14 August 2026 – The EU Packaging and Packaging Waste Regulation (PPWR) has applied since 12 August. On the very same day, Brussels recommended that authorities would be better off not enforcing it. The obligations remain, as do the fines. Only legal certainty has disappeared. Small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) are left to pay the price, businesses the Commission, as usual, has deliberately ignored.
PPWR: Brussels Passes a Law and Recommends Not Enforcing It
The EU Packaging and Packaging Waste Regulation (PPWR) has applied since 12 August 2026. On the very same day, the Commission indicated that it would be better not to enforce it. None of this is legally binding.
For SMEs, it is the most expensive form of accommodation imaginable.
The Recommendation That Is Worth Nothing
A senior EU official, quoted by WELT, said that nobody needed to stop exporting and that Member States were being encouraged not to apply the new rules and not to impose penalties. The reason given was that the rules were fragmenting the internal market.
Officially, the wording is more restrained. Section XVI of the updated FAQ invites market surveillance authorities to issue a warning first, then set a deadline, and only afterwards resort to Article 62. The problem is that enforcement powers lie with the Member States. Article 68 requires them to provide for effective, proportionate and dissuasive penalties, and fines are mandatory for infringements of Articles 24 to 29.
Nobody is bound by Brussels’ invitation.
At the deadline, thirteen Member States had not even designated an enforcement authority.
“Anyone supplying 27 markets is no longer dealing with harmonised law, but with 27 different probabilities of being prosecuted for the same act,” says Thorsten Gerber, CEO of the Gerber Group. “That is not mitigation. It is transferred risk.”
PPWR: The SME Test That Never Happened
The impact assessment SWD(2022) 384 identifies five affected groups: the general public, consumers, brands, packaging manufacturers and waste management operators.
Small and medium sized enterprises are not one of them. The European Parliamentary Research Service notes that the impact on SMEs was assessed, explicitly “as manufacturers”.
That is precisely where the gap lies. The PPWR affects SMEs not as packaging producers, but as businesses placing packaged goods on the market. The honey producer. The tool distributor.
The Regulatory Scrutiny Board identified eleven shortcomings. Not one concerned SMEs.
The Commission was perfectly capable of producing figures elsewhere: €10.3 billion in one off administrative costs for labelling alone, and €1.14 billion annually for recyclability certificates. As for the burden on an eight person business: not a single figure.
The Commission Accuses the Commission
On 21 May 2025, the same institution declared fragmented packaging and labelling rules to be the sixth most serious barrier to the European internal market. Its own PPWR had already been in force for three months.
In December 2025, it sought to suspend the authorised representative requirement that it had itself adopted a year earlier. The Council removed that proposal in June 2026. Since 12 August, the requirement has applied.
The Commission estimates the market for authorised representative services at between €1 billion and €2 billion per year. A figure that was not even estimated in the case of CBAM.
“A rule that one seeks to suspend for a decade just ten months after it entered into force should never have been adopted in the first place,” Gerber says. “We are paying the price for a dispute over responsibilities that we did not create.”
The Commission’s Till Must Keep Ringing
The pattern is consistent. Where costs are widely distributed and generate no revenue, the Commission retreats behind a non binding recommendation. Where the beneficiaries are concentrated and the revenues are secure, as with steel quotas and CBAM, it stays the course or tightens the rules.
SMEs receive relief where it achieves nothing, and additional burdens where they hurt. The obligations remain. Only legal certainty has disappeared. The main thing is that the Commission’s till keeps ringing.
Latest news
- CBAM Correction: Brussels’ Errors as a Consulting Market
- Copper Above USD 14,400: Aluminium Becomes an Alternative
- Why Does the IW Not Sweep Its Own Doorstep When It Comes to Tariffs?
We at the Gerber Group have been trading in stainless steel worldwide for over 20 years. We are your experts when it comes to purchasing, import, logistics and services. Information is a vital part of this. Because only then can you and we make the right decisions. Do you have any questions? Contact us now.
Disclaimer: Many things here represent our opinion. Others are information from the Internet. We can therefore never claim to be correct or complete. And never base a business decision solely on the news you receive from us.
