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Amazon doesn't care about guys like Lectronz, they're far too small, and the EU Commission really doesn't care about Amazon. They're openly antagonistic to US tech firms.

Occam's Razor applies here. These regulations exist because the EU is 10,000+ civil servants writing whatever laws they want with no meaningful democratic accountability (this sort of thing is nobody's priority). They love creating new laws, they love micromanagement, they always have and they always will. There is nothing here we haven't already seen with things like the bottle top regulations, laws about how fast kettles can boil water and more.

And there is no end to this. The EU Commission is on a path that will completely kill the European economy, dragging it to Soviet levels or worse. By design there's no constitutional mechanism to force them to change course, save for every country following Britain and just leaving. That's why there's such a massive pile of propaganda trying to convince Europeans that Brexit was an unrepeatable disaster (which it wasn't, check the data for yourself).

> that Brexit was an unrepeatable disaster (which it wasn't, check the data for yourself).

OK thanks I'll go find and check the data to back up your claim

I'm not agreeing with everything that this user wrote but for sure the Brexit did not destroy UK's economy. GDP-wise the UK and France always developed very similarly before Brexit and also after Brexit, so it's hard to call it a "desaster".

I still remember the articles saying that Britons will have no food on shelves after Brexit.

And no flights to Europe !! Since then, both Ryanair and Easyjet have OPENED new flights.between the UK and mainland Europe...

>dragging it to Soviet levels or worse

The Soviet Union at least had factories and an arms industry, even if they were quite inefficient.

A depressingly true point.

When economists struggle disentangling the effects of brexit from the pandemic, an actual disaster, and so can't really determine if brexit was a disaster, I feel like you can't honestly say it wasn't. But still, while it's hard to gauge how bad the effect was, few experts seems to think it was good.

The most honest reading of the data is that it was neither bad nor good; that it had no impact on anything whatsoever. Whether you read this as a win for the Leave or Remain factions is in the eye of the beholder.

I don't think that's an honest reading. If there were a wealth of data and analyses that suggested the UK's economy is larger because of brexit I could agree but I certainly can't find any. You're right to be skeptical of the doomsayers that predicted (and continue to predict) disaster, but it seems incredibly unlikely (and unsupported by data) that Brexit did nothing.

Why would you need to see evidence that the economy is larger because of Brexit when what I said was it made no difference, larger or smaller?

It only seems incredibly unlikely it did nothing because we were all subjected to industrial-scale propaganda claiming the effect would be huge. In hindsight it is obvious why there was no effect: the single market is only a single market for goods, but Britain primarily exports services.

The broad swathe of analyses done to answer the question of "how did the economy change due to brexit?" consistently suggest brexit shrunk the economy. All analyses are biased or flawed in some way because they rely on making a prediction of what the economy would have been if brexit hadn't happened, but that's only a prediction. Since they are flawed, but they are many, the likely truth is in the aggragate of many analyses, just like when we take multiple measurements of a noisy system and take the mean to get a more certain result than any one analysis. If what you're saying is true I would expect there to be some predictions that back up what you're saying exactly, along with a number of predictions that the economy increased in size. That's why I'm asking for evidence of predictions of a larger economy, because it makes your statement far more plausible.

Your point on goods isn't... Good. Services is the majority but goods still make up ~1/3rd of exports, and don't forget we still have to import goods. Brexit affected that too.

truth of this unfortunately depends on the analysis of others, thus when those analyses . The data cannot itself show whether the

I don't have a horse in this race, but sources I found claim Brexit was economically detrimental to this day, including but not limited to the wiki page and its citations.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_effects_of_Brexit

Give it time

How much time? Doesn't seem like the trend is reversing

About 30 years

It's a bad idea to trust Wikipedia for anything that might have a political or ideological slant that would upset the left, which the non-impact of Brexit definitely did. For instance, there are biographical pages on Wikipedia for people who died years ago but Wiki claims they're still alive, because the only websites that reported the death are anti-woke and thus considered not "reliable sources". So they just ... revert any edits stating the person died.

To understand the true state of things you need to look elsewhere these days. Sad, but that's what seems to happen when you rely on volunteer moderators.

That page specifically is citing a lot of "studies" that are just wishcasting by academics, e.g.

> A 2018 analysis by Stanford University and Nottingham University economists estimated that uncertainty around Brexit reduced investment by businesses by approximately 6 percentage points and caused an employment reduction by 1.5 percentage points.

Unemployment continuously fell after the vote in 2016 until it reached record lows. But if you believe Wikipedia you'd think unemployment rose. This is the kind of thing they define as reliable sources.

https://tradingeconomics.com/united-kingdom/unemployment-rat...

I don't understand. The 10year view on the site you linked shows a spike in unemployment in 2020 after Brexit took effect, and current rates are still higher than pre-Brexit rates. Is there an explanation for why the 2016 vote would be directly responsible for the temporary dip?

But I'm not convinced you can prove or disprove anything from one graph without context and analysis.

Nobody claimed the 2016 vote lowered unemployment. It was on a steady downward trend that continued for years, uninterrupted by the vote. This wasn't what economists predicted: they claimed the "uncertainty" of a Leave vote would cause a huge recession with 800,000 job losses. That's what the wiki quote is about - note that 2018, when the Stanford guys made their claims, is before 2020.

> They're openly antagonistic to US tech firms.

Utterly wrong. US tech firms have on many occasions violated deep fundamental EU regulations/rights and have barely received a slap on the wrist (fines). Very little is done to keep them in check, and to this day the European Commission, the European Parliament, and the member States are all very dedicated customers of big american tech firms (eg. Microsoft).

> they love micromanagement

Quite the opposite actually. EU regulations and directives give great margin for state-specific implementation, as shown in this particular case with each country having different packaging authority/fees. If anything, the EU is mostly about destroying existing pro-consumer pro-worker pro-environment pro-privacy regulations that were in place in member states. See also: deregulation of medical devices, deregulation of food and toxic chemicals, deregulation of public services. That's precisely because of deregulation that the EU is widely criticized from within (side-note for the nitpickers, they're not technically deregulating, but rather regulating with looser rules and bodies with no actual enforcement capacities which is overall equivalent).

> And PPWR comes a short month after another Amazon-friendly legislation: The €3 per item-kind customs duty for items shipped from outside EU.

If you dig a little deeper you will see that this legislation was sponsored, championed and lobbied by the largest pan-EU retail organization. How convenient. Just like Chinese EVs, can't let EU customers have access to the best goods for the lowest prices. Better to have lazy greedy EU businesses gouge them :)

Obviously, you have never dealt with Amazon as a merchant.

You still need to be compliant with PPWR, no matter you sell on Amazon, eBay, Aliexpress or the street corner.

But one of those is not like the others. If you sell on Amazon, via the "Fulfilled by Amazon" system... Wouldn't be Amazon the one required to comply with PPWR? They're putting the stuff in boxes and all that stuff... (I have no idea)

No absolutely no. We were selling some electronic stuff on Amazon. We were doing good. But then this came, the registration that become mandatory, took 3 months instead of 3 weeks and then they had no rules and deleted saying our device is not the right category. We closed shop after spending time and money. The system is horrenduos and has not stopped the chinese stuff on the Amazon at all.

Did you store your Amazon listed product on Amazon in their warehouse or send it out from your home or from a supplier?

yes stored in their warehouse. But the law says I am a producer becase my logo and my registered brand is on the package.

The packaging issue is orthogonal to Amazon. they just apply the law.

As it should be! Amazon have little control over product packaging.

(But of course this article is right about the insane admin and cost requirements for small companies.)

> You still need to be compliant with PPWR, no matter you sell on Amazon, eBay, Aliexpress or the street corner.

I am 100% sure AliExpress just doesn't care and ship it anyway.

Actually the strongest lobbyists for the €3 fee were European companies https://www.reddit.com/r/Aliexpress/comments/1ugpyoe/i_dug_a...

(but yes it's "conveniently good" for Amazon as well)

this is addressed in "Solution #3: Allow marketplaces to represent and manage micro-enterprises collectively as if it were a single producer."

so apparently, what you are describing is not what's actually happening.

I think it will happen.

And EU regulations are generally more two-sided where lots of innovations can happen by smaller marketplaces as well. Not just Amazon.

Which is like creating the Apple App Store for physical products.

I think Amazon just adds another layer of packaging. I can imagine you are still responsible for yours.

And that's the irony for me - adds another package over package, but it probably complies with documents, I hope they are filled in paper.

I get the idea behind the law. Not once I was surprised how many waste is in packaging and badly packaged goods (not only shipped, but even available in local shop). But this regulation changes nothing, just adds layer of paperwork and broke international shipping (many non-eu stopped selling to eu - I hope it's temporary only…).

Don’t worry there’s regulation in the works that will mandate how much air you can have in the box[1]. The EU is on the case.

[1] https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/ALL/?uri=CELEX:52...

Good lord. At what point do we need to just wipe the slate clean and start over?

What stops a person from starting a packaging/shipping business, paying the fees to ship and handle waste in all 27 euro countries and then charging customers a couple of cents for this service?

Overhead means it's gonna cost more than a few cents each.

Just get some VCs to take the losses for you for a few years /s

This will directly stop Irish based people shopping on Amazon as the Irish Amazon is useless and everyone buys from Amazon UK. These fees are going to change that big time so it’s not all in favor of Amazon

If Amazon was competent and saw that as a problem (doubtful, given how hard it is to filter items that actually ship to your country, as opposed to claiming to do so but then on the checkout page tell you otherwise), they could likely bulk-import the items to Ireland, then ship from there.

I assume Aliexpress is ~~going to do~~ doing [1] exactly that to bypass the 3 EUR fee. I wonder if the packaging rules are a shortsighted attempt at sabotaging Chinese sellers without making it obvious.

[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/Aliexpress/comments/1ukojbr/i_place...

I agree that amazon.ie is useless, but i think that Irish shoppers will still buy from Amazon UK for more expensive items, where the €3 fee is relatively insignificant. Amazon UK, even with the new €3 import fee, is still cheaper than local Irish retailers who take price gouging to new levels.

I’m no fan of big tech, but, at some point the conspiratorial bending over backwards to blame big business instead of the government representatives creating the actual harm gets ridiculous.

Again, I often sympathize with the left leaning side of things, but you have to admit our side has a massive blind spot in terms of blaming all the worlds ills on a secret cabal of business elites instead of blaming the mechanism of government power actually creating the harm.

If we’re being honest, Amazon feels zero threat from European small businesses and quite frankly barely sees much value in their EU ecomm business at all. If anybody wants to see the EU turn into one market with one set of simple regulations it’s them. Trust me, they are not worried about small Etsy sellers.

The fundamental issue is the EU is a “union” in name only and the member states fundamentally don’t actually want to work together unanimously on most things. Yet, we’re paying all those officials in Brussels to do something, and the trivial green consumer issues like bottle caps are the only thing that doesn’t cause too big of a fight. It’s bike shedding 101. [1]

Until we acknowledge that this is the true root of the problem instead of inventing tired conspiracies, we cannot solve any of the issues.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_triviality

When big companies have the resources to lobby and pass regulations (EU or country wide level) it is hard to separate these two, in particular when there are long-lasting policies that consistently disadvantage smaller entrepreneurs/small property owners disproportionally.

I think it is fair to point criticism to government/eu, but it also fair to point who actually benefits (intentionally or even not) from these.

Up to the governments to require the split-up of companies which become too large. Up to the governments to avoid corruption.

"The bribe was too seducing" is not a valid defense for citizens. The fact the gouvernements have an armed branch to enforce hegemony makes it more required, not more forgivable.

Both passive corruption (accepting a bribe) and active corruption (giving a bribe) are a problem.

“But the officials accepted it” is not a valid way to discount Amazon from their nefarious practices.

Please cite ANY evidence that Amazon, Epstein, Aliens, etc. had anything to do with this particular EU packaging nightmare...and that it wasn't wholly due to the bike shedding nature of a massive incomprehensible bureaucracy.

> Please cite ANY evidence that Amazon had anything to do with this particular EU packaging nightmare

Easy. Amazon spends several million every year to have their representatives discussing issues that affect them like that. We know for certain that they were indeed involved in the discussions, because that's what they are being paid to do (and it's not entirely objectionable for legislators to listen to industrial interests in the first place).

> to the bike shedding nature of a massive incomprehensible bureaucracy.

It may be incomprehensible to you, but like it or not these bureaucracy are what shape the modern world. Countries without an extensive bureaucracies are all failed state (and the first thing any emerging state actors, like the Taliban or HTS in Syria, do when they come to power is to set up a bureaucracy).

If it’s easy, where’s the evidence? Nothing you wrote is evidence for anything, at most “educated guesses”.

> Countries without an extensive bureaucracies are all failed state

This is such a ridiculous statement. There’s so many different levels of bureaucracy across the developed and developing world that you can’t really put them all in a single bag.

This falls into where your ideology belongs to "see" what is most likely:

* Amazon paid politicians in EU to craft and pass packaging laws that they would have to enforce/abide by, but have the resources. [Who and how many is anyones guess].

* EU Politicians meaning well, created policy to clean up packing with enforcement in all EU countries, maybe hoping large companies pay for the cleanup. Unintended consequences mean small shippers have a higher burden.

> Amazon spends several million every year to have their representatives discussing issues that affect them like that

Discussions are not bribes. Write to your MEP and charge yourself out at €500/hour to do so, and you'll soon be spending a decent chunk.

But it’s the incoherence of the EU support that’s so weird.

Apple ships USB-C phones (a year before required): look at the EU standing up to big tech and forcing consumer-friendly products.

Crazy policies cripple small business and domestic AI? Oh, it’s not the EU’s fault, it’s that evil big tech.

There’s a recurring theme where the EU can do no wrong, despite repeated negative outcomes that only make sense to read as well-meaning but misguided regulatory overzealousness.

There is no way Amazon is lobbying to complexity product distribution in the EU out of some kind of triple bank shot to suppress those €1m/year businesses. The potential downside is nowhere near worth the benefit. This is pure bureaucracy.

> There’s a recurring theme where the EU can do no wrong, despite repeated negative outcomes that only make sense to read as well-meaning but misguided regulatory overzealousness.

Forget it. It's like talking to a wall. Go to /r/Europe and criticize anything regarding the EU and you'll be called a nazi or a far-right extremist.

Something good happens in Europe and you get the constant refrain that without the EU it would have never happened so everyone should just go dance kumbaya around the fire while singing the European anthem but if something goes wrong or is wrong with EU regulations it's because the lobbies got to it/watered it down/ changed it somehow and so on...

That's how you get people who with a straight face will tell you that digital and privacy rights are a 1000 times better in the EU even though the commission has been pushing Chat control V1 and V2 for the last 5 years.

It's complete madness and more akin to cult than anything. Is the EU doing something good sometimes? Yes. Is it the panacea that everyone wants you to believe it is? No.

Heck, even on HN which is usually visited by people who I would like to believe can have a nuanced opinion about certain topics, I have been accused to be some sort of Russian troll or far-right troll just because I dare to criticize the EU regulations that I disagree with.

Yes, I criticize frequently EU tech and EU laws because I live here and I am the one who has to live with it everyday but for some people voicing a disagreement in this day and age is akin to treason.

The EU is a collectivist ideology first and foremost, a set of institutions second.

HN is no longer a place of people with nuanced opinions. During Covid it got overrun by normies and redditors during the mass reddit exodus.

Since then it's become basically a typical leftist ragebait-driven subreddit on a different domain. Say anything that challenges the left-party line and you're immediately downvoted.

> … the conspiratorial bending over backwards to blame big business instead of the government representatives …

False dichotomy.

Conspiratorial? Like lobbying is something I came up with this morning. Also, you don't need to feel threatened to push for something like this. Pure corporate greed is enough of a motivator. You're giving corporations a free pass, like they collectively have a spotless track record.

And, sorry, I don't buy into the law of triviality. Most things are trivial when considered in isolation and you are not affected.

More bureaucracy + more taxes + protection of status quo fits exactly into the EU's ideology. Amazon doesn't have to bribe anyone for that. The boot licking is so ingrained here that the lord doesn't even have to call. Europeans do it all on their own and they like it.

It is not. Big European business always get what they want. Which tends to be maintaining status quo.

Blanket statement, no backup