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The award for ludicrous bureaucracy goes to...

Bureaucrats are sometimes the lowest form of life.

Although a measure of bureaucracy can't be avoided in the modern world, there are some forms that simply beggar belief in respect to the lunacy of their actions and the impositions they make on others.

Last week we saw one of the greatest examples of lunatic bureaucracy ever inflicted on mankind and, of course, it happened in the EU.

Brussels, the Mecca for all bureaucrats, issued a new diktat that has effectively destroyed almost every micro/small business that ships limited quantities of any product to an EU country.

Usually, such bureaucratic excesses are associated with either saving the planet or saving the children and you won't be disappointed by the reasons given this time.

Apparently the new EU rules, regulations and costs are all related to packaging and its effects on the environment.

Under the EU Packaging and Packaging Waste Regulation (PPWR), anyone shipping any product to an EU country on a commercial basis must now create a "Declaration of conformity" document for each different type of packaging used for shipments and keep a technical folder containing all relevant documentation relied on to prove compliance.

Yep, each different part of the packaging requires its own declaration and proofs. That's one for the cardboard box, one for the protective padding inside the box, one for the plastic bag used to wrap the product, one for the tape used to seal everything, etc, etc. These documents must be retained for a period of up to 10 years.

So far we're only talking inconvenience but there are also very real costs as well.

If you're shipping from a country outside the EU then you will need an "authorised representative" in each destination country.

This representative becomes a point of contact and must also be able to provide copies of your documentation to enforcement authorities on request. They also have a responsibility to check your conformity status and pay the "eco fees" associated with recylcing the packaging.

Suffice to say, the cost of establishing and running such an authority in each EU member state to which you might want to export is something utterly beyond the resources of anything other than a pretty significantly sized company.

I've seen many small entrepreneurs who have been selling products into the EU issue statements that they will no longer be selling to those countries and it's understandable why this is.

This is a blow, not only to those small traders but also to those people within the EU who may have found it convenient (or essential) to purchase products from outside the union. Now they will be very hard-pressed to find smaller companies or sole traders who are prepared to meet these compliance costs and burdens.

The irony of this situation is that I'm pretty sure that more CO2 was emitted and more waste created by the bureaucratic process of coming up with and enforcing these new regulations than will ever be saved by their implementation. But then again, we know that the primary role of many bureaucrats is not to make our world better but to simply justify their own existence and pay packets.

With moves like this by the EU and all the crazy tariffs plus restrictions that the USA is imposing on its trading partners, the world seems to have flipped from globalism to isolationism in almost the blink of an eye.

Where to next I wonder?

Carpe Diem folks!

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