There are a lot of EU wide requirements that create barriers to entry. Before Altman's scareware campaign to "regulate" "AI", there was:
Exhibit 1:
https://pcengines.ch/recycle.htm
See the blurb about not being able to sell direct to customers in the EU.
[Think the company has shut down or is shutting down, possibly because of that too.]
It looks like they're shutting down because megacorporations don't want to support small business endeavors, which is perhaps the most critical barrier to entry if you want to do anything in this space.
> After a long production run, AMD will accept last orders for the SOC used in our apu2/3/4/5/6 boards by end of June 2023.
> Despite having used considerable quantities of AMD processors and Intel NICs, we don't get adequate design support for new projects. In addition, the x86 silicon currently offered is not very appealing for our niche of passively cooled boards. After about 20 years of WRAP, ALIX and APU, it is time for me to move on to different things.
Considering I have a pretty decent router board on my desk, waiting to be set up, just with an Intel processor. Made by some shop in China. I've had a friend do my research so I don't know if it's a big or small shop, but what's the likelihood they order CPUs by the million?
https://www.toptonpc.com/product/12th-gen-intel-i3-n305-n100...
But then, that thing won't run passively.
Everyone can agree regulation burden exists, but I too often see it invoked in bad faith, like in the case of GDPR. This primes me to ask for concrete proof why any regulation would be especially burdensome for small business.
If you want to market small circuit boards from the EU into the EU, you need to register in all EU countries. It's not 100% clear whether the requirement is incurred at "making available for sale in country X" (ie as soon as you put it on the website) or at the point you make your first sale.
This is on top of trying to untangle what CE marking testing may be required.
On the other hand, if you're a Chinese small board vendor, you just advertise it on AliExpress, put it in the (subsidized!) small parcel post, and ignore the EU rules.
Yes. While I'm generally in favor of the EU regulatory approach they need to learn about and understand the concept of "small business", including the fact that you can't get a new large EU business without it going through the small business stage. There should be a lot more de minimis exemptions from the whole CE marking system.