Don't know what you define as small but when you have two million per year turnover and ten employees you should think about complying to the available laws. Since those are the cutoff numbers where below it does not apply.
> complying to the available laws.
That's why Europe has gotten into its present sorry state when it comes to IT. They're winning all the law-related battles but they've lost the big war, just look of how all of Europe is a slave to the American IT industry (after all, we're having this conversation on a an American-run forum, even though I presume that we're both EU citizens).
There's benefits, but there's a LOT of cons that people refuse to admit, and this is not saying "brexit was better", just that EU politics are riddled with corruption and pretending we're good because we try to compare ourselves to a different context in the USA is just pointless.
Stringent regulations that American companies won't be compliant with without extra effort can be expected to increase the relative competitiveness of European companies in the EU.