EU packaging certification costs the same whether a maker ships ten units or ten thousand. Lectronz, a hardware seller, says the Packaging and Packaging Waste Regulation makes it economically impossible to test a product in several EU markets at small scale.
The regulation requires sellers to register with a packaging compliance scheme in every country they ship to, and to report packaging data through a central EU database. Lectronz says the registration fees alone run to hundreds of euros per country per year, before any per-package costs. A maker shipping a handful of boards to three countries faces the same compliance overhead as a distributor moving pallets.
The penalty for non-compliance is a fine of up to €200,000, according to a comment from Jskewel, who adds that "the EU have actually asked companies to ignore the law that they just implemented". That claim about the EU's own guidance is not supported by other sources in the thread.
A comment from anigbrowl disputes the premise entirely. It links to an EU FAQ stating that micro-enterprises and sellers using generic packaging are exempt, and argues the article "seems to have imagined a worst-case scenario based on either a misunderstanding or misrepresentation of the EU rules". The FAQ includes a diagram on page 13, though the comment does not specify what the diagram shows.
Robin_f says the law has already changed behaviour: "This is actively preventing me from sending packages to other countries as a maker. No matter how small the risk is, I don't want to risk a 5000 euro fine for sending a small amount of packages to other EU countries." The figure cited is €5,000, not the €200,000 Jskewel named, and neither commenter sources the number.
The top comment, from yardie, frames the problem as structural rather than specific to packaging. "EU will pass laws, countries will adopt those laws, but you end up with 20-24 different versions of those laws," they write. "A lot of it is written from the perspective that large corporations are the only ones who do business throughout the EU. It's completely missed that small entrepreneurs may also want to take part."
What is unresolved is whether the exemptions anigbrowl cites apply to the scenarios Lectronz and the commenters describe, and which penalty figure is correct. The thread has 648 comments and nobody has reconciled the two readings of the law.