Tomorrow is a dark day for small businesses in the UK

[lostmybuttons]

I run a small business, mostly selling on Etsy. But as of tomorrow, Friday 13th December the introduction of the new GPSR legislation is creating such a huge headache for businesses like mine.

We can no longer sell to the EU or Northern Ireland, without paying for an appointed representative to ensure our products are safe. The cost for this is completely unachievable for most businesses like mine. Obviously, we all want our products to be as safe as possible but is it right that it'll cost me at least £2,000 a year to tell me my paper stationery is safe!!

Our only choice is to stop selling to the EU and Northern Ireland, which is a huge loss in income for those already struggling.

We feel like we are shouting into the void and absolutely no one is listening.

This is compounded by the fact that Etsy refuse to separate Northern Ireland in our shipping settings, so by default we are all breaking the legislation and risking fine of up to £20,000.

All Etsy have advised is to cancel any NI orders, which frankly is terrible customer service.

If there was ever a time to shop independent, your small business friends need you now.

Seriously?! What a ridiculous argument. Remain voters are utterly devastated at the damage the Leave vote did to this country - what the fuck do you expect us to do about it? We begged and begged people not to vote for this act of utter fucking lunacy but what did we know, eh? 🙄

The blame for this excessive and draconian legislation is solely at the feet of the EU. They needlessly chose to exclude the UK from safety legislation not for safety reasons, but on principle: as their ongoing show of power and punishment to prevent other members from leaving. This is deeply unethical behaviour; the EU care more about simply maintaining power for themselves as an organisation, than being a positive force for their members and the wider world.

This is actually quite funny. UK leaves the EU (whoops we forgot NI was part of the UK - sorry but who would have known that). UK (remember NI is part of you and Good Friday agreement) wants to go solo and break free from the draconian EU regulation.

EU is responsible for UK not being able to negotiate with the trading bloc they left. Does it ever occur to you that the EU is making decisions that suit its members and the wider world and the UK is no longer even near the top of the list of "the wider world"?

your sense of entitlement is breathtaking. And explains Brexit. What do you mean these foreign johnnies will actually not still recognise the UK as top nation?

"EU and Mercosur Bloc Breakthrough - UK in a changing Europe" https://ukandeu.ac.uk/eu-and-mercosur-bloc-breakthrough/

"EU and Mercosur Bloc Breakthrough - UK in a changing Europe" https://ukandeu.ac.uk/eu-and-mercosur-bloc-breakthrough/

I'm guessing they mean the Mercosur deal. Although as you say, why doing a trade deal is "breathtakingly arrogant" is a mystery! The EU exists mainly to facilitate trade: between its members via the internal market, and between its members and the rest of the world via free-trade agreements. The size and wealth of its 450m-person market makes it a highly valuable counterparty with enormous bargaining power. (The same cannot be said for UK, which might explain the bitterness.)

Spot on. Who was the dickhead Tory who said we hold all the cards? We hold none of the cards - we threw them in the sea in June 2016. It’s fucking mental that people are only now waking up to the utter shit show this whole thing was going to be. And this is only the start . . . . .

I agree with you on this.

Around a quarter of my orders are sent to NI. I have been in online retail for 25 years and always found it astonishing how many businesses do not sell to NI, Highlands and Islands, places not part of the UK but the likes of crown dependancies etc. and BFPO. I send to all of them and use Royal Mail. I suspect a lot of it is because businesses can't get enough of a preferential discount from RM next day services than they do from the other couriers. Many small enterprises now send via fulfillment houses, including Amazon, they all have preferred couriers. I can understand smaller independants use fulfillment but surely the fulfillment houses can add RM to their courier services.

I no longer sell my own hand crafted items, I'm a distributor these days but I think it is a bit rich of Etsy to put this in their terms when they allow so many Far East Asian companies to sell their mass produced goods on Etsy and do not respond to any reports of them being against their own policies.

Northern Ireland is part of the UK.

Unfortunately it has a land border with an EU country which is why this shitshow has happened.

I’m not convinced that selling stuff on Etsy is a proper “small business” rather than a cheap and easy way of monetising a hobby/side-project.

Businesses, large or small, rightly have to comply with consumer regulations and this comes with costs.

You’ve got away with side-stepping those costs for a while, which has been a profitable loop-hole, and now that’s been restricted.

Is that you Nigel?

No. It's more that we are sitting facepalming and saying "That thing we said would happen? This is it, happening." It's not "glee" it's more "despondency at the refusal of Leavers to acknowledge that they voted for this".

We are not "suffering at the hands of the EU" any more than China, Japan, Morocco, or any other country outwith the single market is "suffering at the hands of the EU". The EU is making laws to protect its citizens from shoddy and dangerous goods and we are being treated like every other country that has chosen not to be subject to the rules of the single market.

Norway and Switzerland are not in the EU. Brexit did not have to be like this.

We could have opted to be in the single market. Our govt chose not to negotiate that option.

As for this new legislation, there should be exceptions for countries with equally strong product safety legislation.

Without a binding treaty between the 27 EU countries and the "country with equally strong product safety legislation", the EU27 have no assurance that our (or China's, or Ghana's, or anyone else's) product safety legislation will stay equally strong. Single market membership involves a binding treaty that obliges the non-EU countries to keep regulatory lockstep with the EU concerning all products produced. "All products" because the definition of a single market is the ability to trade freely without any distinction (on paper or in practice) between products made for the domestic market and those made for export.

I recall at the time considerable rightist opposition to any kind of requirement for regulatory lockstep that would affect products made for the domestic market. I remember the Tory press exhorting our politicians to reject any "half-in, half-out" or "all pay, no say" deal in favour of total independence from the EU.

The EU choose not to do this because they behave like a criminal gang who punish members for leaving. These decisions are merely to prevent other member countries from doing the same.

Nope. The EU are treating us exactly like they treat any country who is not in the single market. Your post is reminiscent of a man who divorces his wife and then complains that she won't hoover his new flat or do his laundry for him any more.

These are not the actions of an ethical or benevolent organization.

They are benevolent towards the citizens of 27 EU countries. They are not obliged to be benevolent towards any other country's citizens and should not be if doing so would be detrimental to EU citizens.p

Also, Etsy are damaging the rights of Northern Irish people by going against the Good Friday agreement.

Tell me that you don't understand how treaties work without telling me that you don't understand how treaties work.

The Good Friday Agreement is a treaty between two sovereign nations: Ireland and the UK. The GFA binds the governments of two sovereign nations: Ireland and the UK.

Etsy are not a sovereign nation but a private company. Etsy did not sign the GFA. Etsy are not bound by the terms of the GFA.

Etsy are bound by UK laws. Please find the UK legislation that requires Etsy to implement a feature that allows sellers to make a distinction between Great Britain and Northern Ireland when declaring where they will ship to. I'll wait.

Honestly, there ought to be an exam on treaties and international law before people are allowed to post online about Brexit.

Small businesses including Etsy ones, have always had to comply with product regulations. The problem is that before Brexit there was a single market with one single set of regulations. Goods can circulate freely within the single market without borders. The UK left that single market and now UK businesses are not automatically compliant with single-market requirements - they have to go through extra hoops to verify compliance.

Honestly, there ought to be an exam on treaties and international law before people are allowed to post online about Brexit.

There should have been one before people were allowed to vote on it.

Is that you Nigel

Considering that Nigel is vociferously anti-regulation this is a remarkably juvenile and ignorant response.

TBF we always did have to comply with regulations, whether that was the UK Sales of Goods Act or EU Electronic Communications etc. Regulations never stay static for long, there are frequent changes and add ons even to old standbys.Being part of the EU or not didn't make it easier to comply with anything.

There is always a lot of hoop jumping and there is always a lot of gnashing of teeth over it but it's part and parcel of doing business anywhere with anyone even in our own local markets.

If we want to stay in business and serve our customers in any market, it doesn't matter whether we are part of a multi state single market or just sell on mainland GB, it's no different, we always have to comply with something somewhere.

JFC. Basically, your argument is pretty much "forget about selling to NI from your side hustle". Kick the smallest businesses whilst they're down, why don't you?

Jo Cox

Plus the UK has done a deal with Australia that will allow lower-welfare animal products in. This will directly reduce food standards and put UK farmers out of business. But don't look at the man behind the curtain, they have stories about the "evil EU" to tell you.

Being part of the EU or not didn't make it easier to comply with anything.

It made it much easier, as we're about to find out.

Being part of the EU (or more specifically the single market) meant you only had to comply with one set of regulations (EU-wide) and your goods could circulate in a market of 450m people.

Now if you want to sell in that market you need to comply with two sets of regulations: UK and EU (over which we now have no control).

And there were no checks at the border because UK goods were not crossing a regulatory border. We were within the charmed circle of the single market.

This fresh problem is only just starting. At this early stage much of our goods regulation is still EU-based. As time goes on the EU will amend its regulations (with no input from the UK), our rulebook will diverge ever further from our most important trading partner, and the problems being discussed here will compound.

Businesses rarely start off fully fledged and many business owners go through several ideas before they hit on the one that makes a good income.

3rd party vendors like Etsy, eBay, Amazon etc. are useful for people to test new product lines, designs, and business ideas. I know plenty of microbusinesses that turned into very useful incomes and launched careers and businesses that started as a micro.

We always had to comply with UK and European regulations, since joining the common market. Member states kept some of their own regulations and took on the EUs too not just in business but in many other things too.

The Sale of Goods Act had exisited since the 1800s (in various forms until 2015) is an example of UK laws, when the EU set out it's Consumer Protection (Distance Selling) Regulations 2000 was an EU directive set out in UK law so any ecommerce operation had to comply with UK and EU laws.

I've been doing this since 1999, I've seen many changes to EU and UK laws for running a business. We still had to comply either way, just like we have to comply again now with this one.

I absolutely hear you and have the same issues.

Amazed so little has been said about it !

The impact on micro and SME’s is huge ….

Please get your facts straight! The EU has been working on this legislation for years and years, long before Brexit. So your assertion that the EU…

“ … needlessly chose to exclude the UK from safety legislation not for safety reasons, but on principle: as their ongoing show of power and punishment to prevent other members from leaving.”

… is absolute rubbish!

It was the UK’s choice to exclude itself from the considerable benefits of the single market remember?

And the legislation is not Draconian; it’s designed to protect individual consumers (with limited power) from buying unsafe imports, and it’s designed to be effective enough to ensure that global giants like Amazon (with extensive power) take responsibility for what they import in to the EU. It’s very sensible.

If protecting David from Goliath is a “modern leftist” strategy then I’m all for it!

But if you, in the name of “consumer freedom” want to preserve the right to buy a cheap unsafe electrical gadget that burns down your house and endangers your family’s life, with the safety assessment being your sole responsibility, without recourse to any sort of justice afterwards when it all goes wrong, by all means please crack on!

Yup - closing my digital download shop for this reason. For quite a lot of people that is going to be a steady income stream gone overnight.

Feel like I should also point out that the official government guidance was published on 3 December - a whole nine days before the law came into force, and twelve days before Christmas. There's an utter sadist working somewhere in there :(