EU packaging rules push small retailers to halt cross-border sales

Small retailers in Austria are stopping shipments to other EU countries because of new packaging rules that they say create additional bureaucracy and costs, ORF reported. The EU Packaging Regulation came into force on August 12, with the aim of reducing waste and increasing recycling.

Lisa Cijan, who sells second-hand designer clothing and handbags in Klagenfurt, has blocked her online shop for customers outside Austria. She previously shipped goods to Germany and Slovenia.

“We do not yet know what sanctions this regulation will bring,” Cijan said, according to ORF. She said the change had already cost her sales from customers in those countries.

For a cloth nappy shipping company in Klagenfurt, each parcel now requires additional administrative work. The company must pay a waste-disposal fee in every EU country where it sends a shipment, register in each country and appoint an authorised representative. Andrea Zlender-Zaufl said the additional cost could quickly reach several hundred euros per country each year.

“They say you have to find someone in every country, instead of having one authorised representative for all of Europe,” Zlender-Zaufl said. She added that small retailers were increasingly announcing on Instagram that they would ship only within their own countries because they could not afford the costs.

Austria will also introduce a parcel levy in October. Markus Miklautsch, a spokesman for the mail-order trade, said the additional procedures would ultimately burden customers. He estimated that private customers could face more than seven euros in extra costs per parcel when ordering products through platforms.

Miklautsch said small retailers in Austria and other countries were stopping online sales outside their home markets, losing customers gained through e-commerce. For his own business, which has a high export volume to countries including Germany, he forecast a potential 95 percent loss in sales and said the company would otherwise have to close in October. He added that the business was prepared for the changes.

Environmental organisations such as Greenpeace support the regulation’s goals. Miklautsch said the objectives were sound, including reducing waste and limiting imports from non-EU countries such as China, which would also have to pay the levy when supplying the EU.

The European Commission has proposed possible exceptions for small businesses, but the EU member states and the European Parliament still have to decide on them. Further negotiations are under way, and a decision could come too late for some retailers.