As of 12 August, 21rebel no longer ships to the European Union. Not by choice.
The EU's new packaging regulation took effect that day. Because we are registered outside the EU, we count as the "producer" in every member state we ship into — all 27 of them. That triggers three separate obligations in each one:
Registration in that country's packaging register. It cannot be delegated and it cannot be shared.
A contract with a licensed system operator there, plus annual volume reporting and recycling fees.
And an authorised representative established in that country, paid, who carries the liability.
Twenty-seven registers. Twenty-seven contracts. Twenty-seven representatives.
Here is the part that decides it: these costs are per country and per year, and they do not move with volume. One parcel costs the same as fifty thousand. There is no small-seller threshold. The UK wrote one into its rules. The EU did not.
And since 12 August we cannot even register in Germany on our own any more. A seller without an EU establishment is required to go through a paid intermediary. Compliance is not merely expensive, it is gated.
Germany was our largest market by a wide margin. Most of what we sold, we sold there. As of today we are locked out of it — not because anyone objected to our products, our packaging or our conduct, but because we did not hire a representative.
The single market was supposed to abolish exactly this: a hand held out at every border. The hand is back. It just isn't called customs any more, it's called an authorised representative. Twenty-seven of them, each with an invoice.
Call it what it is. Highway robbery, with extra steps.
None of this bans small sellers. It prices them out, and hands the market to whoever is large enough to absorb twenty-seven parallel bureaucracies. That is not a drafting accident. It is what happens when you write rules with no floor and call it a level playing field.
Still shipping: Switzerland, Norway, Iceland, Liechtenstein, the United States, and the rest of the world.
We are working on a way to serve Germany again. We will say so here when it is done, not before.
