Within EU we already pay ~€3 for packages from China. And in Austria we will soon pay additional ~€2 for every delivered package. And 20% VAT.
Edit:
I am pretty sure at least some part of these already contribute towards recycling.
The goal here is likely not just to get more funding for recycling, but rather to use materials that can be recycled in the first place. Which you cannot achieve simply by charging businesses or consumers more.
Yes, the point is, pay +€1 for packages from EU to EU to finance all this PPWR circus.
They got rid of the de minimis €150 limit for tariffs and added fees on top.
There was also €25 VAT de minimis limit but that’s also no longer the case since some time.
Having said that, the customs duty will go to the EU budget so there's now a direct incentive for the EU to maintain or perhaps even increase this.
The amount of shit that gets shipped from China to Europe (world) is fucking ludicrous, and people should be taxed heavily for the stupid shit they often don't need.
Preferably somewhere where it’s cheaper than the value of the thing being repaired.
The reason the price for parcels from China is going up in Europe is not shipping chips or component, it's from shipping stupid fucking shit people do not need, from e.g Temu and copied goods such as clothing, shoes and what not.
The toll offices in the airports are being drowned in cheap crap. Shut it down by making people pay more for the shit they buy. That will of course hurt everyone else, but that is how it works.
This wasn't introduced "from tomorrow", people had 1 year and a half to prepare for this (at least) or to protest this. See some comments below how individual countries actually messed this up.
> But of course EU is fundamentally different in a way that the politicians need to please the electorate, so nothing is really planned ahead.
> I don't know if this EU regulation will work or not (most likely not)
It's good that you take the time to just make assumptions about how the EU is bad based on your knowledge on how it operates...
So no, it's not EU's ruling, but their idiot member states. As usual. And of course, everybody points to the usual scapegoat, regardless of the truth. And probably the truth is, that those specific member states wanted this mess.
Do you understand what the EU even is?
Imagine trying to create a single set of laws to apply to all of the countries in North and South America at the same time. Just try to imagine it, because that's about as close an analogy as you're going to get. Now re-evaluate your criticism in that light, and understand that comparing a single state to a collection of 27 states is more or less a non-sequitur.
[1] https://single-market-economy.ec.europa.eu/single-market_en
And it is! People here are always complaining about the EU as if it's a single state, even though it's very clearly in the process of becoming one. It's a long road, we're not sure if we're going to make it all the way to the finish line (but I suspect we will), and we're going to have some happy little (and big) mistakes along the way. But for now it's imperfect, and it might be imperfect for a very long time to come. It's still a lot better than not having it, and we're actively working on improving it.
Rather: if you look at what the EU is doing, it is rather a huge advertisement that the EU should not become one.
Since the current situation is shit, and one EU national state will be shit, too, this only leaves one option. :-) So let's dissolve the EU before even more billions are wasted in this futile project.
It's better to be an EU MEP and do absolutely fuck all tbh.
I think that attempts at making the E.U. a state are doomed to fail. There are too many differences between countries, including customs, language, legal systems, etc. The United States of America works because all states largely inherited or adopted the British social contract. You can't replicate this in Europe. The E.U. should have never been more than a free trade agreement. The currency union was a big, fat mistake that amplified the Great Recession in many of the poorer E.U. states.
I actually think it would be quite a bit easier than it is to create the EU. There's a lot more broad cultural homogeneity between the countries in the Americas than there is within Europe. Even on the topic of language you've got the vast majority of all peoples speaking some combination of Spanish, English, and Portuguese. And Latin America has a bit more limited geopolitical concerns than Europe does which makes managing some tensions easier than it might otherwise be.
But I'm not sure why you are considering "it's hard to create the EU" to be a defense against complaints or criticism related to the EU itself. Maybe it's hard and it won't work and the criticism is reflecting that and others are pointing out that it's a flawed task to begin with for some number of reasons. For my own part I think it has been a fascinating topic and a remarkable accomplishment of statesmanship to even get the EU to this stage, albeit like anything there are some very valid drawbacks.
No, not really. Unless you believe the Hollywood view that everything south of the US border has a Sepia filter
Intra-Canada commerce is a PITA in itself
Do you think Mexico looks in the eyes of half the central American countries? (Mexico being North America, yes I know)
> Do you think Mexico looks in the eyes of half the central American countries?
Did you mean How do I think Mexico looks in the eyes of half the Central American countries? If so I'd say it's nuanced and many people in those countries have their own views and their own various problems to solve, just like folks in France have a different view on immigration than, say, Switzerland, or how Germany and France can't agree on a fighter jet project and are looking at different industrial policies, or how Spain has a lot less interest in Ukraine than Latvia does.
Of course South America is incredibly culturally diverse, but I think it's a lot more homogenous than Europe is not just in terms of policy but culturally too. But hey if you disagree, sure make your case if you'd like. I'm just discussing the topic based on my own perceptions. The EU has something like 27 official languages and an Americas block would likely have 3 or so - that itself is the kind of thing that makes integration a lot easier.
In Europe a lot of people speak English as a second language but by and large many member states speak predominantly more languages - Spanish in Spain, Portuguese in Portugal, French in France, Italian in Italy (there's 4 different major language groups right there) and when you add in economy size, prominence on the global stage, geopolitical interests, history, and more it seems to me, in my opinion of course, it's a bit more difficult to wrangle, say, Germany and France together who have collectively killed millions of each others citizens versus, idk, Mexico and Colombia who are certainly distinct and have their own rich national and regional cultures (just like the United States even) but speak the same language and, in my view, get a long a little bit better.
I'm not arguing that there isn't a vibrancy in culture or that these countries are entirely homogenous. I'm arguing it would be easier to wrangle them together in a bloc of sorts than it was to get (and keep) the EU together.
For what it's worth a lot of cultural differences are becoming increasingly (unfortunately) minor differences at best because of globalization and the Internet and other communication technologies.
> and the destruction of thousands of spoken languages
Eh thousands of languages were destroyed by war and destitute and colonialization of various sorts throughout history. I'm not going to put a random assortment of them on a pedestal to get angry about just because they happened to be more recent (400 years ago). But anyway isn't China currently destroying spoken languages in places like Tibet and Xinjiang?
I think Europe and the Americas are differently heterogeneous and differently homogeneous. Certainly the Europeans have made more practical strides in building a coalition across their members than, say, South America or Central America. The reality is that Europe demonstrates a higher degree of solidarity between states than these other places. So it's strange to me to argue the opposite.
But if I understand, your assertion is that the Mayans, the islanders of the Caribbean, the people of Peru, or the Amazonians are less culturally different from one another than the citizens of, say, Greece and Norway? I'm not sure I buy it personally .. but I can see your argument.
not...really a solid argument for how well they would combine, but clearly a major contributor to how how much you know about them.
And FYI those languages didn't disappear 400 years ago. They are spoken today. Guatemala alone recognizes 25 current spoken languages - Spanish and 24 languages that are completely unrelated to any European language.
> For what it's worth a lot of cultural differences are becoming increasingly (unfortunately) minor differences at best because of globalization and the Internet and other communication technologies.
Good news! Many of these languages are still spoken today because these people still live in societies without the internet and other communication technologies! They don't even speak Spanish, their national official language, because they don't know anyone who speaks Spanish.
You don't have to know history, but try knowing a little bit more about current politics and geography before the sweeping statements?
An explanation for why some markets are smaller and fragmented is interesting academically but it doesn’t change that it’s not worth participating in.
Your country looks more like Germany (and if you know your history, that's no coincidence) than it looks like the EU.
> Overall proficiency: According to data from the European Union, over 43% of the total EU population speaks English as a second language, making it the most widely spoken non-native tongue across all 24 non-Anglophone countries in the bloc.
And Germany has 16 federal states.
The 10th amendment has been eviscerated by the courts. By a strict reading of its relatively simple language, most of what the federal government does is unconstitutional.
Today, USA is unabbreviated as the “United States of America”, but the country was founded as the “United States for Anerica”.
As such, I am strongly in favor of returning to our former glory by stripping the federal government of most of its power and transferring it to the states.
I am also wise enough to know that will never happen without a long and bloody revolution, and I am okay with that given the lived reality that has defined my life.
We live in tyranny. You may not feel the rolling boil of the water that surrounds you, my fellow Americans, but make no mistake: your goose is cooked.
Can you please put a date on when you think this happened and what were the turning event(s)?
Because you could mean a lot of different points over decades. And what and when you think was the turning point is pretty significant.
Anytime there is a spat, the federal government dangles those highway dollars to get their way.
Do you have actual sources for that?
(Funny thing, I googled the phrase in quotes, did not realize the misspelling, and was a bit frustrated that the only result was this comment on HN...)
I'm not anti-federal government or anything but clearly we can see that there are issues in how the federal government has become so powerful and yet we're beholden to these two big-tent political parties leaving folks across the various states unhappy with decrees from Washington. Don't like Donald Trump's power over you? Maybe the federal government shouldn't have that power then?
Anybody seriously thinking that seems completely oblivious to how central EU is to the economies and every day lives of member states. There is a lot to criticise about EU but without it, the Europeans lives would be much worse and their economies would be nothing to speak of. It is very sad that populists managed to popularize the image of the bloated unnecessary monster. Even otherwise intellectually capable folks.
If it was just single registration for EU and paying for each kg of plastic or electronics to member states (like you do with VAT already via VAT-OSS) then it wouldn't be such a big deal.
Even if you didn't have any agreement with recycling companies in each member state and you had to pay the highest per-kg fees it would still be manageable for small sellers.
Meanwhile if you want to sell a single circuit board you're looking at several thousand euro in registration fees and several months for processing just to sell legally to 4-5 countries in EU.
nobody in an EU member state thinks of themselves as a "state" in the EU, they're a country but in the EU
nobody would want the US kind of federalism. not to mention there isn't a single majority language aside from English for those that know it well enough
The US / Trump doesn’t even manage to renegotiate a trade agreement with Canada, although you speak the same language and your cultural proximity is about 95% - so maybe it’s time to get off your high horse buddy
There will be a post in 9 months from software companies crying about the PLD and CRA because their leaders were asleep at the wheel for the last half decade.
Are they shipping within EU? Then they literally are in the field of shipping within the EU.
I also fail to see how this will stop Chinese companies from shipping to Europe. No Chinese company will register in this farce.
Also, are those bodies ready for the volume of applicants? They certainly weren't when MDR came in.
What makes you so sure? It really depends on enforcement but your Chinese company sure isn't going to just drop Europe as a market.
hmm that is not systems thinking there.. there are more layers than that!
The biggest problem in Europe is the obsession with taxes. Tax on recycling, tax on AI, tax on this, tax on that. So people who want to make money and keep it without having to fight absurd amounts of regulation and red tape just go elsewhere.