As intended.

A small supplier for a niche-ish hobby of mine has had to stop shipping to the EU entirely because of this, its just not feasible.

The way they describe it (I'm not confirming accuracy) is:

• Need to pay for a representative in every EU state (on top of annual fees for GPSR safety laws) of €299 per state (so €8073)
• Have to register with each state's recycling scheme (with more fees)
• Report any packaging waste they generate and pay recycling fees

And there are no minimum fees. We absolutely need stuff like this to target the outrageous amount of plastic generated by these huge Chinese marketplaces like Aliexpress/Temu/Shein, as well as the likes of Amazon (at least they tend to use recyclable packaging) but its so absurdly short sighted to inflict this on tiny businesses.

Aren't there any service providers who could do these registrations centrally for a small fee rather than everyone registering everywhere individually? I mean we also have tax regulations, eInvoicing etc. in many EU states and not everyone has to reinvent the wheel themselves.