Can you just buy from another European country and import? German customs are pretty rubbish at catching such things from my understanding. AFAIK you only get screwed on retail purchases.
I really like the idea of the EU, a single market no more protectionism and other simular idotic shit. In reallity the EU is just another layer of stupid regulations and now we get protectionism and interventionsim on EU level too.
Im happy that Im not in the EU (Switzerland) but I belive only getting the good stuff from the EU (open borders ...) will get harder and harder with the EU becomming more like a country.
And the great thing is that your country, being entirely surrounded by EU countries, has no choice but to implement all those "stupid regulations" as well as it won't be able to do business with its neighbours otherwise.
Yes it has to do that to some regard but it can not be forced to and we still hold democratic control over the most importend of these things. Joining the EU would be spitting on the democratic system that Switzerland has built up over the last 200+ years.
I don't think there's much "stupid regulation", mostly just actual regulation (which can be a good thing). (There's more to say here, but it gets into politics, which is not good to have on HN)
Going into a huge disscusion on interventionsim is not my intend but let me just make a stament.
Thinking that the waterhead burocarcy in brussel is serving the people at large with there interventions is idialistic at best. The EU is very undemocratic and has been put in place over peoples heads.
Some other European countries are doing the same stupid thing so it might be not an option. E.g. in my country computer price will increase about 7 euros because of that, USB keys and similar devices will be about 20% more expensive.
