Source: https://www.reddit.com/r/Aliexpress/comments/1ugpyoe/i_dug_around_a_bit_and_found_exactly_who_is/
I dug around a bit and found exactly who is responsible for the new EU 3/5 Euros customs fees, here is who they are and how to hit back at them.
I dug around a bit in the public paper trail to find out exactly bought and paid for this law to screw over everyday consumers. The answer boils down to greedy monopolies with political connections being afraid of real competition because efficiency and a superior business model are apparently “unfair”
The corpos behind the mask.
The main driving force that pressured the European Commission to kill the de minimis threshold and forced you to pay 3 euros for a 2 euro pack of double adhesive stickers is a massive monopolistic corporate lobby group in Brussels called EuroCommerce.
They ran an aggressive, well funded lobbying campaign called the #Compliance4All. They did this because they were absolutely terrified of people buying affordable directly from global sellers instead of paying their bloated monopoly markups.
When you look at who actually sits on the governing body for this lobby, you find Europe’s biggest retail and grocery monopolies pulling the strings. According to their official website, this nasty group is packed with corporate lobbyists, including:
| Parent Corporate Member | Key Retail Brands & Subsidiaries | Annual Revenue |
|---|---|---|
| Schwarz Group | Lidl, Kaufland, PreZero | €185.6 Billion |
| REWE Group | BILLA, REWE, Penny, Toom Baumarkt, BIPA | €100.4 Billion |
| Ahold Delhaize | Albert Heijn, Delhaize, Alfa Beta, Mega Image, Maxi, Albert | €92.35 Billion |
| Carrefour Group | Carrefour, Carrefour Market, Express, Atacadão, Cora, Match | €91.48 Billion |
| Tesco PLC | Tesco, Tesco Express, One Stop | €82 Billion |
| Inditex | Zara, Pull&Bear, Massimo Dutti, Bershka, Stradivarius | €36 Billion |
| H&M Group | H&M, COS, Monki, Weekday, & Other Stories, ARKET | €21 Billion |
| Colruyt Group | Colruyt, Okay, Spar | €11.19 Billion |
They successfully convinced the EU to pass this law to bully us back into their stores and buy their heavily marked up crap. This is classic protectionist crony capitalism.
How We can legally fight back:
Don’t let them force you back into their overpriced supermarkets and clothing stores. And share this with your friends. Use filters in the AliExpress app to buy products that are being shipped from Europe, and the Choice Category stacking mechanism thus skipping or reducing the fees.
Get together with some friends and buy stuff you like together preferably via the Choice option, making sure it is in the same category, then have one of you purchase it and distribute it to the others. You can even use cheap courier services that might cost less than the per item handling fee if you live far apart.
since: Boycott the likes of Schwartz and Zara and buy from local stores. Buy from local stores. Going to small so called “Mom-and-pop” stores for necessities keeps the money in your local community and puts it in your neighbors pockets, not those of some greedy corporation that does everything it can to skip taxes and stifle real competition.
Demand that these monopolies be hit with extra taxes, since many of them like Schwarz already have bad reputations for unfair competition and many national level politicians in the EU want to hit THEM with extra taxes you can support whoever wants to put such a law in place. Sunlight is the best disinfectant, so make sure you spread this message far and wide!
When the warnings that show that 2/3 of the products from Shein and Temu doesn’t fullfill EU safety standards doesn’t stop people from buying shit then one can hope this at least slows down the consumption of crap by making it more expensive.
Listen to Captain Vimes and save up for proper shoes that last for more than a year or two.
Out of ALL the lobby groups that shape politics in Brussels this is one of the last I give a flying fuck about to be completely honest with you. Sure, big corp is bad no matter from where it‘s from.
From my point of view China got a teeny tiny taste of what they‘ve been serving the west when they try to enter the Chinese market. It has always been asymmetrical but with this act a little bit less so. It isn‘t unfair towards Chinese companies at all, it‘s merely trying to even the playing field.
I will say that they probably did it out of the wrong reasons however and that lobbying is of course basically bribing. Just like major Chinese lobby groups keep our politicians occupied. Let‘s not pretend China never got anything out of that practice. They‘re deeply invested in EU politics.
As for making smaller, local business more attractive, yeah sure. But you won‘t win anyone over by making everything else more expensive. Not right now. Sorry.