NEW EU PACKAGING REGULATION PPWR – WHAT’S CHANGING FOR INTERNATIONAL ORDERS

(As of August 18, 2026 — this regulation is still evolving, and I’ll keep this post updated accordingly)

Since August 12, 2026, a new EU packaging regulation is in effect: PPWR (Packaging and Packaging Waste Regulation). In short: anyone shipping packaged goods across a border now has to register in every single destination country and appoint a so-called authorized representative there — regardless of whether I’m shipping a single print or a hundred packages a year to that country.

For a small business like mine, that means fixed costs per country, no matter how much or how little I actually sell there. For some destination countries, the effort has zero relation to the actual shipping volume.

I’ve written to my lawyer to find out what’s actually possible for me here. I’ll keep this post updated as soon as I know more.

Why I’m being upfront about this instead of just hiding it in shipping costs: it matters to me that you, as a customer, can understand why prices might change. This isn’t a price hike out of principle — it’s a direct consequence of a new legal requirement that hits small businesses exactly as hard as large corporations, just without their resources to absorb it.

At the EU level, there’s now a new “roundtable” in Brussels, set to meet on October 5th, discussing simplification — such as one central registration instead of 27 separate ones. Whether and when anything binding comes out of that is still open. Until then, the regulation stands as it is.

Notably: a senior EU official was quoted by German news outlet RedaktionsNetzwerk Deutschland calling the regulation “clearly disproportionate.” The EU Commission itself has since recommended that national authorities not sanction businesses that haven’t yet met the requirements, but instead issue a warning first. So the EU is essentially calling for restraint on its own law, before it’s even properly gotten going.

The catch: this recommendation is legally non-binding on any national authority. Whether a country follows it or not is up to each member state individually. If a state decides to go straight to sanctions instead of a warning, I can’t invoke what the EU official said — the obligation itself remains, regardless of what’s being said in Brussels.

Many small retailers have simply stopped shipping to certain countries altogether, because the effort no longer makes sense. Large corporations with their own legal departments and offices in every country barely feel this regulation — for a one-person business like mine, it can be existential. That’s the reality small businesses across Europe are currently dealing with.

Let me be clear about where I stand: I’m genuinely in favor of reducing packaging waste. That’s a reasonable goal, and I don’t disagree with it. What’s simply not manageable for one person, though, is the bureaucratic madness this has turned into.

Case in point: even boxes I’ve already used and reused have to be registered again. A box I reuse a second time, specifically to avoid waste instead of throwing it away, triggers the exact same administrative burden as a brand new one. That feels backwards.

Why not simply add a flat fee X to every sale of a new box, and call it settled? Simple, transparent, understandable — instead of registrations, representatives, and reports across 27 different systems.

Honestly, I also have to admit: I barely understand these regulations anymore myself. I simply don’t have the time or resources to read through every regulatory text, written, as always, in the finest legal German. As a one-person business, I still have an entire company to run alongside all this.

This doesn’t just affect me — it affects you as a customer, too. My work is available exclusively through me, directly — not on Amazon, not on Temu, nowhere else. If I can no longer ship internationally, these pieces simply stop existing for customers outside Austria. This isn’t some abstract bureaucratic issue that only concerns business owners — it directly determines whether you can still get what you want from me at all.

The EU Commission is currently collecting feedback on its Have Your Say platform, Initiative 15352 on national producer registers: https://ec.europa.eu/info/law/better-regulation/have-your-say/initiatives/15352-Packaging-and-packaging-waste-rules-on-national-registers-of-producers_en

I’ve already left a comment there myself. If it matters to you too — that small, individual sellers stay orderable across the EU — a short comment there is worth it, whether you’re a business owner or a customer.

I’ll update this post as soon as there’s anything concrete to report.

Questions? Feel free to reach out by email.