Unfortunately, we’re no longer able to ship our technical textiles to every EU country. We know this particularly affects our private customers, who have come to know akustikstoff.com as the go-to place for high-quality speaker cloth across Europe.
The reason for this decision is the EU Packaging Regulation, which each EU country has implemented into national law. The result? A bureaucratic nightmare that’s not only impenetrable but also ridiculously expensive.
A mess of rules and red tape
Let’s say a manufacturer, importer, or retailer wants to operate across all EU countries. It doesn’t matter whether they’re selling to private customers, business customers, or even just resellers – they must meet complex national regulations in each of the 27 EU countries. This means joining a waste recovery scheme and submitting two annual reports: one on the planned amount of packaging, and another on the actual amount of packaging they’ve put into circulation.
And that’s not all. In some countries, they also have to:
• See a local notary
• Register in a packaging register
• Appoint a local representative
• Apply for a national tax number
Of course, there are now plenty of clever agencies that can handle all this for you in each member state – for a hefty annual fee. According to our research, the cost per country ranges between €150 and €400 a year, depending on the service package. On top of that, you’ve got the system fees for each country’s specific waste recovery scheme, which can often result in four-figure annual costs even if you just ship a single parcel to that country within a year.
A real-world example – no joke!
Here’s an example to make it clearer: A hospital in Portugal urgently needs medical masks. They’re sold out in Portugal, and with supply chains to China or other non-EU countries disrupted, they can’t get them quickly from outside the EU. But a highly specialised manufacturer of filter fleece and masks in another EU country could deliver them fast. However, under current laws, this manufacturer would first have to:
• Appoint a local representative in Portugal
• Register with the Portuguese authority in Portuguese
• Sign up with a local system provider
• Pay upfront licensing fees (without any de minimis threshold)
• Submit annual reports on the packaging of the masks they’ve sold.
No wonder that the manufacturer decided not to bother with the deal in the end. The administrative costs were completely disproportionate to the potential profit. The hospital was then forced to buy from one of the international marketplace giants.
Crazy, isn’t it? Some EU countries have already recognised the absurdity of the situation and exempted medical items and packaging from these rules. However, the example still serves to highlight the madness, as similar situations are now commonplace for many products and customers in multiple EU countries. This deranged state of affairs completely contradicts the European ideal and the fundamental principle of free trade.
Isn’t there a better way to tackle packaging waste?
Please don’t get us wrong – environmental protection is of the utmost importance, and reducing packaging waste should be close to everyone’s heart. At akustikstoff.com, we’ve been avoiding plastic packaging for years, we ship all orders in nothing but recyclable cardboard and we optimise all shipments to require as little shipping volume as possible.
We fully support tackling packaging waste, and we live up to this principle every day. We also believe that businesses should pay a fair price for the natural resources they use and the environmental damage they cause. But why not just tax the source of the problem?
Every piece of packaging made within or imported into the EU could easily be taxed at the point of manufacture or importation. This would only require tracking the movement of goods – something that’s already done in most cases – and then distribute the collected fees to the countries where the packaging is ultimately transferred to. Why create such a bureaucratic monster instead? Especially in view of the fact that the reform of the EU VAT system in 2022 already proved that the whole shebang could be handled in a different and much simpler manner. Sure, that took 25 years, but at least they got there in the end.
