Have you heard about the new German Packaging Laws that come into effect on 1st July? If you sell to customers in Germany these will impact your business.
We’ve put together a blog post that outlines how they affect you and what you need to do. Let us know if you have any questions and we will try our best to help.
If anyone is interested in finding out how much a license costs then reclay have this handy calculator (the license is step 3 in the blog post).
https://activate.reclay.de/activate_germany_english/packaging-licensing/
There are other companies that offer licenses but they tend to be more expensive for small producers however if you ship regularly to Germany it is probably worth shopping around (the other companies are listing on the webpage that is linked to by step 3 of the blog post).
Aren’t there needs for other countries too? France for example? It would be so much easier if it was just one thing that covered all EU or European countries rather than them all having different rules 
Yes other countries have their own version of the packaging act (France being one of them like you mention) but so far they haven’t got to the point where they are actually checking that businesses have licenses (or levying fines against market places if they don’t check that businesses have licenses). A unified european system would be much easier.
Yes I’m with these - they were def the cheapest for me
Thanks for this
Is the field ready to input the registration number yet? And where do we put it!? thanks
@JoSouthArtworks The field isn’t there yet.
So, is it sort of back-dated? On that Reclay website, you can’t seem to put in less than 1kg, so I’m wondering how you pay if it’s like 30g?
It is for a calendar year and the minimum (for the year) is 1kg.
Ahhh OK! So even if you only sell one item, the minimum they charge you is £7-ish?
It’s a shame it doesn’t go down to 500g!
I have applied for a lucid thingy and will start to register with Reclay this weekend!
I feel sorry for consumers in Germany though not being able to buy from micro-businesses either in Europe or the UK if they don’t want this extra hassle and don’t sign up to this Luscid thing!
Great, more fees. I have read some of it but is there any idea of the costs? I think I will be taking these countries off my list.
For Germany there is an annual license fee which is under 10 euros if you are only sending 1kg of paper/ cardboard per annum.
Do you have to get a license to do this? I wonder if other countries will follow suit, I bet you will need a license for each country I presume.
It wouldn’t surprise me if other countries follow 
If you want to ship to Germany then yes you need to buy a license - they have made it a requirement that marketplaces like Folksy (or Etsy) check that sellers have the license or the market place is liable for a fine. If you don’t get a license the Folksy will block sales to Germany for your shop.
At the moment 5 other countries require you to have a license to ship there and yes you need to buy a license for each of those countires (France is 80 euros per annum, I can’t remember which others). And yes I anticipate that more countries will follow suit.
Wow thats ridiculous, how do they expect small businesses to be able to do this. I won’t be posting to these countries at all now. Thanks for the info Sasha
Then I just wont post to them, its sad really.
Thanks for that, Sasha. I’ve been registered with Lucid since feb 2021, and hadn’t realised there were new requirements from July. Now I have Reclay. I really appreciate you having done the hard wrok of finding them and then sharing. Thanks so much. Hugs.
Hi everyone. The German LUCID work has been deployed and there is now a “Government registrations” section at the bottom of the shop sections page with an optional “German LUCID identification number” field to fill in.
If you fill that in, then ‘Germany’ will appear in the lists of shipping destinations for an item (assuming you ship to the EU) and sales to Germany will proceed as normal.
If you don’t fill that in, then ‘Germany’ will not be in the lists of shipping destinations for that item and, more importantly, buyers attempting to ship to Germany will be informed at checkout that those items sadly can’t be delivered to their country.
You can read more here - https://blog.folksy.com/…/german-packaging-laws-verpackg