Comment by Jskewel

8 hours ago

PPWR is an EU catastrophe.

Firstly for the reasons outlined in the article: it essentially makes being a micro/small business in the EU impossible, if your market is other EU countries.

Secondly because it validates insidious populist views that the EU institution is useless and incompetent at a fundamental level.

The legislation is so ABSURDIST that the EU have actually asked companies to ignore the law that they just implemented. I can assure you it is difficult to ignore a law that comes with a €200000 fine for non-compliance.

If this view is validated:

>EU institution is useless and incompetent at a fundamental level

Then aren't the people who hold it simply correct? Why brand this valid view as "insidious populists?"

>The legislation is so ABSURDIST that the EU have actually asked companies to ignore the law that they just implemented.

This is probably the best way to emphasize it. It is completely absurd, useless, non-functional, etc.

> The legislation is so ABSURDIST that the EU have actually asked companies to ignore the law that they just implemented. I can assure you it is difficult to ignore a law that comes with a €200000 fine for non-compliance.

That's the commission telling small businesses that please don't stop selling in the EU and suggesting member states should use common sense. Unfortunately, as with all EU directives the implementation and enforcement is up to the member states, and especially certain northern countries really love their bureaucrats leaving common sense at home in the morning and sticking to the exact letter of the law. The 200000 EUR fine is Germany specific I think, obviously a prime candidate here.

  • Germany does an extra gold plating on every single EU regulation.

    • Or just ignores them, if it doesn't serve the lobby groups, like for example the EU Water Framework Directive (WFD).

> Secondly because it validates insidious populist views that the EU institution is useless and incompetent at a fundamental level.

- resentment that bad policy damages the institution’s reputation - annoyed it proves people i hate like correct

Really the chances that someone will ask a small company to be compliant are just very low. Of course if you sell something in an envelope nobody will ask you anything, the deal and the reason for this law (that I consider correct) is to address packaging waste from big companies.

Of course this law it's complex for nothing, to me, they could have just added the cost of the recycling of the packaging material into the cost of the packaging material itself, making it that only the companies producing the packaging would need to comply (so that if you buy a box to ship something the cost of recycling of the box is already embedded in the cost of the box, like they did with plastic bags at the supermarket).

Gosh I hate it when politicians are useless and incompetent, since it just validates the false populist propaganda that politicians can be useless and incompetent, which is clearly not true (even in cases when politicians actually are useless and incompetent, which they of course cannot be, since that is evil propaganda).

  • Politicians can be quite evil, but in a functioning democracy they need to be at least competent at gathering support and navigating the occasional backstabbing plots to make it to the highest ranks of government. So I'm hesitant to call them totally incompetent.

The legislation doesnt apply to small joes..... stop disseminating total hogwash, especially if you don't have any idea what you are talking about.