it is mostly real people who upvote based on just the headline with reading it just because the headline agrees with their worldview.
The idea isn't the issue, the implementation is. The EU did the same with VAT previously, where you'd have to register separate businesses in different countries, once you got large enough (which wasn't very large). Now there's a central system to keep track of what goes where and you can sell internally in the EU with no issues.
Something similar needs to happen here, where business report and pay to a central EU system, that then transfers the funds to each country. The problem is that the EU is smart enough to see the environmental problem, but forgets to think about ramifications and doesn't provide the right tools.
I was commenting on the title, the concept is sound yes, but doesn't call the initial idea into question, these measures are necessary to ensure a sustainable civilisation at this point, should be clear to every body really...
It 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.
As they should. As a customer, I want to be able to hold a business accountable, and the minimum requirement for that is being able to identify the legal person responsible for that business.
That's a very American mindset. I've worked across both the US and EU at a variety of companies with customers, partners, etc and it's a clear pattern:
- Americans are usually willing to skirt the rules and figure it out later. This comes with risk but is ideal when you're early stage, low stakes, and you couldn't follow the rules anyway.
- Europeans absolutely want to do it by the book and will be shocked if you suggest otherwise. Being process oriented is great for high stakes industries where lives and safety are on the line but destroys startups, likely slowing or even killing innovation.
There is no floor to the level of "petty" that can happen here.
The UK - granted, not the EU - goes after individuals who don't pay their TV license and determine the who by triangulating unlicensed TVs via radio trucks and inspectors looking in your windows.
I find this hard to discuss among others as it often results in heated discussions, but in my experience, Europeans have a completely different understanding of what is considered "rude" so much that I struggle to work with a vast majority of them.
That's not to say that there aren't extremely nice people all other Europe... there are. But I'm still caught off guard when hearing them say some things nonchalantly that would get them fired in the US.
I don't really have this experience. A lot of business I have worked with followed the "let's just do it and figure out the risk later" approach. In highly regulated environment it was different, but then looking for ways to squirt around the rules was the game. See for example the CumCum (don't blame me, it was called like that) tax-evasion scheme put in place by french banks.
Perhaps one explanation is personal bankruptcy? At least in Scandinavia/Finland this is an unknown concept. You mess up your business (Ireland has EPR fines upto 500ke) and end up paying company loans for the rest of your life.
I don't think any bank will give you such a huge personal loan that you could end up in debt for your whole life, since they typically want the loan repaid. The only way I can imagine that happening is if you're a sole proprietor and you get sued or fined. I can't think of another way to get exposed to that much liability.
100ke might be enough. Once the debt is in enforcement (ulosotto in Finnish), interest can keep accruing at roughly 10%. If your earnings are low, you can pay for years without reducing the principal at all.
What are you doing taking on that kind of risk and starting ventures if your earnings are low? I'm sorry, but if you're a delivery boy living from paycheck to paycheck, you should be trying to get an education, not start a business.
Depends on what Europe you mean. Europe can be quite different depending on where you are. I wouldn't say northern Europe wants to do it by the book all the time like the Germans.
Quite common to view Europe as all the same, but Europe varies much more than what US does.
The TV license is silly but the detector van situation is bogus, at least in the present day; really they just blanket mail demand letters to every address in the database on the assumption that everyone watches TV.
> Europeans absolutely want to do it by the book
Again on HN, I don't think conflating Europe and all Europeans into a uniform culture works. This might be true of Germany but as you get further from Berlin it is .. less so.
(Famous story from the Greek debt crisis of using satellite photos to find swimming pools and therefore people who were probably underpaying income tax, which was at such poor compliance levels the state was struggling)
Yes, it appears the "detector vans" are an urban legend/propoganda.
Even more fun, in the lead up to Greece joining the EU, they had to get their government pay under control so they were given monthly caps on what they could pay people. No problem, they created a 13th month.
* As detailed in Michael Lewis' Boomerang: https://amzn.to/4cXJnjE - He's the same guy who wrote The Big Short and Moneyball
Most people are under the impression that those triangulating trucks can't detect anything and they're just an obvious looking enforcement truck used as a scare tactic, is that not the case?
The problem is that even this has a chilling effect on innovation:
1.It will dissuade some people from starting in the first place because it's one more hurdle. Even if in practice people don't comply, the existence of that complexity will dissuade some people.
2.Even if nobody is being prosecuted for mailing 10 anti-static bags, what is the number at which you do comply? And once you do, will you be held accountable for everything that came before?
Maybe it's super convenient for you in the moment, but the aggregate effect is pretty bad. If everyone just ignores laws because they're too much hassle and they don't expect to get caught, enforcement becomes incredibly difficult. You end up with loads of laws that technically exist but are only selectively enforced, which is a pretty serious problem.
Courts, lobbying (writing to your MP), campaigning, demonstrations, elections ideally. I know that non-compliance is the path of least resistance, it's just got really bad consequences.
Yeah, I always ignore them, first in my own country (NL) and after that in EU. Even if they fine (which they don't for small companies/persons), they will not spend money/efforts to cash the fine anyway, especially across borders. I had a few useless fines in the 35 years of my company, never will pay them.
This 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.
I believe Adafruit gets around certifying every device by declaring themselves a cellphone company and being on good terms with regulators. This isn't viable for the sort of businesses and people described by this article.
FCC allows suppliers to self-declare conformance with EMI/EMC rules. You’re obviously taking a risk selling stuff if you haven’t had it properly tested so don’t really know if it passes but it’s unlikely to really be an issue for a small maker selling low quantities, especially if any intentional radiators (Bluetooth, WiFi etc.) are already-certified modules.
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)
Huh. I thought that is actually the EU that allows self declared conformance, rather than the FCC. But looking into this it seems both do?
I recall trying to build some hardware in 2020 and getting discouraged because of the CE/FCC silliness. Even though I could self declare for the EU it seemed like a big risk to do so.
> FCC allows suppliers to self-declare conformance with EMI/EMC rules
Yes, though they can also ask for your lab results or to inspect your testing facility and hit you with massive fines if it turns out you falsified your compliance documents. As you mentioned this is very rare though - even enforcement actions against non-certified intentional radiators are uncommon.
As a hardware guy it totally kills me, to get a fun or needed small time product off the ground and legally onto the market can require ~$250k of lab certifications.
Imagine making a mod for a video game, and to legally cover your ass, go through months of testing that cost $250,000.
Talk about killing a project in the cradle.
On the flip side, there are engineers who absolutely do not give a fuck, and will design their product with zero regard for emissions. To them the world is "If it's not illegal, then I cannot comprehend why I cannot take it to the extreme".
Sometimes I wonder if the lawmakers in EU are brain dead. The whole point of economic union is that free movement of good without custom tax and this new rule is practically a custom tax for each country.
I'm sorry, but that's utter bullshit.
The EU project was and is a significant growth motor for the member states. That's why even Canada is contemplating to become part of the union.
But yes, bureaucracy and bad implementation of useful regulation a real issue.
This is actively preventing me from sending packages to other countries as a maker. No matter how small the risk is, I don't want to risk a 5000 euro fine for sending a small amount of packages to other EU countries.
Really sorry you’re experiencing this, that whole regulation rollout is a complete mess. The leadership should be sacked for such an incompetent regulation, it’s insane how much troubles they are creating for small businesses.
Who is the leadership? The Council - then it would be national elections etc for the individual national representatives; the Commission - then it would be the European Parliament.
Do you send them as your business or as yourself? If it's the latter, then I would consider forming a business to take on the risk. That's not free either, but think of it as insurance.
Can't comment on all European jurisdictions obviously, but a 1 person LLC/Ltd. is not a great shield in Germany. Usually they'll still consider the owner/director liable because they were making those executive decisions.
That's just an excuse then. Register with whatever local authority in your country handles these things and in the unlikely event you get a grumpy letter just send them a copy of your registration documents.
Yes, that’s exactly what we want. The single market should be finalized. And we should move towards having a European equivalent of Delaware corps, and unified systems.
What is amazing is that this goes so much against the concept of the EU. The EU was founded on the principles of four freedoms, Free movement of goods, Free movement of persons, Freedom to provide services, and Free movement of capital.
The EU even have a SME Test to maker sure small business are not overburdened by regulations.
Also there are thousands of lobbyists fighting for small businesses. Yes, this law will probably eventually be thrown out for small businesses but after how many years is a big question, and how many small businesses have lost there businesses.
And the law was devised by Ripa di Meana, who had been a member of the Italian Communist Party and the green party.
--
The EU was founded on the principles of four freedoms, Free movement of goods, Free movement of persons, Freedom to provide services, and Free movement of capital.
--
If you take a look at first paragraphs of the EU contracts, they sate above all these:
-----------
Article 3
(ex Article 2 TEU)
1. The Union's aim is to promote peace, its values and the well-being of its peoples.
2. The Union shall offer its citizens an area of freedom, security and justice without internal frontiers, in which the free movement of persons is ensured in conjunction with appropriate measures with respect to external border controls, asylum, immigration and the prevention and combating of crime.
3. The Union shall establish an internal market. It shall work for the sustainable development of Europe based on balanced economic growth and price stability, a highly competitive social market economy, aiming at full employment and social progress, and a high level of protection and improvement of the quality of the environment. It shall promote scientific and technological advance.
It shall combat social exclusion and discrimination, and shall promote social justice and protection, equality between women and men, solidarity between generations and protection of the rights of the child.
It shall promote economic, social and territorial cohesion, and solidarity among Member States.
It shall respect its rich cultural and linguistic diversity, and shall ensure that Europe's cultural heritage is safeguarded and enhanced.
4. The Union shall establish an economic and monetary union whose currency is the euro.
...
----
So its only about free movement of people in the beginning, goods and services are much later in the docs
In most EU countries law, this one is also considered as "solid business", regardless if you are incorporated or not:
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.
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 that small entrepreneurs may also want to take part. Modern technology makes it feasible, but old ideas just drags it down.
The bigger issue in OP's case is they are dependent on de minimis.
The de minimis crackdown [0] and EPR [1] are both being rolled out because Chinese conglomerates like PDD and SHEIN took undue advantage of that while ignoring European regulators on issues such as safety standards [2] and gacha mechanisms [3].
Seems European HNers are fine with European regulations until it hurts their niche interests.
The issue is that those marketplaces got too mainstream, and the average consumer is too stupid.
10-15 years ago if you were importing stuff from China you'd know that the trade off for cheaper prices is that you'd lose your consumer laws protection and you'd be on your own. If you wanted those, then you'd go to your local retailer and pay extra.
And then everyone started doing it, which meant that your local retailer isn't in business anymore (see local high streets in many countries). The choice you had 10-15 years ago doesn't exist anymore because everyone went for the cheaper price, and now the question is where the extra goes that we used to pay to the local retailer.
Means nothing though because no European country can produce the goods an impoverished European can afford to pay for the goods so the local store is just the same Chinese goods shipped to that address other than your home address.
Living in Europe, I find that with LLMs, it is possible to navigate the federal & law jungle. However, LLMs don't protect you from institutional envy or the resistance of people trying to block progress simply because it is perceived as 'too modern' or disruptive. I find this the hardest challenge. And I have the feeling during times of general decline, like these, it gets worse.
That makes sense given the structure of the society, no? If you were to build an organization whose purpose was a predictable amount paid out to the senior most members committed ahead of time for an indefinite period, you would prioritize predictable income. In the ideal, your contracts would all be long-term contracts that don’t fluctuate very much.
Any entity that seeks to take risks to earn outsize income increases the income variance and makes it hard to organize your committed payouts. So you are forced (by your priorities) to discourage the entrepreneur and freelancer and encourage the 18-60 salaried employee. Fixed fungible production unit can be used as an input to a machine that produces committed output.
Then you import guest-workers etc. to improve throughput. You are forced by your priorities. Probably the expansion of the US welfare state will meet similar constraints soon enough.
It’s a bit just-so so I think there’s an over-claim in there but I think the seed is there.
I personally hate the "reenact" the old- good times to recreate the prosperity cargo cults. What created those prosperous times, where "characters" that would just do things, and ask for forgiveness by the law later. And that was actually priced into the justice system, by giving the judges a range to verdict from. In a way, the rule of law was much less strict in the 50s and 60s and way more informal.
Right, it's a zero-sum mentality versus a growth mentality. When people don't believe that growth is possible then they focus on guarding what they have.
Because if the EU tried to force countries into single compliance, there would no end of "EU is trampling national interests" and similar screaming.
It's an unwinnable situation. Again, EU-level politics keep assuming everyone (corporations and states) are adults. Unfortunately, everyone are just a bunch of screaming, scheming petulant children.
>Again, EU-level politics keep assuming everyone (corporations and states) are adults. Unfortunately, everyone are just a bunch of screaming, scheming petulant children.
One in four MEPs are involved in scandals [0] ranging from harassment to organized crime and corruption. The European Parliament also remains a free out-of-jail card through abuse of parliamentary immunity, and they do abuse it [1]. EU politics is a circus.
One of the best example is Ursula Von der Leyen. She was sent from Berlin to EU by Angela Merkle because when she was the defence minister of Germany under Merkle’s government there was a huge scandal of offering contracts (https://www.euractiv.com/news/von-der-leyen-admits-mistakes-...)
She was sent to EU so she can do less harm in the future, but the irony is that she became the head of EU.
The US is wealthier, has more billionaires and has fewer of these barriers for small entrepreneurs. So no, this is not the monocausal explanation that applies equally everywhere.
(YES, the US has regulatory capture, YES the wealthy attempt to use it, YES we should try to eliminate it here too, but it remains true that it is easier to run a small business in the US, while having more billionaires. There are other explanations to the differential here).
Agreed, europe has a culture of "stability" first. The fear of disruption and chaos is larger after two WW and it outsourced the risks of disruption to the US. Basically, use the us as a test-mouse for new ideas and innovations, then when proven safe introduce them and ride those coat-tails to infinity.
Is fetishizing disruption good for USA? It did helped to create a billionaire oligarch class, but that class is literally intentionally destroying it. I mean, it may end up destroying Europe and the rest of the world too, but the US democracy seem to be their first target.
Why does this matter? The US has fewer than 1000 billionaires out of a population of more than 340 million people. Statistically, almost nobody is or ever will be a billionaire.
> and has fewer of these barriers for small entrepreneurs. So no, this is not the monocausal explanation that applies equally everywhere.
The US is a federal system in which each of 50 states has its own laws governing the operation of businesses within the state.
That might be one reason they refuse to be open about their financial supports in their various organizations yes. it is very well known unfortunately..
Its not as bad as in the US I think, but yeah, most of the laws are actually (literally) written by corporations. I wouldn't call them puppets, but EU corps have an outsized influence on the outcome of the process.
I don‘t know about EU laws specifically, but national law in Europe is often written by lobby firms in favor of their corporate sponsors. In Iceland for example the main corporate lobby is called Viðskiptaráð, and they brag about the high percentage of laws they write passing at the parliament (in 2007 it was like 90%). I don‘t think things are much different in the rest of Europe (maybe just less obvious due to size differences).
EU politicians seemed to be fairly captured by corporations generally. Less so than politicians from the countries themselves. Voting turnout for EU representatives is very low compared with voting for local officials. I think its because people know that who they vote for as their chancellor or prime minister can make a big impact on their lives. They see the EU parliament as this distant thing and don't follow it so much. EU representatives therefore don't have as much accountability and can more easily be swayed by lobbying. How else can you explain the whole chat control thing which everyone hates but still keeps getting pushed through. Like who is voting for this a-holes.
It passed on a technicality of present reps voted against in majority but not enough total votes because the president had triggered a special vote for the last session before recess when less reps are present.
The entire purpose of EU is trade (trading nations don't go to war etc), trade is more or less defined by large corporations, it's through that lens every decision is made and measured.
The one thing EU politicians hate is disruption. Entrepreneurs are fresh entrants trying to disrupt an existing market. The politicians don't even need to be puppets. The fact that these small startups exist and may even succeed is reason enough.
Nothing specific to EU here except the specific point is about EU this time. Otherwise just copy paste "most EU politicians are puppets of EU corporations" in some search engine and enjoy, here are the top result of such a search:
So even searching specifically for praising information, one will have to dig deep apparently, or maybe go straight to the official propaganda of what the politicians say about themselves (but probably less so about others).
Everyone is free to go as deep as they want (and can afford) and draw their own conclusions.
Dunno about that. I live in the US. I can start a small business today and the only thing I'd have to do differently is file an additional form on my taxes next year.
Yes, that's a simplification that doesn't apply to every situation, but it is still completely accurate.
That's pretty much the situation in the UK if you are a sole trader. If you set up a limited liability company, that's a separate entity and has its own tax reporting requirement, but nothing onerous. I am a sole trader, and manage a small company separately from that.
One thing I have heard of in the USA is the need for a "business licence". I'm not sure what that is or whether it applies to all businesses, so I'm not sure what it would correspond to in the UK. Neither of my businesses needed any licences or permissions to start trading.
That's pretty much the situation in the UK if you are a sole trader. If you set up a limited liability company, that's a separate entity and has its own tax reporting requirement, but nothing onerous.
It's becoming more onerous all the time to run a small business in the UK though.
We just got charged £100 just to essentially tick one box with Companies House saying "nothing changed since last year".
The main tax paperwork is the annual financial statements. These are getting more demanding over the next couple of years with the simplified versions that small companies have been allowed to file looking like they will no longer being acceptable after that time.
You now have to file tax returns like PAYE and VAT using approved software. Most of that software - even the big names - ranges from OK but with significant problems and limitations to simply awful.
I heard recently that personal self assessment tax returns for company directors are about to get more complicated as well.
If you have business premises then you have to deal with business rates. Often these are still based on valuations from a time when dinosaurs still roamed the planet. Some small businesses have already closed down due to this becoming unaffordable.
I've lost count of how many different kinds of insurance we now have. All have a cost of course.
If you're working solo or the only person from your company working with a specific customer/client then you need to worry about Off Payroll Working as well. That's still a huge mess of ambiguity decades after IR35 was introduced and likely incurs further expenses for legal reviews and insurance policies that shouldn't even need to exist.
Control any personal data? Make sure you register with the ICO and pay their fee too.
Sell online or even run a website? Make sure you know the requirements for information you have to provide and it's in exactly the right format for compliance. (I've even seen businesses working in the compliance industry failing on this one and risking regulatory sanctions.)
The public sector is increasingly pushing for things like Cyber Essentials if you want to be part of its supply chain. That is an absolutely textbook example of regulations that were clearly written for large businesses using a certain operating system. The only options are 100% compliance or failing and 100% compliance is tricky for sole traders or microbusinesses to achieve without disproportionate expense and administration. If you need the certified version then that's another cost and the disruption of being audited to deal with.
We haven't even talked about everything you have to do if you want to take on employee #1 who isn't one of the founders/owners yet.
I don't think it's realistic to say that the UK is supportive of small businesses today. It never really was but at least the the potential financial benefits used to justify the overheads. Now the taxes are far higher - you end up paying double-digit higher overall rates if you set up a Ltd that can actually grow as a business compared to simply trading as a self-employed sole trader now - and the overheads and costs are also far higher in numerous ways. It's no surprise that people are deterred from going into business here and that's really bad for the country because we need the people willing to take the risks and put in the effort to build the next generation of businesses to support our economy and provide much-needed new jobs.
That is the issue across the entire world. Large corporations can easily bear the cost of regulatory laws, environmental requirements, rules, and regulations. They can also go to great lengths to promote an environment that is almost nightmarish for a smaller company or entrepreneur trying to enter the game.
They create barrier after barrier through their lobbying efforts. A good example is having to pay $50,000 for an inspector to come and determine whether your automatic door opens and closes properly, or to verify that your facility does not have a chimney. A friend of mine who owns a business in Niagara Falls, Canada, had to pay around $10,000 for a wind assessment to determine where chimney exhaust would go once released. He didn’t even have a chimney. They ended up having to have another inspection to verify they didn't have a chimney.
Many of these environmental laws are intentionally created and applied to small businesses as well, even when the cost of meeting the requirements is greater than what the business could realistically generate in sales.
The result is that large corporations can absorb these costs, while small businesses and entrepreneurs are often priced out before they even have a chance to compete.
Back in college (USA) friends would spin up LLCs for the summer just to buy mowers or vans to do yard work. They would hire all the students who didn't get summer jobs.
Starting a small company in many EU countries is a breeze too e.g. Estonia, Portugal, UK and no doubt many others. The rumoured 'EU Inc' entity should also help close the gap for member countries where incorporating domestically traditionally comes with more friction (e.g. Germany).
Can you elaborate more? When you say "checks and balances" do you mean explicit legal mechanisms or implicit mechanisms like Tiebout-style foot voting? For the latter areas with "almost zero oversight" seem advantages. Also, can you give an example of these low-oversight places and how it manifests? I'm thankful even for some pointers in what to search for.
One example is the effective prohibition on spraying pesticides by air, including drone. Drones allow lower pesticide use than current, legal practices
Oh, so "parts of the EU" wasn't about geographic areas but policy areas? But this sounds like more regulation, not checks and balances either. Are you replying to the right comment?
European Commission is so disjoined from electorate through many layers of elections, that it can disregard it completely - practically citizens have no input on EC's body. Any legislation originates from there which makes it even worse.
Only guarantee of EC doing their job is their Oath, and vote of no confidence is basically impossible to call, nor there's a way to initiate one from citizens side via for example a referendum. There are no consequences for not following the Oath at all so corrupt EC can easily push things that are favorable for bigger voting blocks, while screwing everyone else and get away with it.
The only measure that citizens have to actually affect EU turned out to be worthless(as SKG initiative has shown) - as Citizens Initiative is not binding at all, and can be disregarded.
EU itself creates a system of double loyalty for every politician - do they pursue national interest or do they jump ship to European ones(including appointed positions)? This erodes national systems of check and balances.
European initiatives are impossible to control nor audit form member state PoV, and it's even worse from citizen PoV. And there's no mechanism to counteract bureaucratic bloat growth, nor rampant lobbying.
European Council is used as a way to launder unpopular legislations and push it onto all member states - like chat control.
Most of the times none of those legislations have been a part of internal political campaigns - and even if they were, they were such in only single member state. There was zero input from citizens, even in forms of voting for their own government.
President of European Parliament can act against parliament itself, again with no mechanism for any consequences(ie best example is pushing chat control vote just before summer vacation this year)
Whole institution of EU after Lisbon Treaty was made with assumption that every member state will pursue their own best interests, MEPs will pursue their own best national interests too. But sadly this created system in which it is difficult to purge any form of corruption(both embezzlement/criminal, pursuing personal interests or being purely ideologically driven without consideration of practicality).
This was done to create resistance to populism, but in practice created system that's extremely resistant to purging corruption.
It doesn't help that EU itself is a very top-down organization. Not in form of dictatorship - it's far from that - but in form of committee driven changes by unelected civil servants that operate like a black box.
and one last thing, not related to checks and balances - EU itself moves at glacial pace and is resistant to change by design - which would be perfectly fine for just a Trade Union. Unfortunately it leads to it both not reacting in time, and pushing initiatives that are already outdated.
It’s unlikely because smaller member states wouldn’t want that as they’d be outvoted by bigger members and thus forced to implement laws that might not even make sense in those (smaller) countries.
We had a federation around here called Yugoslavia and we saw how it played out. Forcing different nations to agree on everything down to things that are basically cultural preferences never worked well. Regulations, bureaucracy and laws are often based on cultural preferences. The EU tries to find a common baseline but still leaves a lot to each member state to avoid this problem.
Then the bigger member states will say that they’re contributing so much more but get very little voting power etc. It’s not an easy problem to solve, hence the current indirect system.
I don't see federalism ever working - you have thousand of years of grudges within EU that you would have to overcome, plus gigantic cultural differences that lead to completely different ways of life.
I think this is a big factor. While I would prefer a more federated US, the US as is is a great market to start in. It's 350M fairly wealthy people under mostly the same tech restrictions. That's a great place to grow.
It's important to remember that even without the fact that big companies basically write the regulations, regulations naturally tend to being effectively regressive wrt company stage/size. Every new one is a hurdle that a bigger company has more resources to overcome.
> It's 350M fairly wealthy people under mostly the same tech restrictions
and, on a case-by-case basis, those people are generally happy to adopt other states' standards in the name of convenience and efficiency (California notwithstanding). Look at E-ZPass/I-Pass as a great example of harmonization across states.
It's funny. Ask any Illinoisan how they feel about adopting Ohio's policies and they'd bristle. But say "hey we're gonna make your highway transponder work in every state east of the Rockies" and they're all for it.
I have to wonder if Europe has the same thing going on.
Your example of adoption is interesting. I think California has actually influenced other states on efficiency. I wanted to say disproportionately, but perhaps in exact accordance with their economic and political power.
I don't know the details well enough, but I do know that there is an effective anti-fedaralist force in the US wherever federal funding is concerned, as it comes with rules conditions (rules) attached. I would be interested to what extent this acts as a bias toward cooperation in the case of ez pass, given the interstate system.
> I think California has actually influenced other states on efficiency.
California has a frustrating tendency invent its own systems that are neither better nor worse, but nonetheless incompatible with more widely accepted standards. The highway transponder example actually applies again - Fastrak.
CA has some great ideas too, don't get me wrong (ubiquitous painted curbs: great!) but a lot of the time it's just different for the sake of being different.
The emissions standards themselves? Kinda. The way they go about enforcing those standards? Not even close. CA emissions testing is byzantine and expensive compared to most other states. The fact that you people have to pay money to get tested, and there's 2 tiers of tests, hurts my brain.
Please elaborate on less strict rules for Gdpr? There is Record of Processing Activities exemption for <250, but if you have to comply with Gdpr (and you do), you need essentially same info as Ropa and of course it has to be up to date. How else can you ensure you are in compliance?
Ah yes, let’s give the EU and its undemocratic system in which policy formation is heavily filtered through a relatively narrow professional political class, ordinary voters have weak or almost no direct control over major policy choices, dissent encounters administrative/economic punishment, and central institutions possess and use powerful financial means to discipline peripheral governments should have even more centralised power?
And no, just because voting for MEPs is bolted on there as a pressure valve doesn’t suddenly make it all okay when most of the real decisions happen behind closed doors and adherence to the passed laws, no matter how damaging is ensured through financial coercion.
Not a single person voted or agreed to this law, and yet here we are.
Yeah, that's always been my concern with the EU (I'm American, for context): the long worrying practice where the legal concept of the EU is assembled by a small group who very much want EU citizens to go back to sleep and only wake up once all the laws and regulation has been created.
A federation makes sense to me: I live in one. But how the EU has assembled itself in a way that seems to unrepresentative has been worrying to watch over the last couple decades.
There is no such a thing as "representative democracy", that’s antinomic bullshit throw at people to lower it down to powerless populace.
Either citizens have the power, exercise it continuously in practice and are supplied with everything it takes to assume that role properly with all the duties it implies, or there is no democracy beyond empty words.
You cannot compare 10 million people with 450 million people when talking about direct democracy. It cannot be done I think. But if you know a way propose it here.
Just saying lets vote directly on everything will put everything on hold until all goes down.
Direct democracy doesn't mean everyone votes on everything.
At the extreme you could do something like localized e-voting: citizens vote on issues that affect a given geographic radius of where they live. Because the boundaries are purely distance-based, gerrymandering is impossible.
Maybe we could have a decaying distance boundary by some measurement like population density or something like it?
Switzerland has a very direct form of democracy thanks to its constitutional referendums. If Swiss representatives pass unpopular bullshit like the EU bottle cap rule, their work can be permanently undone by a citizen initiative writing a constitutional resolution overriding said bullshit. This means that the representatives are on a tight leash and would not even attempt to write the unpopular regulations that the EU gets away with.
One day you piss off the voters with your poorly conceived cookie law, couple years later there's a line in the constitution saying "no cookie laws" and your hands are tied forever.
First let's acknowledge that "Has it ever existed before?" is not helping with conclusion outside "it proved not physically impossible for some time in some historical specific context". It would not tell anything about "is that possible now or in near future in this or that specific geopolitical context at such a scale". And if it never existed before, a first in history is always possible.
Now what get often cited as direct democracy is ancient Greek city-states and nowadays Switzerland, which are two vastly different implementations.
> How would citizens even have the time?
That's actually the exact opposite mindset of what it takes to think democratically: how one could be called a citizen when they are not equipped with everything it takes to properly accomplish citizen duties. Of course accomplishing civil duties should be fairly compensated for the time invested. Such a compensation is generally existing and expected by current politician, so the only difference with direct democracy on this regard is that it should not be reserved to a small cast.
Funny how this questioning of democracy never shows up in topics about USA, UK or any other country - it's always EU that gets assaulted by sudden political theorists despite mirroring pretty much every other democracy on the planet.
UK is a monarchy. It’s actually in the name: United Kingdom. Democracy added as decorum on top of it is not there to change the principle of inequality that is deeply engraved in its underlying core.
USA is definitely described as a mix of plutocracy, kleptocracy, and oligarchy in many sources.
Not sure where this idea that the critics should be exclusive to Europe. TFA is about Europe, so comments will target more specifically EU, but that’s all.
Congratulations, you've redefined democracy to mean something very different to the dictionary and colloquial definitions. That's not very useful though, unless your goal is to confuse people.
Yes, as sure as the dictionary and the colloquial definitions were first altered by propaganda. War is peace, Freedom Is Slavery. Ignorance Is Strength. Democracy is delegation.
US House term is 2 years, European Parliament is 5 years. The latter is actually proportional at least but you can see how they’d only feel pressure every so often
Yes. I used to sell objects on Amazon in Europe. You can sell from just one country, but then each sale outside of that country is an "export" that triggers high fees.
For sales to be "local", products need to be stored in warehouses in each country. But that in turn means the owner of said products (the seller) has to be registered for VAT in that country, and submitting annual reports in each country's language.
I went to the trouble of registering in 6 different countries; in some countries, Amazon more or less helps sellers submit reports; in others, they offer to partner with local lawyers.
The result is a mess of reports, injunctions, penalties for late filing, etc. coming to you in Polish, German, Spanish, Hungarian. I eventually gave up.
Europe is not actually a "single market". It's a federated bureaucracy entirely indifferent (or hostile) to small businesses.
I don't think any EU One-stop-shop scheme covers "local" goods sales in other EU member states yet, i.e. an EU company has to register in all EU countries they hold stock in.
That is changing with the Single VAT Registration (SVR) legislation, effective in 2028.
This was 2017-2021. Not sure if One-Stop-Shop covers this as it mentions "cross-border sales" and the problem with Amazon fulfillment and storage was to make all sales local (not cross-border). But maybe it does cover it. I don't know.
If you look at what I responded to then you see that it was about every country having their own rules. "More EU" would mean harmonizing them in the sense that they are all the same and you'd have a single regulatory body.
I don't see how less EU would make this particular problem any easier. It would certainly give you an even harder time to deal with 20+ states that all impose import bureaucracy. That's exactly what the EU was founded to solve, but the menber states are populisting against it, not unlike your comment.
Without the EU you wouldn't have a single set of annoying overly-bureaucratic bloc-wide regulation for trade between member states, you'd have a bunch of bilateral agreements between individual countries. You might not be paying a new tax to the EU, but instead you'd pay much more for your postal service to file customs paperwork based on declarations you'd have to write. And I'd guess countries would still want you to have a local representative for a bunch of things, not to mention compliance with tens of slightly-different safety standards (think CE).
Maybe it wouldn't be that much worse, but certainly not better than what we have today.
The EU existed for a long time now and you could replace all of this with bilateral organisations focused on narrow topics, rather than a bureaucratic body with an open agenda and no real checks and balances.
I never understand this argument. The same logic would suggest that things like the GPL, CNCF, OCI etc. are somehow harmful when, objectively, it's the opposite. Standardisation and conformity lead to much larger and more efficient ecosystems. Why should it not be the same for the EU?
You think without EU there would be no regulations and everything would be free for all? You must be young or don't remember pre-EU times.
In CS terms, the EU turned an O(n^2) problem, bilateral agreements, into an O(n) problem, everybody trying to get their view into a single body. The advantages should be obvious to anybody knowing O notation.
Again, not to say EU doesn't have problems. But dismantling the EU is not the solution. Improving it is.
You specialize in things that are more difficult to make in poorer countries - you use your advantages they use theirs.
Afterall this is what happened to a lot of Polish industry after we got our EU membership - it died under pressure of already developed competition from countries like Germany.
If you are in Munich, how do you compete with someone from Magdeburg?
Also, quite a lot of German business costs are a self-inflicted wound (too much bureaucracy). Maybe taper down the endless paper war a bit, and throw away the fax machines.
In the EU you have to distinguish between "Directives" and "Regulations".
A "Regulation" becomes "law" in any member state without modification. No member state has to adopt anything. Examples are the GDPR and the new Machine Regulation.
A "Directive" does not become "law" in any member state. A member state has to enact their own national laws to implement the directive until a given date. It does not have to be single law. It could spread many laws. An example is the Machine Directive before it was re-released as Machine Regulation.
> 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 that small entrepreneurs may also want to take part.
I'm not convinced that's an accident. I think politicians in Europe are just better than those in the US at hiding who they really work for.
There are numerous examples of regulations in many European countries that create a glass ceiling for anyone who strives to be more than just middle-middle-class, while creating effective loopholes for the wealthy to continue multiplying their wealth.
For example, the total (State + Federal) top tax rate for someone living in California or New York is not too different (maybe 2-3%) from someone living in France or Sweden. But the difference is that in California the top rate does not kick in until you earn north of $1M per year, while in Sweden or France the middle class is already paying those rates.
Likewise, in the US you cannot (legally) shelter your income by declaring it to be foreign income, as you can in most European countries. That is a tax dodge not applicable to the middle class.
And then we have the present discussion: The compliance costs are of course too high for any small business, so these regulations are just another form of regulatory capture to prevent anyone new from breaking into the upper class, while allowing those already there to have it easy.
It's a success of the upper class to pit the middle class against the lower class and the immigrants. As long as people on one "side" complain that there is too much foreign culture and they'll all be replaced and/raped and the other "side" sees the racists as their main enemy, the rich have an easy time.
That sounds like a good argument, but if you look at government budgets and where come from and where they go that is not at all what is happening. I mean, there is a core of truth in that the rules allow the upper class to go less-taxed (generally not untaxed). But let's be honest here. If the upper class paid 60% on their income instead of 10%, it would improve government budgets by less than 1% (disregarding things like royal families that own oil company profits or rent out incredible amounts of terrible housing (UK) at essentially 0% tax as a specific exemption in the law)
Which means taxing the rich can make the rich poorer than they currently are and bring more equality. Which is a goal in itself. But it cannot fund EU governments. It cannot fund pensions. Not even a little bit.
Everyone knows what the big problem is: right now close to 35% of working people in the EU work, one way or another (usually in bureaucracies, granted), to take care of children, sick, unemployed or elderly non-working people. Of those groups, the elderly group is going up by about 3% every year, and that will keep going until 2050 or later. In the group of working people there is extreme resistance to actually work with the elderly (meaning physically helping elderly people, those jobs are low-status, low-paid, and generally hated with a passion), even against teaching jobs there is quite a bit of resistance (dropout rates are double digit percentages). So how do we take care of the elderly? Hell: how do we take care of kids?
This problem alone makes me say "we don't just want AI to take our jobs, we NEED AI to take our jobs". Because "we" are sure as hell not going to take them. That doesn't preclude that this needs to be regulated, but obviously just saying no to AI is not what we want. And that's putting it politely.
It should be a separate topic, yes. But calling it a "problem" is already the framing that pits locals against immigrants, distracting from what's really keeping people down. In fact, immigration is a solution to lots of actual problems. (For example demography and lack of economi growth.)
What is the solution to your demand for infinite growth on a planet of finite resources? Sounds like you use immigrants as a shield for your desire to get yours' before the resources run out and the line can't go up anymore.
> What is the solution to your demand for infinite growth on a planet of finite resources?
Um I wrote "lots of problems", not "all problems". Nor did I require infinite growth, not sure where you read that.
Though on a planet with finite resources, what is the point of encouraging women in the west to have more kids because the population needs to be growing again, if otherplace has still more (population) growth than they can handle, so one thing could alleviate the other, win-win. If we were less racist, that is.
It also depends a little on the definition of "growth" of course. Physical growth of course has limits. But services can always improve, so you can get "growth" without more stuff. Depends on what and how you count.
Or you build rockets and go interplanetary, but that's mostly a solution for the Musk cult which I'm not subscribing to.
> Sounds like you use immigrants as a shield for your desire to get yours' before the resources run out and the line can't go up anymore.
Yes, I am pitting locals against immigrants and I am calling them a problem, which they are. Immigration is absolutely disastrous for the average citizen who has to compete for housing and jobs.
Economic growth is pointless if it's only achieved by population growth. It is the wealth per person that counts, which will surely decrease when you import millions of people with few employable skills and their non-working families.
Demography is only a problem because our social systems are completely unsustainable pyramid schemes reliant on endless population growth. Every day that you try to delay its inevitable collapse with immigration will only make the problem worse down the line.
> import millions of people with few employable skills
That's denying reality to a level that's not even funny. For an above-average group like HN folks I'd even assume a bad faith perspective.
The average immigrant is the prime person to boost the economy. They are already born and have gone through childhood, the most expensive time. The society they are immigrating to pays none of that. In contrast, they tend to be young and hungry for work. Exactly what your economy needs. Either they can work right away, mind you often jobs that locals don't want (low level construction, cleaning, elderly care). Or you give them a few years of training and they work harder than the average local. They are on average more law abiding and know that they must succeed otherwise they will be outcasts. No chilling on moms sofa.
Of course there are outliers. But for a fair argument you need to consider the lazy/criminal/... locals too. And the highly educated immigrants that are making the tech sector work which is currently essentially running the economy. Remove all immigrants from the tech sector and the whole western economy would collapse.
> Likewise, in the US you cannot (legally) shelter your income by declaring it to be foreign income, as you can in most European countries.
Not sure what you mean, most European countries tax residents on worldwide income. You certainly can’t just declare income as foreign and be done with it. Some countries (notably UK) had loopholes for non-domiciled residents but they are being closed now.
US Sales tax is the exact same way. Each state has a different rate, Texas has multiple rates inside a zip code you have to manage. Each state also has a nexus requirement that is either money, or number of transactions based. Then the filings you have to do and have a Foreign LLC registration, a registered agent in that state, and a yearly annual report to file to tell them you are still in business and here is my $40-200.
Except you can sell through Amazon (or other online store) and they will manage all that for you as a single fee. Exactly the solution that the article proposed for the EU rules.
This article is claiming that his online platform wants to offer that service but they are legally forbidden from doing so. In fact, they suggest allowing services to perform this is a reasonable solution to the whole problem.
It is harder to offer fulfilment as a service, but there are companies that will give you a registered agent in all the relevant countries and help you with the paperwork. It does still look like it's quite expensive though.
The article states that the registered agent needs to fill out paperwork for each country and pay a registration fee. That's the issue, the fixed costs per country making it cost prohibitive to sell just 2 units shipped to France.
Except you don’t have min threshold requirements for neither PPWR nor WEEE, it's before you can sell anything. And you need to register, hire an authorized agent and get contract (which always has minimal amount rather than per-kg pricing) with local recycling company in each member state.
Also you have Streamlined Sales Tax Registration System (SSTRS) for actual registration in US which covers 24 states.
There is a EU company registration in the maling. You register your business on that platform and it will be recognized as a EU company wich should make it easier to comply.
EU member states want all the benefits of integration without giving anything up, especially things that they consider aspects of national sovereignty.
* * *
I'll give you an example.
I'm from Romania. In Romania in 1990 there were no private enterprises, so everything was state owned. There was a HUGE demand for commerce/retail, so small local businesses popped up. They were very basic because everything was brand new and expertise was extremely scarce. No one knew anything about modern supermarkets, supermarket chains, banks, loans, credit lines, basically everything related to modern market economies.
As Romanian headed for EU integration, foreign invested started... investing. In retail that meant that because Romania is fairly populous by EU standards, everyone was tempted by a potentially big and growing pie that was almost void of serious competition.
So we ended up with Lidl (German), Kaufland (German), Metro (German), Carrefour (French), Mega Image (Romanian, bought by Delhaize: Belgian), DM (German), Cora (French), Auchan (French), Profi (Romanian, bought by Delhaize: Belgian), Selgros (Swiss), Penny (bought by REWE: German), etc.
I moved abroad somewhere close to both France and Germany. At a company I worked for, I had both French and German coworkers.
At some point the Germans were talking about Kaufland and I started chatting with them about it. Some French people mentioned Auchan and I replied to that too. After a few more replies about German and French supermarket chains, one of them said: how do you know so much about both French and German supermarket chains?
And I told them:
We're right next to Germany and German supermarkets stop at the border. There is no Aldi in France. Most French people in the neighboring French towns haven't even been in an Aldi.
We're also next to France and French supermarkets stop at the border. There is no Carrefour in Germany. Most German people in the neighboring German towns haven't even been in a Carrefour.
In Romania your big companies bought everything local (or displaced it), there are hardly any locally owned stores so I guess the upside is that I know all your supermarket chains.
* * *
Repeat this for banking, IT, whatever. Europe is super economically segregated even with the EU operating. Each country has all sort of hidden protections for its local businesses. I can't really tell you what they are exactly, but in practice you can feel them. Each country has its own version of X, Y, Z businesses. Small versions of everything, instead of few really big and competitive businesses at a global level.
This even impacts US companies. You can't get a European Netflix subscription. You fly from Romania to France and when you land and connect your tablet to the internet, your Romanian Netflix account switches over to France and they delete Mad Men from your downloaded episodes because Netflix France hasn't licensed Mad Men (old example).
Language, payroll-rules and tax-rules alone can be enough to prevent a business from expanding into a market. Even when there is no foul intent, just different set of rules.
I am from Brazil and it is not unusual for companies to operate only within certain states because of this. Even though Brazil is a single country with a single language and mostly federal rules about things, there is still enough variance of laws from one state to another to cause problems.
Then you hear about Canada which has tariffs between its own provinces, but not to the US. Meaning some products are cheaper across the US border than across a province border. Figuring out how much to pay in taxes alone can be a blocker...
This is not an EU-only problem, any large single market will have friction in its internal divisions. It tends to be worse in the EU because the countries have a lot more sovereignty though (enforcement agencies tend to be local, not federal for example).
> Then you hear about Canada which has tariffs between its own provinces, but not to the US.
Canada doesn't have, and should not have, the level of ambitions the EU should have. We're talking about EU 450 million people (500+ million if the UK rejoins at some point) vs Canada 35 million.
The EU should go toe to toe with the US and China. The EU is utterly dominated by US software companies and by Chinese green tech companies (batteries, solar panels, EVs).
This is not what I said, I said that Canada has internal tarifs between provinces while being in (albeit limited) free-trade agreements with other countries. Making some types of internal trade _more_ bundersome than foreign trade.
EU is for all practical means not a single market, it's a hodge-podge of rules much more integrated in theory than in practice. Which is exactly the thing causing problems here, and ironically this is exactly what the anti-EU folks complain about. Think about this disconnect: complaining about friction and requesting less integration.
I'm not saying that the boundary is a 20km high wall of fire nothing can go through.
I'm saying that:
1. the direction is mostly big countries -> smaller countries, and very rarely big countries -> other big countries or even rarer, smaller countries -> big countries.
2. 20+ years after the EU has started, the level of high level integration is still pitiful.
If I go into the Carrefour in Sallanches (FR) then I will buy a completely different set of products to those that I would buy in the Carrefour in Aosta (IT), the two are 80km apart.
I feel for you, but the points you're making seem to be contradictory. You don't like that European companies bought out Romanian ones, yet at the same time you don't like that Europe has small versions of everything for each country instead of big mega-corps like Carrefour and Aldi?
> I feel for you, but the points you're making seem to be contradictory.
No, that is actually one of the points, I'm glad someone wanted it.
I, too, want to have my cake and eat it, too. This is a contradiction that can't easily be resolved.
I'd want Romanian sovereignty AND the convenience of big companies with lots of economic power. I guess, to your direct comment, yeah, I'd be happy enough with a few European "champions" out of hundreds being Romanian.
Personally, I lean more towards EU federalism so this cognitive dissonance is probably 30-70 towards big companies, because I think otherwise the EU will be crushed by outsiders.
I checked some quick numbers and Lidl is around 10% in the French market, while Aldi is around 4%. They've both surged since Covid. In 2010 together they held about 3% of the French market.
So yes, there are more recent developments for supermarkets, but repeat the exercise for banks or other fields. How often do French people get services from German companies, for example online retail? Do they go to otto.fr, kaufland.fr, etc?
Story of European regulations. At some point you have to concede that they are incompetent and unaccountable. What do they care if they depress economic integration and growth in Europe? No one will ever be blamed for diffuse bureaucratic costs that drag down the whole Eurozone.
I even resent people giving them credit for "well, the idea was laudable..". No. Again and again they introduce make-the-world-a-better-place regulations, and whoever opposes these or asks about tradeoffs or whether they are meaningfully useful must be a crazed libertarian or industry lobbyist who wants to poison the people.
I remember how smug Europeans were about the American PATRIOT act. Who could be so stupid to be fooled by such propagandist framing of laws? Well, here in the EU that happens frequently. The commission just has to wrap its degrowth policy in saving-the-world names and off we go. (See also the EU Supply Chain Act, i.e. Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive, aka expensive paperwork for a good conscience)
As an American and probably as most Americans you are missing the point that there are no "Europeans", stop saying that. The EU is just a bunch of states which happen to do some things together. And all those "directives" are guidelines for the individual states, which may, and more often that not, may not, implement it that way. Usually they don't because "muh freedom" (I'm sure you get the reference) so it's a chaos EXACTLY BECAUSE no European state wants to submit to some European authority, and even takes pride in doing things DIFFERENTLY, whatever the costs (economical or political).
That would just add tons of extra paperwork and a much larger administrative system to vet all the sizes of companies. IRL they will probably not even be enforcing this widely (like GDPR) but the costs will still be imposed on any business wanting to sell in Europe.
This has its own issues. Big bad actors can now split their activities between more smaller companies to avoid some regulation. I've seen it happening.
In the EU some companies simply cannot grow because of laws like that. They might want to grow, but can't because of laws that says if your company has more than X employees you suddenly have to deal with a bunch of extra bureaucracy and reporting requirements. These companies purposely stay small, and basically has stopped hiring, even if they could use more manpower.
As someone living in the tiny country of Estonia with just about 1.2 million residents, this worries me. No one but the biggest online shops in the EU will bother with the paperwork for such a small market. I'm expecting my import options to drop sharply in the coming years because of this.
It's typical eco-suicide: give eurocrats more power and fake work to do, pretend most recycling regulations aren't scams, and practically destroy trade between countries in the union because you need one representative in every single country you want to sell anything in. As if adding a 5 (soon to become 7€) fee (plus tax) for every line of item (not package) outside the union wasn't enough. It is also quite obvious both must've been heavily lobbied by major retail groups through EuroCommerce.
Feedback for this utterly deranged regulation can be seen below, over 5k entries by many businesses in EU:
FTR. 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.
It also surprises and bewilders me that businesses (usually tech or tech adjacent) apparently expect and have for some time expected the ability to do business internationally completely without friction. Which is less something I think is a good or bad idea, and far more just simply an unrealistic one. If you want to sell in a given set of countries, I would think it a given that you would have to deal with the regulations and business laws in each of those given countries. The fact that you want to sell hacker/DIY products to people in less developed markets is admirable, certainly, but it doesn't change that. It's an unsolved problem precisely because it's kind of a pain in the ass to do compliance work across a large number of them. It's why large companies have entire departments devoted to regulatory compliance.
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.
You must be a fellow German. No where else in the world does the objection that bad legislation has been discussed (very negatively I might add, look up the results from consultation period you quoted) for 10 years have any merit on discussion whether that legislation fulfills its purpose.
So what if businesses "had time to prepare"? Its not the governments / especially the EUs job to waste the time of small businesses.
I'm actually Dutch ;) And I have been following this and other EU legislation like DMA, CRA etc in similar ways. And also chatcontrol. As an EU citizen I take my time to keep up to date on laws and regulations that may affect me or my business, yes. I also write comments in the public discussion phases. Talk to the responsible politicians, depending on where the process is. Sure, I may very well be a weird exception, but being part of society to me also means trying to be part of the decision making process.
MISTER PROSSER: But Mister Dent the plans have been available in the planning office for the last nine months!
ARTHUR DENT: Yes! I went round to find them yesterday afternoon. You’d hadn’t
exactly gone out of your way to pull much attention to them have you? I mean, like actually telling anybody or anything.
MISTER PROSSER: The plans were on display.
ARTHUR DENT: Ah! And how many members of the public are in the habit of casually dropping around the local planning office of an evening?
MISTER PROSSER: Er – ah!
ARTHUR DENT: It’s not exactly a noted social venue is it? And even if you had popped in on the off chance that some raving bureaucrat wanted to knock your house down, the plans weren’t immediately obvious to the eye were they?
MISTER PROSSER: That depends where you were looking.
ARTHUR DENT: I eventually had to go down to the cellar!
MISTER PROSSER: That’s the display department.
ARTHUR DENT: With a torch!
MISTER PROSSER: The lights, had… probably gone.
ARTHUR DENT: So had the stairs!
MISTER PROSSER: Well you found the notice didn’t you?
ARTHUR DENT: Yes. It was on display in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet, stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying “Beware of the Leopard”.
If you try to sell to China, Australia, UUSS and Colombia and Russia for example, you also need to comply with the regulations of each of those countries (and pay Tarifs in some).
To ease the collaboration between humans the European Union was created. But the European Union is not a country. Is the earth only collection of countries that agree to collaborate together to levels no other countries have in the world History.
It's success is so big, that people expects to act as an independent country, and complain when discovering Europe is indeed several countries. WTF!
It's not the first. It's not even the first in Europe: the first was the UK, Belgium and Switzerland came after. There are and have been others around the world throughout history too: the CSA, the first USA, the USSR, the UAE, and the Arab League (just to name a few).
Most systems like the EU don't work well after a certain size. I don't know if we can say whether the EU has reached the point where it's unworkable yet.
The thing with the EU is that, worryingly, the less it works, the bigger it becomes (new memberstates, soon, Albania...) and the more power it takes on. This continent is heading for a catastrophic outcome and one must be blind to not see it.
That is not what the numbers suggest. Europe still leads in median quality of life and more healthy markets.
If you focus only on economic exploitation: Of course, with customer protection, companies can't do whatever they want. Of course business will develop less in comparison to countries where companies are free to do whatever.
From the title alone, I'd expect a typical think-piece from someone (possibly outside the EU) about overregulation, "the solution is no regulation at all", etc. Instead, it's a solid critique of the recent packaging/packaging waste regulation debacle, from a constructive angle. The first section hits the nail on the head: "a good idea, a terrible implementation".
Unfortunately, this feels like a frequent refrain when it comes to the EU. And even more unfortunately, even just this ever-so-slightly-more-nuanced take seems to frequently be drowned out by the two extremes -- "all regulation is bad and we need pure unadulterated free market capitalism" or "all capitalism is bad and we need pure unadulterated regulation" -- which are by far the two loudest voices in the room.
The OP has some good suggestions about this particular regulation (which should definitely be considered! Fix things are broken; don't just throw the baby out with the bathwater!), but I'd personally be interested to see things that try to understand and treat the root cause instead of yet another symptomatic regulation. Maybe walking further down the path towards federalization? Iunno, but if I had a dime for every time I've thought "good idea, bad execution" as an EU resident... I'd have a lot of dimes.
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[ 1.6 ms ] story [ 81.8 ms ] threadAnd my corner of Europe is relatively not that red-tape-ish. But many places are pretty horrible when it comes to that.
Also seems like exactly the kind of thing Elmo would fund.
This would even apply when selling a few electronic knik knaks on ebay?
Europe's smart people are going to have to move to another country to be entrepreneurs. That's going to kill Europe faster.
Something similar needs to happen here, where business report and pay to a central EU system, that then transfers the funds to each country. The problem is that the EU is smart enough to see the environmental problem, but forgets to think about ramifications and doesn't provide the right tools.
In the end, it's mail being sent.
- Americans are usually willing to skirt the rules and figure it out later. This comes with risk but is ideal when you're early stage, low stakes, and you couldn't follow the rules anyway.
- Europeans absolutely want to do it by the book and will be shocked if you suggest otherwise. Being process oriented is great for high stakes industries where lives and safety are on the line but destroys startups, likely slowing or even killing innovation.
There is no floor to the level of "petty" that can happen here.
The UK - granted, not the EU - goes after individuals who don't pay their TV license and determine the who by triangulating unlicensed TVs via radio trucks and inspectors looking in your windows.
That's not to say that there aren't extremely nice people all other Europe... there are. But I'm still caught off guard when hearing them say some things nonchalantly that would get them fired in the US.
But unfortunately, I may be wrong and bought into an urban legend/bit of propoganda:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Television_licensing_in_the_Un...
Quite common to view Europe as all the same, but Europe varies much more than what US does.
> Europeans absolutely want to do it by the book
Again on HN, I don't think conflating Europe and all Europeans into a uniform culture works. This might be true of Germany but as you get further from Berlin it is .. less so.
(Famous story from the Greek debt crisis of using satellite photos to find swimming pools and therefore people who were probably underpaying income tax, which was at such poor compliance levels the state was struggling)
Even more fun, in the lead up to Greece joining the EU, they had to get their government pay under control so they were given monthly caps on what they could pay people. No problem, they created a 13th month.
* As detailed in Michael Lewis' Boomerang: https://amzn.to/4cXJnjE - He's the same guy who wrote The Big Short and Moneyball
1.It will dissuade some people from starting in the first place because it's one more hurdle. Even if in practice people don't comply, the existence of that complexity will dissuade some people.
2.Even if nobody is being prosecuted for mailing 10 anti-static bags, what is the number at which you do comply? And once you do, will you be held accountable for everything that came before?
I assumed that the reason this article exists at all is because that is currently forbidden for some esoteric reason.
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.
I believe Adafruit gets around certifying every device by declaring themselves a cellphone company and being on good terms with regulators. This isn't viable for the sort of businesses and people described by this article.
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)
I recall trying to build some hardware in 2020 and getting discouraged because of the CE/FCC silliness. Even though I could self declare for the EU it seemed like a big risk to do so.
Yes, though they can also ask for your lab results or to inspect your testing facility and hit you with massive fines if it turns out you falsified your compliance documents. As you mentioned this is very rare though - even enforcement actions against non-certified intentional radiators are uncommon.
https://emcfastpass.com/fcc-rules-kits-subassemblies/
Putting that board into an enclosure and then selling it now makes you the manufacturer, and you must certify that new product.
Imagine making a mod for a video game, and to legally cover your ass, go through months of testing that cost $250,000.
Talk about killing a project in the cradle.
On the flip side, there are engineers who absolutely do not give a fuck, and will design their product with zero regard for emissions. To them the world is "If it's not illegal, then I cannot comprehend why I cannot take it to the extreme".
Another small business owner reported their experience in this Reddit thread, looks really bad: https://www.reddit.com/r/europe/comments/1vrz88a/comment/p4i...
I’m as pro-EU as one can get but that’s a mistake we should solve asap
How would we even sack the leadership?
That's just an excuse then. Register with whatever local authority in your country handles these things and in the unlikely event you get a grumpy letter just send them a copy of your registration documents.
The EU even have a SME Test to maker sure small business are not overburdened by regulations.
Also there are thousands of lobbyists fighting for small businesses. Yes, this law will probably eventually be thrown out for small businesses but after how many years is a big question, and how many small businesses have lost there businesses.
And the law was devised by Ripa di Meana, who had been a member of the Italian Communist Party and the green party.
-- The EU was founded on the principles of four freedoms, Free movement of goods, Free movement of persons, Freedom to provide services, and Free movement of capital. --
If you take a look at first paragraphs of the EU contracts, they sate above all these:
-----------
Article 3
(ex Article 2 TEU)
1. The Union's aim is to promote peace, its values and the well-being of its peoples.
2. The Union shall offer its citizens an area of freedom, security and justice without internal frontiers, in which the free movement of persons is ensured in conjunction with appropriate measures with respect to external border controls, asylum, immigration and the prevention and combating of crime.
3. The Union shall establish an internal market. It shall work for the sustainable development of Europe based on balanced economic growth and price stability, a highly competitive social market economy, aiming at full employment and social progress, and a high level of protection and improvement of the quality of the environment. It shall promote scientific and technological advance.
It shall combat social exclusion and discrimination, and shall promote social justice and protection, equality between women and men, solidarity between generations and protection of the rights of the child.
It shall promote economic, social and territorial cohesion, and solidarity among Member States.
It shall respect its rich cultural and linguistic diversity, and shall ensure that Europe's cultural heritage is safeguarded and enhanced.
4. The Union shall establish an economic and monetary union whose currency is the euro. ... ----
So its only about free movement of people in the beginning, goods and services are much later in the docs
I don't know on which world you live, but it's the opposite.
Big business buys influence, including buying the opinion of small companies.
And big business is all around Brussels, small companies simply don't have a 'lobbyist'.
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.
The de minimis crackdown [0] and EPR [1] are both being rolled out because Chinese conglomerates like PDD and SHEIN took undue advantage of that while ignoring European regulators on issues such as safety standards [2] and gacha mechanisms [3].
Seems European HNers are fine with European regulations until it hurts their niche interests.
[0] - https://www.ft.com/content/102e18d7-d06b-4405-a347-97bb3c373...
[1] - https://www.vereev.com/news/europe-faces-trade-conflict-is-e...
[2] - https://www.ft.com/content/ef72f186-2a02-4c51-927d-2c01ddece...
[3] - https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/eu-probes-shein-over-...
10-15 years ago if you were importing stuff from China you'd know that the trade off for cheaper prices is that you'd lose your consumer laws protection and you'd be on your own. If you wanted those, then you'd go to your local retailer and pay extra.
Any entity that seeks to take risks to earn outsize income increases the income variance and makes it hard to organize your committed payouts. So you are forced (by your priorities) to discourage the entrepreneur and freelancer and encourage the 18-60 salaried employee. Fixed fungible production unit can be used as an input to a machine that produces committed output.
Then you import guest-workers etc. to improve throughput. You are forced by your priorities. Probably the expansion of the US welfare state will meet similar constraints soon enough.
It’s a bit just-so so I think there’s an over-claim in there but I think the seed is there.
It's an unwinnable situation. Again, EU-level politics keep assuming everyone (corporations and states) are adults. Unfortunately, everyone are just a bunch of screaming, scheming petulant children.
One in four MEPs are involved in scandals [0] ranging from harassment to organized crime and corruption. The European Parliament also remains a free out-of-jail card through abuse of parliamentary immunity, and they do abuse it [1]. EU politics is a circus.
0. https://archive.is/neTOG
1. https://www.politico.eu/article/eu-parliament-accused-overre...
She was sent to EU so she can do less harm in the future, but the irony is that she became the head of EU.
This is by design. It’s the same all over the world. The wealthy are not going to just let you compete
(YES, the US has regulatory capture, YES the wealthy attempt to use it, YES we should try to eliminate it here too, but it remains true that it is easier to run a small business in the US, while having more billionaires. There are other explanations to the differential here).
Why does this matter? The US has fewer than 1000 billionaires out of a population of more than 340 million people. Statistically, almost nobody is or ever will be a billionaire.
> and has fewer of these barriers for small entrepreneurs. So no, this is not the monocausal explanation that applies equally everywhere.
The US is a federal system in which each of 50 states has its own laws governing the operation of businesses within the state.
https://rednetwork.net/articles/2026/06/how-corporations-set...
https://euvsdisinfo.eu/report/eu-leaders-puppets-of-financia...
https://www.researchgate.net/post/What_are_the_reasons_behin...
https://edwardshepherd.substack.com/p/the-puppets-and-their-...
https://www.lobbycontrol.de/wp-content/uploads/EU-Lobbyrepor...
Now looking up for "EU politicians are prised for their probity and strong attachment to defend their people" here are the top results:
https://www.transparency.org/en/news/political-corruption-in...
https://www.ftm.eu/articles/european-parliamentarians-involv...
https://www.eupublicintegrity.com/what-is-public-integrity-i...
https://www.politico.eu/article/european-union-corruption-pf...
https://www.economist.com/europe/2026/04/29/europes-unpopula...
So even searching specifically for praising information, one will have to dig deep apparently, or maybe go straight to the official propaganda of what the politicians say about themselves (but probably less so about others).
Everyone is free to go as deep as they want (and can afford) and draw their own conclusions.
One thing I have heard of in the USA is the need for a "business licence". I'm not sure what that is or whether it applies to all businesses, so I'm not sure what it would correspond to in the UK. Neither of my businesses needed any licences or permissions to start trading.
Where have you heard about that? Because there is no concept of universal business license.
It's becoming more onerous all the time to run a small business in the UK though.
We just got charged £100 just to essentially tick one box with Companies House saying "nothing changed since last year".
The main tax paperwork is the annual financial statements. These are getting more demanding over the next couple of years with the simplified versions that small companies have been allowed to file looking like they will no longer being acceptable after that time.
You now have to file tax returns like PAYE and VAT using approved software. Most of that software - even the big names - ranges from OK but with significant problems and limitations to simply awful.
I heard recently that personal self assessment tax returns for company directors are about to get more complicated as well.
If you have business premises then you have to deal with business rates. Often these are still based on valuations from a time when dinosaurs still roamed the planet. Some small businesses have already closed down due to this becoming unaffordable.
I've lost count of how many different kinds of insurance we now have. All have a cost of course.
If you're working solo or the only person from your company working with a specific customer/client then you need to worry about Off Payroll Working as well. That's still a huge mess of ambiguity decades after IR35 was introduced and likely incurs further expenses for legal reviews and insurance policies that shouldn't even need to exist.
Control any personal data? Make sure you register with the ICO and pay their fee too.
Sell online or even run a website? Make sure you know the requirements for information you have to provide and it's in exactly the right format for compliance. (I've even seen businesses working in the compliance industry failing on this one and risking regulatory sanctions.)
The public sector is increasingly pushing for things like Cyber Essentials if you want to be part of its supply chain. That is an absolutely textbook example of regulations that were clearly written for large businesses using a certain operating system. The only options are 100% compliance or failing and 100% compliance is tricky for sole traders or microbusinesses to achieve without disproportionate expense and administration. If you need the certified version then that's another cost and the disruption of being audited to deal with.
We haven't even talked about everything you have to do if you want to take on employee #1 who isn't one of the founders/owners yet.
I don't think it's realistic to say that the UK is supportive of small businesses today. It never really was but at least the the potential financial benefits used to justify the overheads. Now the taxes are far higher - you end up paying double-digit higher overall rates if you set up a Ltd that can actually grow as a business compared to simply trading as a self-employed sole trader now - and the overheads and costs are also far higher in numerous ways. It's no surprise that people are deterred from going into business here and that's really bad for the country because we need the people willing to take the risks and put in the effort to build the next generation of businesses to support our economy and provide much-needed new jobs.
They create barrier after barrier through their lobbying efforts. A good example is having to pay $50,000 for an inspector to come and determine whether your automatic door opens and closes properly, or to verify that your facility does not have a chimney. A friend of mine who owns a business in Niagara Falls, Canada, had to pay around $10,000 for a wind assessment to determine where chimney exhaust would go once released. He didn’t even have a chimney. They ended up having to have another inspection to verify they didn't have a chimney.
Many of these environmental laws are intentionally created and applied to small businesses as well, even when the cost of meeting the requirements is greater than what the business could realistically generate in sales.
The result is that large corporations can absorb these costs, while small businesses and entrepreneurs are often priced out before they even have a chance to compete.
I would argue it's even worse, because with properly designed federated system you get checks and balances to some extent.
There are parts of EU that have almost zero oversight.
European Commission is so disjoined from electorate through many layers of elections, that it can disregard it completely - practically citizens have no input on EC's body. Any legislation originates from there which makes it even worse.
Only guarantee of EC doing their job is their Oath, and vote of no confidence is basically impossible to call, nor there's a way to initiate one from citizens side via for example a referendum. There are no consequences for not following the Oath at all so corrupt EC can easily push things that are favorable for bigger voting blocks, while screwing everyone else and get away with it.
The only measure that citizens have to actually affect EU turned out to be worthless(as SKG initiative has shown) - as Citizens Initiative is not binding at all, and can be disregarded.
EU itself creates a system of double loyalty for every politician - do they pursue national interest or do they jump ship to European ones(including appointed positions)? This erodes national systems of check and balances.
European initiatives are impossible to control nor audit form member state PoV, and it's even worse from citizen PoV. And there's no mechanism to counteract bureaucratic bloat growth, nor rampant lobbying.
European Council is used as a way to launder unpopular legislations and push it onto all member states - like chat control.
Most of the times none of those legislations have been a part of internal political campaigns - and even if they were, they were such in only single member state. There was zero input from citizens, even in forms of voting for their own government.
President of European Parliament can act against parliament itself, again with no mechanism for any consequences(ie best example is pushing chat control vote just before summer vacation this year)
Whole institution of EU after Lisbon Treaty was made with assumption that every member state will pursue their own best interests, MEPs will pursue their own best national interests too. But sadly this created system in which it is difficult to purge any form of corruption(both embezzlement/criminal, pursuing personal interests or being purely ideologically driven without consideration of practicality).
This was done to create resistance to populism, but in practice created system that's extremely resistant to purging corruption.
It doesn't help that EU itself is a very top-down organization. Not in form of dictatorship - it's far from that - but in form of committee driven changes by unelected civil servants that operate like a black box.
and one last thing, not related to checks and balances - EU itself moves at glacial pace and is resistant to change by design - which would be perfectly fine for just a Trade Union. Unfortunately it leads to it both not reacting in time, and pushing initiatives that are already outdated.
Trade union is more likely honestly.
It's important to remember that even without the fact that big companies basically write the regulations, regulations naturally tend to being effectively regressive wrt company stage/size. Every new one is a hurdle that a bigger company has more resources to overcome.
and, on a case-by-case basis, those people are generally happy to adopt other states' standards in the name of convenience and efficiency (California notwithstanding). Look at E-ZPass/I-Pass as a great example of harmonization across states.
It's funny. Ask any Illinoisan how they feel about adopting Ohio's policies and they'd bristle. But say "hey we're gonna make your highway transponder work in every state east of the Rockies" and they're all for it.
I have to wonder if Europe has the same thing going on.
I don't know the details well enough, but I do know that there is an effective anti-fedaralist force in the US wherever federal funding is concerned, as it comes with rules conditions (rules) attached. I would be interested to what extent this acts as a bias toward cooperation in the case of ez pass, given the interstate system.
California has a frustrating tendency invent its own systems that are neither better nor worse, but nonetheless incompatible with more widely accepted standards. The highway transponder example actually applies again - Fastrak.
CA has some great ideas too, don't get me wrong (ubiquitous painted curbs: great!) but a lot of the time it's just different for the sake of being different.
There's truth to this but it's an overstatement as it stands. For example, GDPR rules are less strict for small companies.
Are these old ideas? The broad regulatory apparatus in the EU appears very modern and intentional.
And no, just because voting for MEPs is bolted on there as a pressure valve doesn’t suddenly make it all okay when most of the real decisions happen behind closed doors and adherence to the passed laws, no matter how damaging is ensured through financial coercion.
Not a single person voted or agreed to this law, and yet here we are.
A federation makes sense to me: I live in one. But how the EU has assembled itself in a way that seems to unrepresentative has been worrying to watch over the last couple decades.
Either citizens have the power, exercise it continuously in practice and are supplied with everything it takes to assume that role properly with all the duties it implies, or there is no democracy beyond empty words.
Just saying lets vote directly on everything will put everything on hold until all goes down.
At the extreme you could do something like localized e-voting: citizens vote on issues that affect a given geographic radius of where they live. Because the boundaries are purely distance-based, gerrymandering is impossible.
Maybe we could have a decaying distance boundary by some measurement like population density or something like it?
One day you piss off the voters with your poorly conceived cookie law, couple years later there's a line in the constitution saying "no cookie laws" and your hands are tied forever.
Now what get often cited as direct democracy is ancient Greek city-states and nowadays Switzerland, which are two vastly different implementations.
> How would citizens even have the time?
That's actually the exact opposite mindset of what it takes to think democratically: how one could be called a citizen when they are not equipped with everything it takes to properly accomplish citizen duties. Of course accomplishing civil duties should be fairly compensated for the time invested. Such a compensation is generally existing and expected by current politician, so the only difference with direct democracy on this regard is that it should not be reserved to a small cast.
USA is definitely described as a mix of plutocracy, kleptocracy, and oligarchy in many sources.
Not sure where this idea that the critics should be exclusive to Europe. TFA is about Europe, so comments will target more specifically EU, but that’s all.
https://parliamentnews.co.uk/is-the-uk-a-constitutional-mona...
https://josricardomartins.substack.com/p/is-the-us-a-democra... https://www.citizenscount.org/news/united-states-democracy-r... https://cirsd.org/horizon-article/democracy-or-plutocracy-am... https://foreignpolicy.com/2025/03/25/america-kleptocracy-tru... https://www.hks.harvard.edu/faculty-research/policycast/olig...
Not a bad tradeoff, all included.
This was traditionally something that the UK was better than the rest of Europe, having carve-outs for small businesses.
For sales to be "local", products need to be stored in warehouses in each country. But that in turn means the owner of said products (the seller) has to be registered for VAT in that country, and submitting annual reports in each country's language.
I went to the trouble of registering in 6 different countries; in some countries, Amazon more or less helps sellers submit reports; in others, they offer to partner with local lawyers.
The result is a mess of reports, injunctions, penalties for late filing, etc. coming to you in Polish, German, Spanish, Hungarian. I eventually gave up.
Europe is not actually a "single market". It's a federated bureaucracy entirely indifferent (or hostile) to small businesses.
If it was before than, then the EU recognized the problem and implemented a fix for it.
That is changing with the Single VAT Registration (SVR) legislation, effective in 2028.
Or rather, if a little bit of X is bad, why would you want more of X?
I don't see how less EU would make this particular problem any easier. It would certainly give you an even harder time to deal with 20+ states that all impose import bureaucracy. That's exactly what the EU was founded to solve, but the menber states are populisting against it, not unlike your comment.
Maybe it wouldn't be that much worse, but certainly not better than what we have today.
In CS terms, the EU turned an O(n^2) problem, bilateral agreements, into an O(n) problem, everybody trying to get their view into a single body. The advantages should be obvious to anybody knowing O notation.
Again, not to say EU doesn't have problems. But dismantling the EU is not the solution. Improving it is.
Now, of course, it's extremely hard to logically argue against these. But that doesn't mean they aren't extremely annoying to deal with at times.
Tomorrow Europe becomes a single market. How do I compete with a similar business but from a country where business costs are significantly lower ?
Also, quite a lot of German business costs are a self-inflicted wound (too much bureaucracy). Maybe taper down the endless paper war a bit, and throw away the fax machines.
A "Regulation" becomes "law" in any member state without modification. No member state has to adopt anything. Examples are the GDPR and the new Machine Regulation.
A "Directive" does not become "law" in any member state. A member state has to enact their own national laws to implement the directive until a given date. It does not have to be single law. It could spread many laws. An example is the Machine Directive before it was re-released as Machine Regulation.
More on the different types can be found here from the EU itself: https://commission.europa.eu/law/law-making-process/types-eu...
I'm not convinced that's an accident. I think politicians in Europe are just better than those in the US at hiding who they really work for.
There are numerous examples of regulations in many European countries that create a glass ceiling for anyone who strives to be more than just middle-middle-class, while creating effective loopholes for the wealthy to continue multiplying their wealth.
For example, the total (State + Federal) top tax rate for someone living in California or New York is not too different (maybe 2-3%) from someone living in France or Sweden. But the difference is that in California the top rate does not kick in until you earn north of $1M per year, while in Sweden or France the middle class is already paying those rates.
Likewise, in the US you cannot (legally) shelter your income by declaring it to be foreign income, as you can in most European countries. That is a tax dodge not applicable to the middle class.
And then we have the present discussion: The compliance costs are of course too high for any small business, so these regulations are just another form of regulatory capture to prevent anyone new from breaking into the upper class, while allowing those already there to have it easy.
Which means taxing the rich can make the rich poorer than they currently are and bring more equality. Which is a goal in itself. But it cannot fund EU governments. It cannot fund pensions. Not even a little bit.
Everyone knows what the big problem is: right now close to 35% of working people in the EU work, one way or another (usually in bureaucracies, granted), to take care of children, sick, unemployed or elderly non-working people. Of those groups, the elderly group is going up by about 3% every year, and that will keep going until 2050 or later. In the group of working people there is extreme resistance to actually work with the elderly (meaning physically helping elderly people, those jobs are low-status, low-paid, and generally hated with a passion), even against teaching jobs there is quite a bit of resistance (dropout rates are double digit percentages). So how do we take care of the elderly? Hell: how do we take care of kids?
This problem alone makes me say "we don't just want AI to take our jobs, we NEED AI to take our jobs". Because "we" are sure as hell not going to take them. That doesn't preclude that this needs to be regulated, but obviously just saying no to AI is not what we want. And that's putting it politely.
Um I wrote "lots of problems", not "all problems". Nor did I require infinite growth, not sure where you read that.
Though on a planet with finite resources, what is the point of encouraging women in the west to have more kids because the population needs to be growing again, if otherplace has still more (population) growth than they can handle, so one thing could alleviate the other, win-win. If we were less racist, that is.
It also depends a little on the definition of "growth" of course. Physical growth of course has limits. But services can always improve, so you can get "growth" without more stuff. Depends on what and how you count.
Or you build rockets and go interplanetary, but that's mostly a solution for the Musk cult which I'm not subscribing to.
> Sounds like you use immigrants as a shield for your desire to get yours' before the resources run out and the line can't go up anymore.
I don't get what you are insinuating.
Economic growth is pointless if it's only achieved by population growth. It is the wealth per person that counts, which will surely decrease when you import millions of people with few employable skills and their non-working families.
Demography is only a problem because our social systems are completely unsustainable pyramid schemes reliant on endless population growth. Every day that you try to delay its inevitable collapse with immigration will only make the problem worse down the line.
That's denying reality to a level that's not even funny. For an above-average group like HN folks I'd even assume a bad faith perspective.
The average immigrant is the prime person to boost the economy. They are already born and have gone through childhood, the most expensive time. The society they are immigrating to pays none of that. In contrast, they tend to be young and hungry for work. Exactly what your economy needs. Either they can work right away, mind you often jobs that locals don't want (low level construction, cleaning, elderly care). Or you give them a few years of training and they work harder than the average local. They are on average more law abiding and know that they must succeed otherwise they will be outcasts. No chilling on moms sofa.
Of course there are outliers. But for a fair argument you need to consider the lazy/criminal/... locals too. And the highly educated immigrants that are making the tech sector work which is currently essentially running the economy. Remove all immigrants from the tech sector and the whole western economy would collapse.
Not sure what you mean, most European countries tax residents on worldwide income. You certainly can’t just declare income as foreign and be done with it. Some countries (notably UK) had loopholes for non-domiciled residents but they are being closed now.
Also you have Streamlined Sales Tax Registration System (SSTRS) for actual registration in US which covers 24 states.
EU member states want all the benefits of integration without giving anything up, especially things that they consider aspects of national sovereignty.
* * *
I'll give you an example.
I'm from Romania. In Romania in 1990 there were no private enterprises, so everything was state owned. There was a HUGE demand for commerce/retail, so small local businesses popped up. They were very basic because everything was brand new and expertise was extremely scarce. No one knew anything about modern supermarkets, supermarket chains, banks, loans, credit lines, basically everything related to modern market economies.
As Romanian headed for EU integration, foreign invested started... investing. In retail that meant that because Romania is fairly populous by EU standards, everyone was tempted by a potentially big and growing pie that was almost void of serious competition.
So we ended up with Lidl (German), Kaufland (German), Metro (German), Carrefour (French), Mega Image (Romanian, bought by Delhaize: Belgian), DM (German), Cora (French), Auchan (French), Profi (Romanian, bought by Delhaize: Belgian), Selgros (Swiss), Penny (bought by REWE: German), etc.
I moved abroad somewhere close to both France and Germany. At a company I worked for, I had both French and German coworkers.
At some point the Germans were talking about Kaufland and I started chatting with them about it. Some French people mentioned Auchan and I replied to that too. After a few more replies about German and French supermarket chains, one of them said: how do you know so much about both French and German supermarket chains?
And I told them:
We're right next to Germany and German supermarkets stop at the border. There is no Aldi in France. Most French people in the neighboring French towns haven't even been in an Aldi.
We're also next to France and French supermarkets stop at the border. There is no Carrefour in Germany. Most German people in the neighboring German towns haven't even been in a Carrefour.
In Romania your big companies bought everything local (or displaced it), there are hardly any locally owned stores so I guess the upside is that I know all your supermarket chains.
* * *
Repeat this for banking, IT, whatever. Europe is super economically segregated even with the EU operating. Each country has all sort of hidden protections for its local businesses. I can't really tell you what they are exactly, but in practice you can feel them. Each country has its own version of X, Y, Z businesses. Small versions of everything, instead of few really big and competitive businesses at a global level.
This even impacts US companies. You can't get a European Netflix subscription. You fly from Romania to France and when you land and connect your tablet to the internet, your Romanian Netflix account switches over to France and they delete Mad Men from your downloaded episodes because Netflix France hasn't licensed Mad Men (old example).
I am from Brazil and it is not unusual for companies to operate only within certain states because of this. Even though Brazil is a single country with a single language and mostly federal rules about things, there is still enough variance of laws from one state to another to cause problems.
Then you hear about Canada which has tariffs between its own provinces, but not to the US. Meaning some products are cheaper across the US border than across a province border. Figuring out how much to pay in taxes alone can be a blocker...
This is not an EU-only problem, any large single market will have friction in its internal divisions. It tends to be worse in the EU because the countries have a lot more sovereignty though (enforcement agencies tend to be local, not federal for example).
Canada doesn't have, and should not have, the level of ambitions the EU should have. We're talking about EU 450 million people (500+ million if the UK rejoins at some point) vs Canada 35 million.
The EU should go toe to toe with the US and China. The EU is utterly dominated by US software companies and by Chinese green tech companies (batteries, solar panels, EVs).
And Auchan has stores in Spain (Alcampo).
I'm not saying that the boundary is a 20km high wall of fire nothing can go through.
I'm saying that:
1. the direction is mostly big countries -> smaller countries, and very rarely big countries -> other big countries or even rarer, smaller countries -> big countries.
2. 20+ years after the EU has started, the level of high level integration is still pitiful.
If I go into the Carrefour in Sallanches (FR) then I will buy a completely different set of products to those that I would buy in the Carrefour in Aosta (IT), the two are 80km apart.
No, that is actually one of the points, I'm glad someone wanted it.
I, too, want to have my cake and eat it, too. This is a contradiction that can't easily be resolved.
I'd want Romanian sovereignty AND the convenience of big companies with lots of economic power. I guess, to your direct comment, yeah, I'd be happy enough with a few European "champions" out of hundreds being Romanian.
Personally, I lean more towards EU federalism so this cognitive dissonance is probably 30-70 towards big companies, because I think otherwise the EU will be crushed by outsiders.
So yes, there are more recent developments for supermarkets, but repeat the exercise for banks or other fields. How often do French people get services from German companies, for example online retail? Do they go to otto.fr, kaufland.fr, etc?
=> short term gain, free profits for eg FR or DE companies being allowed to devour other smaller countrie's markets
=> big country corpos get used to "almost free lunch"
=> big EU corpos fail to innovated and become uncompetitive globally
=> US ans CN corpos try instead to come with their increased efficiency and innovation at the EU market
=> EU freaks out and throws random restrictions and fines and regulations
=> only the most aggressive and ruthless CN (Temu etc) and US companies get through
=> they mostly rape the s out of EU markets
=> EU tries to protect its markets but its institutions have been regulatorly captured
=> [dark spiral goes on and on...]
Story of European regulations. At some point you have to concede that they are incompetent and unaccountable. What do they care if they depress economic integration and growth in Europe? No one will ever be blamed for diffuse bureaucratic costs that drag down the whole Eurozone.
I even resent people giving them credit for "well, the idea was laudable..". No. Again and again they introduce make-the-world-a-better-place regulations, and whoever opposes these or asks about tradeoffs or whether they are meaningfully useful must be a crazed libertarian or industry lobbyist who wants to poison the people.
I remember how smug Europeans were about the American PATRIOT act. Who could be so stupid to be fooled by such propagandist framing of laws? Well, here in the EU that happens frequently. The commission just has to wrap its degrowth policy in saving-the-world names and off we go. (See also the EU Supply Chain Act, i.e. Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive, aka expensive paperwork for a good conscience)
Feedback for this utterly deranged regulation can be seen below, over 5k entries by many businesses in EU:
https://ec.europa.eu/info/law/better-regulation/have-your-sa...
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.
So what if businesses "had time to prepare"? Its not the governments / especially the EUs job to waste the time of small businesses.
ARTHUR DENT: Yes! I went round to find them yesterday afternoon. You’d hadn’t exactly gone out of your way to pull much attention to them have you? I mean, like actually telling anybody or anything.
MISTER PROSSER: The plans were on display.
ARTHUR DENT: Ah! And how many members of the public are in the habit of casually dropping around the local planning office of an evening?
MISTER PROSSER: Er – ah!
ARTHUR DENT: It’s not exactly a noted social venue is it? And even if you had popped in on the off chance that some raving bureaucrat wanted to knock your house down, the plans weren’t immediately obvious to the eye were they?
MISTER PROSSER: That depends where you were looking.
ARTHUR DENT: I eventually had to go down to the cellar!
MISTER PROSSER: That’s the display department.
ARTHUR DENT: With a torch!
MISTER PROSSER: The lights, had… probably gone.
ARTHUR DENT: So had the stairs!
MISTER PROSSER: Well you found the notice didn’t you?
ARTHUR DENT: Yes. It was on display in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet, stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying “Beware of the Leopard”.
If you try to sell to China, Australia, UUSS and Colombia and Russia for example, you also need to comply with the regulations of each of those countries (and pay Tarifs in some).
To ease the collaboration between humans the European Union was created. But the European Union is not a country. Is the earth only collection of countries that agree to collaborate together to levels no other countries have in the world History.
It's success is so big, that people expects to act as an independent country, and complain when discovering Europe is indeed several countries. WTF!
Most systems like the EU don't work well after a certain size. I don't know if we can say whether the EU has reached the point where it's unworkable yet.
If you focus only on economic exploitation: Of course, with customer protection, companies can't do whatever they want. Of course business will develop less in comparison to countries where companies are free to do whatever.
From the title alone, I'd expect a typical think-piece from someone (possibly outside the EU) about overregulation, "the solution is no regulation at all", etc. Instead, it's a solid critique of the recent packaging/packaging waste regulation debacle, from a constructive angle. The first section hits the nail on the head: "a good idea, a terrible implementation".
Unfortunately, this feels like a frequent refrain when it comes to the EU. And even more unfortunately, even just this ever-so-slightly-more-nuanced take seems to frequently be drowned out by the two extremes -- "all regulation is bad and we need pure unadulterated free market capitalism" or "all capitalism is bad and we need pure unadulterated regulation" -- which are by far the two loudest voices in the room.
The OP has some good suggestions about this particular regulation (which should definitely be considered! Fix things are broken; don't just throw the baby out with the bathwater!), but I'd personally be interested to see things that try to understand and treat the root cause instead of yet another symptomatic regulation. Maybe walking further down the path towards federalization? Iunno, but if I had a dime for every time I've thought "good idea, bad execution" as an EU resident... I'd have a lot of dimes.