Why we can't ship to some EU countries right now

Since 12 August 2026, a new EU regulation on packaging and packaging waste (PPWR) has been in force across the European Union. It changes who is responsible for the recycling of the box your order arrives in.

Under the new rules, a shop that sends a parcel to a customer in another EU country is treated as a packaging producer in that country, and has to register there and pay into that country's recycling scheme.

The difficulty is that this registration works per country. There is no single European registration, no equivalent of the one-stop-shop that exists for VAT. A shop selling across the EU has to register separately in every country it ships to, each with its own scheme, its own paperwork and its own annual fees.

We are a small company in the Czech Republic. Some EU countries set a minimum volume below which small senders are exempt, and we are comfortably below those. Others set no minimum at all — the same registration and the same annual cost applies whether you send ten parcels a year or ten thousand. For countries where we ship only a handful of orders per year, the cost of registering is higher than everything we sell there.

Rather than raise prices for everyone or ignore the rules, we have paused direct shipping to those countries.

Countries we cannot ship to at the moment

As of 14 August 2026: France, Austria, Belgium, Slovenia, Malta.

Everywhere else is unaffected, inside the EU and outside it.

If you are in one of these countries

Orders already placed and paid for will be delivered as normal — nothing changes for them. Warranty, repairs and support continue exactly as before for every customer, including everyone who has bought from us in the past.

If you would like to be told when your country reopens, write to us at info@happy-electronics.eu with your country in the subject line and we will let you know.

Will this change?

Probably. The European rules are still being finalised — national producer registers are due in 2027 and a simplification package is currently being negotiated. We will review the list then. This page will always show the current situation.

Last updated: 14 August 2026.