Weekend

By Rutger Oldenhuis

Once upon a time, back when I was just a young lad, there was a song my brothers and I occasionally hear on the radio – a song that seemed to cast a spell over us. We didn’t know what it was about, nor could we name the band, but something about it was almost magical. And this was before we’d even seen the music video! That song became iconic, a symbol of our youth, resonating with us deeply despite remaining a mystery for years.

Much later, one of my brothers became determined to solve that mystery. He spent an entire day combing through a record store to find that song. This was in the pre-internet days – no Google, no Spotify, no SoundHound to lean on. Just pure determination. And after hours of searching, he finally succeeded! The mysterious song had a name: Weekend, by a Dutch band called Earth & Fire (not to be confused with Earth, Wind & Fire). It felt like solving a puzzle, a small triumph over the unknown.

I often think back on this story – my brother, investing a whole day to find that single piece of music. How did he even go about it? Where did he begin? Did he sing a few bars to the store clerks, hoping they’d recognize it? I’ll have to ask him next time I see him.

Reflecting on that search, it struck me how similar it is to the challenges companies face in navigating European market access. Trying to bring a product to Europe is a lot like that record-store search – a maze of regulations, each one potentially applicable to your product. Where do you start? Which regulations matter? How do you make sense of them?

I’ve written extensively about the upcoming GPSR (General Product Safety Regulation), and for good reason. This blog will likely be published just as the GPSR starts applying on December 13, 2024. But Brussels hasn’t been resting; there’s a wave of new ESG and product regulations approaching. Take a look at just some of the regulatory wave on the horizon:

  • Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive
  • Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive
  • Ecodesign for Sustainable Products Regulation
  • Packaging and Packaging Waste Regulation
  • Deforestation Regulation
  • Green Claims Directive
  • Waste Framework Directive
  • Directive on Empowering Consumers for the Green Transition
  • Machinery Regulation
  • Revision of Textile Labelling Regulation

And that’s just scratching the surface. Navigating these requirements is a monumental task for legal and compliance teams in large multinational corporations, and for small- and medium-sized enterprises, the challenge is even greater. Too often, this task is viewed as a burdensome expense. After all, who really wants to spend an entire day in a record store just to track down one song?

Yet, I can’t emphasize this enough: if selling products is at the core of your business, then product compliance and safety should be at the heart of your business processes. Making sense of these regulations is not just a legal obligation; it’s an investment. After all, how heroic can your sales team really be if the product they champion turns out to be unsafe and must be pulled from the market? Compliance isn’t just a backstage function – it’s the foundation that keeps your product, and your reputation, safe and strong.

There’s one line in Weekend where I hear, “I wanna have the pope a night apart”. Some sources, though, say it’s actually, “I wanna have the whole and not a part”. Not all mysteries can be solved, no matter how much time we spend in a record store.