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Electronics is not an affordable hobby in the EU now

It seems that there's hardly a single tech-based hobby that isn't being destroyed by idiotic bureaucrats these days.

As a kid, I used to get almost all the parts for my electronic projects from discarded ewaste. Even at the age of 10, the corner of my bedroom was dominated by a pile of old radios and amplifiers which were a valuable source of resistors, capacitors, valves, transistors and the other components that I used in my own experiments.

If I needed specific components that weren't found in my junk pile, there was a local electronics repair shop that would sell me specific bits and pieces in exchange for a handful of coins.

Life was good.

As time passed, my own projects became more ambitious and the need for brand new store-bought components became greater, I turned to mail-order providers to source such items.

They published printed catalogs and all I needed to do was fire off an order form with pay ment and within a few days, all the bits I needed would arrive in the mail.

This was the era of Dick Smith Electronics, Radio Shack and a plethora of other suppliers that advertised their wares in magazines and sold either via retail shops or mail-order. The electronics hobbyist was well served.

Jump ahead many decades and most of those component retailers have gone or pivoted away from the sale of individual components -- becoming just regular browngoods retailers.

So where have hobbyists been going for their parts?

Well if you have a lot of money or need some very esoteric branded components, suppliers such as R&S, Element 14, Mouser or Digikey are probably your supplier of choice.

However, if you want your dollar to go much further and are willing to accept that sometimes you won't be getting what you ordered due to counterfeiting or fraud, then Chinese sites such as AliExpress are a great option.

These Sino etailers have a bewildering array of components and modules that are so much cheaper than local sources that it has enabled hobbyists to get far more bang for their buck. Free shipping, bulk deals, kits and libraries of commonly used resistors or capacitors have slashed the cost of filling your parts bins.

Unfortunately, that is no longer the case for folk living in the EU.

Now, overseas sources such as AliExpress have become prohibitively expensive, overnight.

What has happened?

Well the EU has removed its de minimis exemptions on imported goods. The de minimis exemption meant that low value imports were effectively free of taxes and duties, just as used to be the case here in New Zealand. The rational behind this exemption was that it would cost more to process the taxes on a $10 import than those taxes were worth -- so why bother?

Bureaucrats being the creatures they are however, most countries have now decided to dispense with the de minimis exemption and impose those taxes anyway -- or even just a fixed charge on consignments up to a value where such taxes can be economically levied on a consignment value basis.

Here in New Zealand, if you're importing from AliExpress, you'll find that they add GST to every item you buy -- based on its value. This is just the same as if you were purchasing the bits locally so it's not too much of a burden. Buy $10 worth of assorted components and you'll also be billed the GST on that $10 value.

However, the EU is doing things differently. They are charging three Euros per product category ordered for orders totalling less than 150 Euro. On top of that, you're still expected to pay the VAT due as well.

Now imagine you're an EU-resident hobbyist and you order 1 Euro worth of resistors, 2 Euros worth of capacitors, 5 Euros worth of integrated circuits and a case worth 2 Euros. That's something that (with free shipping) used to cost you a total of 10 Euros, delivered to your door.

Since the de minimis exemption was canceled and the new regime instated, that will now cost the original 10 Euros but also have an additional 15 Euros added because there are five different categories of items, each attracting a three Euro charge.

Yes, the cost has increased by 150 percent overnight and the vast majority of what you pay now simply goes into the coffers of bureaucracy.

It could be even worse in some cases. For example, if you desperately need just one little component worth 5p that is only available from an offshore supplier then once the three Euro line-fee is added, you're now paying sixty times as much as the item is worth, just in terms of that line-fee.

Those who think they can sidestep the issue buy purchasing from sites such as Mouser, DigiKey or whatever may still get hit because in many cases, the components they order, even from an EU-based website, are shipped from a warehouse in the USA and thus attract the line-fees.

So, perhaps once again, we're likely to see a hobby that fosters crucial STEM hobbies hugely penalised in the name of bureaucracy.

Where will the EU get its next generation of electronics engineers, techncians and designers if those kids can't afford to feed their interest in electronics at a young age?

Oh, of course... we won't need *actual* engineers, designers and technicials -- we'll have AI, right?

Carpe Diem folks!

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