Any likelihood of resumption of EU fulfillment from UK?

I’m a US-based seller and I sell on Amazon UK, FBA only. Until Brexit, of course, this meant I had access to the EU markets as well. I had been under the impression that Amazon was going to figure out some arrangement by which that could continue, but now I see that, at least for the time being, they’ve simply stopped any shipment of orders from UK fulfillment centers to the EU.

This, sad to say, comes at a time when we were already thinking about shutting down our Amazon UK activity. Sales have been dropping for no obvious reason and the logistics of dealing with retrieving returned merchandise from the UK have always been a real problem. I’m trying to make the decision whether to just stop, and the loss of the EU markets – if permanent – is a pretty large consideration. We don’t have enough sales in the non-UK markets to make it worth opening a VAT account in one of those countries, filing VAT returns in a foreign language, et cetera – particularly because, unlike the UK where we have contacts, we have no way to retrieve returned merchandise in the EU and would just have to have it destroyed.

Has anyone seen any indication from Amazon as to whether this halt on UK-to-EU fulfillment is permanent? I have no idea of the Brexit-caused logistics of the thing, and whether this is a temporary condition for which Amazon will eventually implement some solution or whether it’s really more likely that it will remain.

Kurt
Blue Jeans Cable