Nobody should have to close their shop to Europe over paperwork.

Three concrete things, and nothing else.

We tell you what each country actually asks for. There's a desk for all twenty-seven — what the register is called, who runs it, what it costs, and whether you can be registered under a mandate or have to do it yourself. Dated, re-checked, and free to read whether you join or not.

We negotiate as a block. Representative and scheme fees are quoted at retail to a one-person shop and at a discount to anyone with volume. A few hundred small sellers arriving together is a different conversation from you emailing alone. Where a country allows it, the representative we appoint can handle your registration too.

We collect the evidence nobody has. Real quotes from members, aggregated so no shop is identifiable, to produce a median cost per €1,000 of revenue. Art. 46(5) obliges the schemes themselves not to place a disproportionate burden on small producers — that number is how you hold them to it. That's what the Observatory is for.

No — and be wary of anyone who answers this too quickly.

We are not your authorised representative and we don't hold your liability. Art. 45 requires an AR in each member state where you aren't established, and that contract stays yours to sign. What we do is negotiate the terms and the price, then introduce you. You sign directly with the provider.

Registration is a separate question from representation, and the answer changes by country. Art. 44(3) lets each member state decide whether registration may be handled for you under a written mandate, normally by that same representative. Several took the option. Germany didn't — there it's a personal duty you complete yourself, and anyone offering to register in your name is selling you something that isn't compliant. Knowing which country is which is a large part of what we're for.

Joining costs nothing. The founding list is free, there's no obligation, and the country desks stay free and open whether or not you join. If a paid membership ever comes — once there's a negotiation service worth paying for — the founding list hears it first, and nobody is moved onto it automatically.

What costs money is the compliance itself — registration fees, scheme fees, and a representative in each country where you aren't established. You owe those with or without us; they are the reason the fortnight after 12 August went the way it did. Getting that bill down by negotiating it collectively, instead of you paying the single-shop rate, is the entire point of the association.

We won't quote you a saving we haven't got in writing. When there's a pooled rate, you'll see the real number next to the retail one and decide for yourself.

Honestly: we can make it affordable and navigable. We can't make it permitted — only your own compliance does that, and no membership substitutes for it.

For most small sellers the blocker was never willingness. It was that a fixed per-country cost made shipping a handful of parcels uneconomic, and that the paperwork came in twenty-seven different shapes. Both of those are fixable, and with a pooled rate and a desk telling you exactly what your countries require, a lot of routes that closed in August open again.

Not all of them, and we won't pretend otherwise. For very low volume into one expensive country the honest answer may still be that it isn't worth it — and the desk will tell you that rather than sell you a registration you'll never earn back. Where a country has an easement for the smallest producers, it's on that country's desk. What we can promise is that you'll know where you stand, country by country, without paying the single-shop rate to find out.