Do you need a customs declaration when sending a parcel to Monaco (from another EU member state)?

No.1 While Monaco is not an EU member state, it has been in a customs union with France since 1968. This means that shipments to Monaco are treated exactly like shipments to France.

You can also find information about Monaco on the European Commission’s “Taxation and Customs Union” website, which clearly states that Monaco is

Treated as territory of France for customs, VAT and excise purposes.

For an even more authoritative source, take a look at Article 4, Nr. 2 of Regulation (EU) No 952/2013:

The following territories […] shall, taking into account the conventions and treaties applicable to them, be considered to be part of the customs territory of the Union:
(a) FRANCE
The territory of Monaco […]

Part of the customs territory of the EU. This should settle any debate. However, it doesn’t prevent some postal organizations from doing their own (weird) thing.

How do different postal organizations handle parcels to Monaco?

La Poste (France) gets it right:

Monaco is a third-party state with respect to the European Union but is part of the EU customs territory. Therefore, if you send a parcel from France, no specific customs formalities apply.
(Monaco est un état tiers vis-à-vis de l’Union européenne mais fait partie du territoire douanier de l’UE. Ainsi, si vous envoyez un colis de France, aucune formalité douanière spécifique ne s’applique.)

DHL (Germany) is also correct:

Due to an existing monetary and customs union with France, no customs documents are necessary.
(Aufgrund einer bestehenden Währungs- und Zollunion mit Frankreich sind keine Zollpapiere notwendig.)

Bpost (Belgium) lumps Monaco together with countries like Andorra (neither in the EU nor in the customs union) and places that are part of a EU country but not in the customs union, like the German enclave of Büsingen in Switzerland:

Bpost screenshot

While the linked page incorrectly states that customs documents are required for Monaco, Bpost doesn’t actually require them when you create a parcel label online.

POST (Luxembourg) has no information about shipments to Monaco on their website that I could find, but does require you to complete a customs declaration when you create a parcel label through their mypost.lu service (this functionality of mypost may be available to business customers only):

Luxembourg POST's mypost.lu service requires a custom declaration to be filled out for shipments to Monaco, which is not correct

When my boss contacted them about this in December 2024, they incorrectly but confidently replied that:

Monaco is located in Europe but not in the EU, therefore a customs declaration must be made.
(Monaco befindet sich zwar in Europa jedoch nicht in der EU deshalb muss eine Zolldeklarierung gemacht werden.)

So, if you mistakenly thought that you needed a customs declaration for your parcel to Monaco, don’t be too hard on yourself – even postal employees get this very wrong.


  1. The complete answer is: No, unless you’re in a territory that belongs to an EU member state but is not part of the customs union. Again, this is exactly the same as if you were sending a parcel to France. ↩︎

How to switch to Microsoft 365 Family Classic (without Copilot)

If you’re reading this, you have probably noticed that Microsoft Copilot is now included in Microsoft Office (or whatever Word, Excel, etc. are called now).

This seems to have first started in October 2024 in a few countries and has now been rolled out globally in what ZDNET called “a total disaster“.

This inclusion of AI also came with a considerable price increase (from 99€ to 129€/year in my case).

YouTuber Atomic Shrimp made a video that expresses my feelings quite well:

Microsoft’s Sneaky Forced-Upsell to 365 Users; If You Don’t Need/Want Copilot, Don’t Pay for It

However, there’s an easier method to “downgrade” back to your previous Microsoft 365 plan than the one he presented:

1. Go to your Microsoft account dashboard.
This is where you manage your Microsoft account and your subscriptions.

2. Select “subscriptions” in the menu.
Your existing Microsoft 365 subsciption should appear.

3. Ensure that “recurring billing” is on.
It appears that this is required for the next step to work.

4. Click on “Cancel subscription”.

Microsoft 365 Family account management

This will bring up a page that lets you switch to a “Classic” subscription without AI (you know, the kind of page you’d expect to find under “Switch plan”):

Lower cost without AI

5. Confirm the plan change and payment method.
From the way the confirmation is worded, it seems I will get to “enjoy” Copilot until my current subscription period ends, but at least I won’t have to pay for it.

Workaround: DaVinci Control Panels App crashing

Under DaVinci Resolve 19.0, not only does the DaVinci Resolve Control Panels app crash immediately when I try to start it, but Resolve itself also refuses to start as long as the app is installed. In both cases, the Windows Event Viewer displays exception code 0xc0000409:

Windows Event Viewer entry

Fortunately, uninstalling just the Control Panels app allowed me to work with Resolve again. However, whenever there’s an update available for my Speed Editor, I need to find a workaround. Previously, I installed the Control Panels app on a different computer, but this time it was even more frustrating, as it also crashed on that second machine.

What eventually worked for me was temporarily disabling all other startup applications. A simple way to do this is by pressing the Windows key + R, typing “msconfig,” and then selecting “Selective startup,” leaving only system services checked (unchecking “Load startup items”):

msconfig

After restarting with this selection, DaVinci Resolve Panels ran just fine and updated my Speed Editor:

Once done, I set the selection back to “Normal startup”. I did not have the patience and time to go through the startup apps and disable them one by one to find which one was causing the conflict. You could do this in the “Startup” section of the Windows Task Manager or with other applications like Autoruns.

Solution: Can’t find Bluetooth devices on Win 11?

If the Bluetooth device you want to connect to does not appear on Windows 11, try the following.

Go to Bluetooth and other device settings:

Bluetooth and other devices settings in Windows 11

Scroll down to the “Device settings” section and set “Bluetooth devices discovery” to “Advanced”:

Bluetooth devices discovery: Default and Advanced

If you now try to add a Bluetooth device again, you should see all available devices.

Explanation

Discovery involves scanning for devices that are broadcasting their availability to pair. The “Default” mode uses predefined filters to reduce the devices the system displays to common ones, such as keyboards, mice, and headsets. Presumably this was done to reduce clutter.

When “Advanced” is selected, this filter is removed, allowing the system to list all devices that are discoverable in the vicinity.

While I wasn’t able to find a comprehensive list of devices that Microsoft considers to be uncommon, the following ones only showed up after I changed the setting:

Improvements in Windows 11 version 24H2

It looks like the upcoming version will offer to “show all devices” when Bluetooth devices have been detected but filtered out.

Note for Windows 10 Users

The setting discussed here is specific to Windows 11 and does not exist on Windows 10. This can make it look as if Windows 10 had better Bluetooth discovery capabilities, when the actual cause is the filter in Windows 11.

Zeef.com is shutting down?

Zeef.com is (was?) a curated directory where users could create organized lists of links. I used it to make pages about video management software and RS-232:

If you visit zeef.com right now (February 29, 2024), you’ll see a popup announcing that the site will be shut down:

Although I wasn’t notified by email, the shutdown didn’t come as a complete surprise to me. Zeef apparently struggled to attract a large user base. Moreover, it suffered from frequent outages recently. Still, it’s sad to see it go.

I will be uploading my pages to this blog. If you’ve missed the chance to download your pages, you can probably still find them on the Wayback Machine (Internet Archive).