Specifically, this is another Parliament vs Commission issue. The Commission loves to have little deals away from the public where everything is quietly smoothed over, while the Parliament is trying to build popular legitimacy.
vintermann 3 hours ago [-]
Also, I'm not sure there's much pressure involved. Mass surveillance is a thing "centrist" EU politicians very much want themselves.
benoau 2 hours ago [-]
> Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg publicly voiced his dissatisfaction and sought support from Trump, while Apple’s Tim Cook reportedly asked the White House to directly intervene against EU fines imposed on his company.
Apple even went so far as to demand the EU repeal these laws, and is likely still non-compliant in several ways; for which they should have been fined tens of billions of dollars by now!
Rules for me but not for thee. The entire discussion across the board is riff with hypocrisy depending on which actors are speaking and whom they are speaking of. Modern tech effectively delivers powerful centralized not only surveillance but also commands and control over the population unlike anything we've ever seen before in history. Governments, politicians, want this, quite badly and I am quite certain they will get it eventually. Simultaneously they do not want other people to have this over their own electorate. They are push-push-pushing new norms slowly but persistently, where all online activity is tied to a government identity, where everything done is subject to surveillance, and all information consumed is delivered via algorithms subject to government regulation and control. This cocktail is devastatingly effective as a means of control.
I believe this will to be the end state of basically every country in the world given enough time, we are only stalling for time in a losing battle and we have zero allies anywhere in the incumbent political landscape. They all want this too much.
mc32 3 hours ago [-]
It’s the public/private dichotomy you see everywhere.
Publicly pols say one thing or stand for one thing and privately they hold different views.
Arubis 6 minutes ago [-]
Ceding? Any legal control the EU has over tech has been slowly drawn out of the US’s grasp. It was just that the US dominance over legal control of all these networked interconnections wasn’t so actively and visibly utilized until more recently.
elric 1 hours ago [-]
The European Commission and Council are becoming increasingly unpopular among my peers. Sentiment towards the Parliament is generally still positive. But it's clear that two thirds of the Trilogue essentially don't give a shit about European people, their rights, their freedoms or their wellbeing. Things like Age Verification and Chat Control are going to blow up in their faces.
I don't get how blind these institutions are.
FpUser 36 seconds ago [-]
>"two thirds of the Trilogue essentially don't give a shit about European people, their rights, their freedoms or their wellbeing"
Every bureaucracy works for themselves eventually. The EU's main task is to make superstate they can control. Since they are trying to eliminate / reduce rights of member countries one can imagine what kind of concerns they have towards individual people and their freedom.
40 minutes ago [-]
mikkupikku 2 hours ago [-]
After decades of trying and broadly failing to regulate American tech corps, at what point does the EU admit that leveling fines against Meta will never stop Meta from being Meta, that American megacorps are essentially ungovernable in Europe (or elsewhere for that matter) and the best course of action is to ban and block them in Europe?
Just more fines. Bigger fines, surely this will work eventually... It's been 20 years, its not working. A new approach is needed.
troyvit 1 hours ago [-]
This talk from Cory Doctorow made the rounds on HN when it happened:
In it he espouses going a little further. He posits that other countries should repeal their versions of the DMCA and just start jailbreaking American megacorps' app stores, hardware, software, etc. and providing their own, much cheaper (or free) versions. Free trade has already broken down, what do they have to lose?
As you might guess he puts it a lot better than I do.
mikkupikku 1 hours ago [-]
Brilliant idea, my appreciation for Doctorow has grown even more than before.
dehrmann 13 minutes ago [-]
Except it's already possible to install a third-party app store or OS on Android devices. The process isn't trivial, but it's officially supported.
szszrk 2 hours ago [-]
My monkey brain would love to see if corporate strategy would work here:
For repeating offenses fines should rise much faster, multiplied by 10x-100x every time, until we find fines so big they are physically unable to pay even if corps would consider liquidating their all global assets. Then lower it just slightly, so that being operational in Europe would produce no financial benefits and see if they'll comply, or just quit themselves.
Recent political and technical events makes me question why do we even attempt to keep such strong relations with megacorp businesses (and, by extension, US gov). We would still be here even if multiple megacorps would die. It would take us decades to build up capacity to have complex tech of our own (fully local). But meanwhile we'd be just fine, just less trendy.
benoau 2 hours ago [-]
The DMA and DSA already allow fines up to 10 - 20% of global turnover (effectively 30 - 40% of annual profit) and breaking up noncompliant companies.
The issue is nobody wants to pull the trigger because the companies that would get fined or broken up have curried favour with Trump to circumvent these consequences.
szszrk 52 minutes ago [-]
That's a similar scale as GDPR violations. And EU companies I worked with were always very serious about GDPR regulations, even if their internal training confirms fines were always really small compared to maximums.
US doesn't care about warnings and small fines, though. If penalties are not enforced, it's like they don't exist.
anthk 17 minutes ago [-]
Block FB at IP level. Every domain, from FB to WA to IG and whatnot. No access from Europe unless you comply with privacy laws.
Isamu 2 hours ago [-]
Well you have to ask why fines aren’t working. In Meta’s case, recent revelations show that they make choices based on how much they stand to make by refusing compliance and just paying the fine. They decided the fine was small relative to the billions they made. A fine could still work but it needs to reach maybe unprecedented punitive levels.
SunshineTheCat 1 hours ago [-]
What you're seeing here is why the US has such a massive amount of leverage over the EU.
The US has for some time fostered an environment where people build and grow businesses. I've started many myself, some totally for fun.
And as it happens some of those US businesses have grown into massive corporations, and yes, some not so great ones too.
I think the EU in general (not everyone of course) leans more in the realm of letting the government take care of everything.
This of course creates dependency, not just on that government, but upon companies who create things that government can't provide.
Because of that dependency upon the government, there isn't any recourse against a business' practices because at some point, the fines and penalties will fall flat.
In the US, a pretty normal response to a bad/annoying/corrupt business is: "ok cool, I'll build a competitor."
If instead of creating a culture of dependency in the EU, one of innovation and creativity was fostered instead, this point in time could be very different.
tokai 59 minutes ago [-]
>I think the EU in general (not everyone of course) leans more in the realm of letting the government take care of everything.
Your understanding of business in EU countries seems to be make-believe and personal fantasy.
anthk 16 minutes ago [-]
>"The goverment take care"...
So, like Boeing and tons of corpos too big to fail.
runarberg 44 minutes ago [-]
Also the picture of the US is totally fictional for the vast majority of people. The US has fostered an environment where only a tiny subset of the population can start a business. Even opening up a restaurant you are usually met with an avalanche of paperwork, of requirements to fulfill, and unless you have a lot of money to fix any issue, they rule some aspect of your business in violation. Even a tiny business like a food cart you need to make sure you keep it x meters from a public restroom, that your neighbors don‘t complaint, that you provide 2 parking spaces per gas-burner (or 3 if you use an induction stove) etc. etc.
Gud 2 hours ago [-]
Levy harder fines until they go away? At least some money goes into the union
dzink 2 hours ago [-]
Per the book “Careless People” Meta started “backing” right wing candidates everywhere (via algorithms, not money) to avoid regulation and taxes as soon as the EU tried to tax and regulate it more - thus leading to a surge of that sentiment all over the EU.
whateverboat 44 minutes ago [-]
At some point, EU needs to build an alternative to those corps and that will never happen as long as they keep holding on to their precious pearl clutching regional and linguistic issues. EU needed to be a single country like 10 years ago.
SpicyLemonZest 36 minutes ago [-]
It's very hard to imagine the EU enacting a ban on products that over half of Europeans use, regardless of the theoretical benefits of doing so. It doesn't seem like a practical option.
Xelbair 2 hours ago [-]
the issue isn't fines themselves
it's the fact that fines are part of agency's income and it is their best interest(as a bureaucratic agency) to keep them at highest level where companies will still pay them.
Effectively this makes this a tax, enshittifying everything even worse.
if fines were decoupled from agencies, and had exponentially rising curve for repeat offenses, i think that would work better than ban, as much i would prefer for them to get banned.
PaulDavisThe1st 1 hours ago [-]
> it's the fact that fines are part of agency's income and it is their best interest(as a bureaucratic agency) to keep them at highest level where companies will still pay them.
and yet there's absolutely no evidence whatsoever that they've done this. The fines that have been levied are easy to pay.
alephnerd 2 hours ago [-]
> After decades of trying and broadly failing to regulate American tech corps, at what point does the EU...
The crux of the matter is it's a subset of the European Parliament versus a subset of EU member states.
When push comes to shove, EU member states can and already do ignore the EP for anything tangentially related to national security, and national politicans don't and won't give up sovereign power to the EU.
Additonally, the incentives of individual EU states with strong US FDI ties and not as strong domestic champions such as Poland, Ireland, Czechia, Luxembourg, and Romania means they fight tooth and nail to ensure American FDI continues. Member states like Hungary and Spain do this for China and Hungary and Austria for Russia.
There's also the added issue of perception - the EP was historically (and for larger states like France and Germany still is) used as a way to sideline unpopular domestic politicans or as a cushy retirement posting. There's a reason VdL is in Bruxelles and not the Bundeskanzleramt.
Plus, European companies have massive fixed capital investments in the US, especially after the IRA [0], so they don't want to face retaliation from American regulators, and are especially cozy with the Trump admin [1].
Also, European politicos also heavy leverage the revolving door of lobbying like their American peers. The "spend a couple years in Bundestag or Bruxelles and then take a cushy gig at Harvard [2][3]" remains strong. Heck, we'd always organize a fest where the wine would flow and European leaders would network with American and European policymakers studying and working in the US or in Europe [4].
All this so Meta and X can sell politically divisive and hateful advertising with zero transparency.
Gareth321 26 minutes ago [-]
As a European I have been deeply disappointed with how toothless the EC has been on enforcing the Digital Markets Act. I have exactly one submission to Hacker News from 20 July 2022 when the DMA was approved (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32163704). I was incredibly hopeful, given the indicated timelines, that Apple would be forced to open up iOS and iPadOS. Meaning install an application from the internet without restriction, like with any other operating system. The wording clearly requires this (with some wiggle room for security). Apple has dragged this legal process out longer than even my most cynical prediction. I can only surmise that someone in the Commission or senior leadership has decided that enforcing the DMA is not politically expedient right now.
I don't know how to force this issue as a European. There are just too many levels of abstraction between me and Brussels. It looks like many layers of bureaucracy and a lot of opaque backroom deals and discussions. I don't like it at all. Especially given that the EU moves so much faster when it comes to regulations like forcing all of us in Denmark to use timesheets, annoying lids on our bottles, and invasive surveillance laws. All I see is my life getting worse with their actions. I am not alone. Sentiment towards the EU internally is not good right now. Either they start creating regulations which benefit ordinary people, or we're going to get a pretty radical rightward shift in leadership soon, and there are many risks associated with this.
jmyeet 54 minutes ago [-]
What are we witnessesing is the beginning of the end of the post-WW2 rules-based international order. What's truly bizarre is that the US designed this order to benefit themselves and they're the ones destroying it now. NATO is a protection racket to outsource European security but really to sell arms to Europe and give the US effetive control over the European militaries.
Over the years the control has grown ever-more pervasive, such as with the control over banking and international payments. One anecdote of the extent of this influence is that if one European Venmos another European and puts "Cuba" or "Syria" in the memo field, they can have their account flagged or permanently banned [1]. The US gets to decide who can use credit cards and what for, which is something the EU has finally picked up on as an issue [2].
What's clear in all this is that China was completely correct to maintain sovereignty over their tech companies, platforms and data. What the US risks is that the EU is going to follow the China model. That means EU versions of cloud platforms, computing platforms, networking infrastructure and so on. And they'll do it similar to how China did by creating demand. Specifically, the EU will mandate the use of European platforms with all their contracts, the European parliament will pass laws as such for national governments and generally the pressure will increase to wean off of US tech companies.
IMHO this shift is as big a change as the post-1945 world order.
It will be messy, but if the EU can make political and economic decisions for the benefit of their own people, instead of subservient to the US, this paradigm shift could turn out to be very healthy and productive for the region and future generations. China's prosperity is undeniable, and it's due to their willingness to question the unipolar dominance of the US in the decades since WWII. In terms of economic and geopolitical strategy, they've been ahead of the game and prepared for the disintegration of the "rules-based" order. Is the EU ready?
picafrost 4 hours ago [-]
I continue to find it bizarre that some Americans are offended that Europeans do not want to be dragged into the American corporate surveillance, advertising, and consumption cult. Will nothing be sovereign until Europe is also littered with personal injury attorney billboards, broadcasting pharmaceutical ads, and other pox marks of a degraded culture? Why search for a better way when you can normalize awful (because it's more profitable).
WarmWash 2 hours ago [-]
Americans don't either, but the "free" (with ads*) model is so wildly popular with humans that it is unavoidable.
If anything it's more interesting that it has American origins. At it's core, the model provides flat rate access to anyone of any class at no upfront cost. High value users with high ad conversion rates subsiding the platforms for low income low consumer spending users. That's something that is particularly European, and not very American.
soopypoos 41 minutes ago [-]
but the result is loud, crass and distasteful so...
petcat 4 hours ago [-]
> personal injury attorney
> ... a degraded culture
Do matters of personal injury liability not apply in Europe?
stavros 3 hours ago [-]
Suing for damages here isn't profitable enough for attorneys, because "damages" with free healthcare means "missed a week of work", instead of "got a $200k bill".
pjc50 3 hours ago [-]
It does happen, but it's way less lucrative. Tends to be limited to actual damages rather than punitive damages. There have been some scam-ish sub-industries (fake whiplash claims, suing councils for tripping over cracks in the pavement). It's very rare to see advertising for lawyers.
holowoodman 3 hours ago [-]
It's also rare because advertising for lawyers (and doctors) is strictly regulated in some member states. A sign in front of the office saying "S. Goodman, attorney, specialized in drugs, organized crime and whiplash" is OK, billboards, TV spots, newspaper ads and any kind of claims beyond "I'm an attorney and this is my office and specialty" are verboten.
inexcf 3 hours ago [-]
Insurance and worker rights probably takes care of that here. What is it that personal injury lawyers usually do?
SpicyLemonZest 30 minutes ago [-]
Personal injury cases exist everywhere, but most countries impose very strict restrictions on legal advertising, which greatly reduce the phenomenon of the "personal injury guy" who plasters his face everywhere with text about how much money he'll get you. In the US, most such restrictions were prohibited by the Supreme Court in the 80s.
skrebbel 3 hours ago [-]
FWIW it took me multiple US television shows to figure out what "ambulance chasers" are and why they exist.
bavell 3 hours ago [-]
Pretty sure this is illegal now across the board.
em-bee 3 hours ago [-]
lawyers or law firms are very limited in how they are allowed to promote themselves.
kasperni 3 hours ago [-]
mostly handled by insurance. Payouts are also a lot less, and typically standardized.
raverbashing 3 hours ago [-]
WAY less than in the US
But no you don't have ambulance chasers or personal injury lawyers trying to get millions out of someone who had a car crash and now their neck feels funny
Ylpertnodi 3 hours ago [-]
Not on dirty great billboards, no.
Not yet.
martin-t 2 hours ago [-]
I once read that PayPal was not successful outside the US because people outside the US couldn't understand why not just do a normal bank transfer. PayPal realized this and tried lobbying governments outside the US to make bank transfers harder.
No idea if this claim is true. How do Americans transfer money? Don't your banking apps allow that?
mikkupikku 2 hours ago [-]
I don't know if that Paypal story is true, but that definitely is the situation with Intuit/TurboTax in America.
> How do Americans transfer money? Don't your banking apps allow that?
If the exchange isn't online and is a fairly large amount of money, something like buying a car, checks (cheques) or even envelopes of cash are a lot more common than PayPal. Online, those aren't easy so that's where Paypal and their competitors shine. Americans also now use other apps for small money exchanges, like paying somebody for mowing your lawn, although refusing the app and offering/demanding cash is still relatively normal.
Bayart 2 hours ago [-]
As far as I can remember, Paypal was successful in Europe because of the tie-in with Ebay and because bank transfers at time were slow thanks to asynchronous settlement. SEPA fixed that, I don't know how much lobbying in the EU was involved but I'm certain payment processors eschewing banking regulation hastened it (the same way the push for WERO and the Digital Euro is coming from the problematic VISA/MasterCard duopoly).
nradov 2 hours ago [-]
Most banking apps now allow that using Zelle but it came many years after PayPal.
gherkinnn 3 hours ago [-]
Better Call Saul was a docudrama.
moogly 3 hours ago [-]
Common claims from a subset of Americans:
"They hate our freedom!"
"They want to destroy our culture!"
Since every accusation is a confession with these people, I guess this is what they want to do to others.
9864247888754 3 hours ago [-]
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amazingamazing 2 hours ago [-]
Why no ban like china? Weak
shevy-java 3 hours ago [-]
Isn't it strange how Washington makes laws in the EU?
I wonder if these lobbyists get paid a lot.
skrebbel 3 hours ago [-]
Meh, you're right but the EU also makes laws in the US (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brussels_effect). In the end it's not about who makes the law but whether it's a good law. Ecodesign laws making US vacuum cleaners more economical is good. Trade pressures undermining EU privacy protections maybe not so good.
MarcelOlsz 3 hours ago [-]
I like how out of all examples to pit up against eroding privacy protections was consumer vacuum stuff from ages ago.
m-s-y 3 hours ago [-]
Is it just me or is there not actual meat to this article? Like what specifically are the rules at issue here?
benoau 3 hours ago [-]
The "Digital Services Act" effectively takes the divisive dark money out of advertising and requires more than minimum-effort moderation, affecting Meta and X:
- bans targeted advertising based on a person’s sexual orientation, religion, ethnicity, or political beliefs and puts restrictions on targeting ads to children
- requires transparency on content algorithms and advertising
- requires online platforms prevent and remove posts containing illegal goods, services, or content in a timely fashion
The "Digital Markets Act" requires interoperability and competition:
- requires Apple to allow competing app stores, very contentious for Apple who invented a stack of fees for this
- requires Apple and Google to allow apps to freely use 3rd party payments, this is very contentious for Apple and they still charge for doing so
- allow 3rd parties interoperability, eg headphones and smartwatches for Apple and messaging clients for Meta, this is starting to improve
- allow removal of preinstalled apps, settings of new defaults, this is largely done although malicious compliance has kept rival browsers at bay on iPhone
input_sh 3 hours ago [-]
Digital Services Act / Digital Markets Act (similar in spirit, but one targets online stores like Google Play, another one online services like Instagram more generally)
More specifically, both are already in effect, outlawing certain things, and designating certain companies as "digital gatekeepers" when they reach a certain threshold of users within the EU.
These regulations don't really specify what every gatekeeper needs to actually do (above the bare minimum), but say that once a company is designated as a gatekeeper, corrective action to prevent their monopolistic behaviour are going to be decided on a case-by-case basis. In practice this means that corrective actions can be something very significant (like iOS having to ask EU users to set a default browser during device setup instead of defaulting to Safari) or nothing, which is why this direct line of conversation shows spinelessness.
It's pretty much an equivalent of a judge having open discussions with a criminal about how the court should interpret the law to suit the criminal better.
picsao 3 hours ago [-]
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mono442 5 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
matthewdgreen 4 hours ago [-]
Don't worry, everything will be expensive because the US decided to blow up half the world's oil supply.
pepperoni_pizza 4 hours ago [-]
Hello, six months old account that only posts anti-EU stuff!
Our_Benefactors 4 hours ago [-]
How old must an account be before expressing a consistent opinion in order for you to take those opinions in good faith?
em-bee 3 hours ago [-]
it's not the consistent opinion that's the problem, it's the single issue (EU is bad) they are purportedly (i didn't check) focused on.
also, "EU is bad" is suspicious in itself because it can't possibly be that everything about the EU is bad. a good faith opinion will find some good things about the EU and be specific in what they are criticizing.
pjc50 3 hours ago [-]
This is the internet. Good faith needs to be earned, on an increasingly difficult scale now that comments may be AI-generated.
greensh 5 hours ago [-]
The EU is not doing anything near enough against global warming.
mcv 4 hours ago [-]
They really should end fuel subsidies. We're paying taxes to promote fuel use. That's a really bad use of our taxes. (Some are apparently already being phased out, but others are not, from what I understand, and they've gone up dramatically in the past couple of years.)
As for digital rules, the EU should definitely stand firm and invest in its own tech sector, instead of caving to the US. Same with everything else where our standards are higher than theirs (food, human rights).
mono442 4 hours ago [-]
There are no subsidies, gas and diesel are the most expensive in the world, and most of the cost is taxes. But apparently, for the EU politicians, that is still too cheap, so they want even more taxes on top of that.
> Notably, more than 60% of all fossil fuel subsidies granted in 2023 were spent in three countries: Germany (EUR 41 billion), Poland (EUR 16 billion), and France (EUR 15 billion).
This is another one of those cases where people say "Europe" when meaning something much more country specific.
I can't find any detailed breakdown of this; I'm guessing it's something to do with coal mining in Germany?
France has absolutely no excuse, though. Largest nuclear power generation in Europe and subsidizing fossil fuels? I bet it's something to do with farming.
orwin 3 hours ago [-]
Your bet is right, but it's based on a misunderstanding. Those are not real subsidies, those are tax exemption on farmers, fishermen, trucker and traveling nurses.
mcv 2 hours ago [-]
And airplanes. They also pay no fuel tax, as far as I'm aware. Or at least it's rare; it requires bilateral agreements to tax fuel.
SirHumphrey 4 hours ago [-]
You are thinking too logically. In EU fuel is expensive because it’s heavily taxed AND there are a lot of fuel subsidies.
Or to quote an old TV show:
Hacker: One of your officials pays farmers to produce surplus food, while on the same floor, the next office is paying them to destroy the surpluses.
Maurice: That is not true!
Hacker: No?
Maurice: He is not in the next office, not even on the same floor!
orwin 4 hours ago [-]
At least in France, the fuel 'subsidies' are not real subsidies, but tax exemption for different kind of people: farmers, truckers, fishermen and private nurses (I don't have a good translation, basically health workers who go directly to patients homes instead of working at a clinic or hospital). There was also a one time relief for people with fuel heating who earn less than 40k (I'm simplifying) in 2022 because of the Russian war, but it was extremely limited.
Maybe next time you imply my government is incompetent on a specific subject, do your research first. It is incompetent on a lot, don't get me wrong, but no one here need more disinformation hidden as a quip.
Y-bar 3 hours ago [-]
In 2021 Europe provided $135 Billion in subsidies to the petroleum industry. A net increase of about 30% from 2015.
There is no point fighting against global warming if you're the only one doing it. If China, USA and India are not on the same page, the result will be that production will move even more to those countries, global warming will continue and European will just be poorer.
mono442 4 hours ago [-]
Their policies are a grift to funnel money to the right people so that's not surprising.
9dev 4 hours ago [-]
Do you have anything to support that claim? Carbon taxes are a theoretically effective mechanism to tilt the markets towards more sustainable means of production, that is something most economists agree on; alas, practically they are often thwarted by caving out exceptions or delays for short-term political gain.
It's an ugly and wasteful system set up instead of other, simpler measure that were politically unacceptable at the time, like higher VAT, excise duties on all fossil fuels across all industries without exception, including fuel oil for heating and aviation fuel.
mcv 4 hours ago [-]
At the moment carbon is still getting subsidizes for 100 billion per year. I'd love it if they taxed it by that amount.
mono442 4 hours ago [-]
If most economists agree on something, it probably isn't true. Just like every economist agreed that there would be no inflation in 2020.
roenxi 4 hours ago [-]
Mmm. The language is not precise enough - if most economists agree on something it probably is true. If the corporate media gives the impression all economists agree on something, it is probably not true.
Economists as a profession understand extremely well that they have no ability predict the economic future beyond what the futures markets say.
gcanyon 4 hours ago [-]
When Disney World is behind a sea wall, we will have deserved it.
pzo 4 hours ago [-]
everything is expensive worldwide more because of:
- decade of money printing (quantitive easing, covid, petro-dollar)
- decade of low interest rate free (created bubbles in stocks and assets)
- oil price increase (war in ukraine, war in iran)
as for EU climate rules this is IMHO still more a smoke screen - otherwise they wouldn't put tarriffs on chinese solar panels and EVs.
notrealyme123 4 hours ago [-]
Why stop there? Child work and slavery save money!
/s
decremental 4 hours ago [-]
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agrishin 3 hours ago [-]
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alephnerd 2 hours ago [-]
Nope. It gets undue hate on Reddit (and by extension HN) but most people who matter in Bruxelles are heavy Politico consumers and leak to them all the time.
Them, Table Media, and Indigo Publications will give you the best pulse on what's happening in Bruxelles.
quietus2026 2 hours ago [-]
Nope. The simple fact that a politician gives any kind of quote, let alone an interview, to politico is a clear sign he/she is on the declining part of a political career. A bit like how using "Bruxelles" in a comment about the EU is a giveaway that your British and/or a (former?) brexiteer.
alephnerd 2 hours ago [-]
> like how using "Bruxelles" in a comment about the EU is a giveaway that your British and/or a (former?) brexiteer
It's a very common metonym for the EU - like how I'd use "Berlin" or "Paris" as a metonym for political leadership in Germany and France respectively.
Also, I ain't a Brit and have made that clear in my history on HN.
> The simple fact that a politician gives any kind of quote, let alone an interview, to politico is a clear sign he/she is on the declining part of a political career
In what way? You only give an assertion and no actual reasoning, and appear to be a long-living throwaway account. Meanwhile, I've been very open on HN about my past career in the policy space.
breuleux 2 hours ago [-]
> A bit like how using "Bruxelles" in a comment about the EU is a giveaway that your British and/or a (former?) brexiteer.
"Bruxelles" is the official French spelling, and French is the city's most spoken language, so maybe they just, you know, live there.
Rendered at 16:00:16 GMT+0000 (Coordinated Universal Time) with Vercel.
https://www.euractiv.com/news/widespread-alarm-over-commissi...
Apple even went so far as to demand the EU repeal these laws, and is likely still non-compliant in several ways; for which they should have been fined tens of billions of dollars by now!
https://www.reuters.com/business/apple-urges-eu-regulators-t...
Trump has delivered for them, made it a point of contention for trade deals and threatened sanctions on anyone enforcing them.
https://www.reuters.com/world/us/trump-administration-weighs...
I believe this will to be the end state of basically every country in the world given enough time, we are only stalling for time in a losing battle and we have zero allies anywhere in the incumbent political landscape. They all want this too much.
Publicly pols say one thing or stand for one thing and privately they hold different views.
I don't get how blind these institutions are.
Every bureaucracy works for themselves eventually. The EU's main task is to make superstate they can control. Since they are trying to eliminate / reduce rights of member countries one can imagine what kind of concerns they have towards individual people and their freedom.
Just more fines. Bigger fines, surely this will work eventually... It's been 20 years, its not working. A new approach is needed.
https://pluralistic.net/2026/01/01/39c3/#the-new-coalition
In it he espouses going a little further. He posits that other countries should repeal their versions of the DMCA and just start jailbreaking American megacorps' app stores, hardware, software, etc. and providing their own, much cheaper (or free) versions. Free trade has already broken down, what do they have to lose?
As you might guess he puts it a lot better than I do.
For repeating offenses fines should rise much faster, multiplied by 10x-100x every time, until we find fines so big they are physically unable to pay even if corps would consider liquidating their all global assets. Then lower it just slightly, so that being operational in Europe would produce no financial benefits and see if they'll comply, or just quit themselves.
Recent political and technical events makes me question why do we even attempt to keep such strong relations with megacorp businesses (and, by extension, US gov). We would still be here even if multiple megacorps would die. It would take us decades to build up capacity to have complex tech of our own (fully local). But meanwhile we'd be just fine, just less trendy.
The issue is nobody wants to pull the trigger because the companies that would get fined or broken up have curried favour with Trump to circumvent these consequences.
US doesn't care about warnings and small fines, though. If penalties are not enforced, it's like they don't exist.
The US has for some time fostered an environment where people build and grow businesses. I've started many myself, some totally for fun.
And as it happens some of those US businesses have grown into massive corporations, and yes, some not so great ones too.
I think the EU in general (not everyone of course) leans more in the realm of letting the government take care of everything.
This of course creates dependency, not just on that government, but upon companies who create things that government can't provide.
Because of that dependency upon the government, there isn't any recourse against a business' practices because at some point, the fines and penalties will fall flat.
In the US, a pretty normal response to a bad/annoying/corrupt business is: "ok cool, I'll build a competitor."
If instead of creating a culture of dependency in the EU, one of innovation and creativity was fostered instead, this point in time could be very different.
Your understanding of business in EU countries seems to be make-believe and personal fantasy.
So, like Boeing and tons of corpos too big to fail.
it's the fact that fines are part of agency's income and it is their best interest(as a bureaucratic agency) to keep them at highest level where companies will still pay them.
Effectively this makes this a tax, enshittifying everything even worse.
if fines were decoupled from agencies, and had exponentially rising curve for repeat offenses, i think that would work better than ban, as much i would prefer for them to get banned.
and yet there's absolutely no evidence whatsoever that they've done this. The fines that have been levied are easy to pay.
The crux of the matter is it's a subset of the European Parliament versus a subset of EU member states.
When push comes to shove, EU member states can and already do ignore the EP for anything tangentially related to national security, and national politicans don't and won't give up sovereign power to the EU.
Additonally, the incentives of individual EU states with strong US FDI ties and not as strong domestic champions such as Poland, Ireland, Czechia, Luxembourg, and Romania means they fight tooth and nail to ensure American FDI continues. Member states like Hungary and Spain do this for China and Hungary and Austria for Russia.
There's also the added issue of perception - the EP was historically (and for larger states like France and Germany still is) used as a way to sideline unpopular domestic politicans or as a cushy retirement posting. There's a reason VdL is in Bruxelles and not the Bundeskanzleramt.
Plus, European companies have massive fixed capital investments in the US, especially after the IRA [0], so they don't want to face retaliation from American regulators, and are especially cozy with the Trump admin [1].
Also, European politicos also heavy leverage the revolving door of lobbying like their American peers. The "spend a couple years in Bundestag or Bruxelles and then take a cushy gig at Harvard [2][3]" remains strong. Heck, we'd always organize a fest where the wine would flow and European leaders would network with American and European policymakers studying and working in the US or in Europe [4].
[0] - https://flow.db.com/topics/macro-and-markets/us-german-trade...
[1] - https://www.wsj.com/business/retail/trump-bernard-arnault-lv...
[2] - https://www.hks.harvard.edu/about/leo-varadkar
[3] - https://ces.fas.harvard.edu/people/ces-alumni/past-policy-fe...
[4] - https://euroconf.eu/speakers/
I don't know how to force this issue as a European. There are just too many levels of abstraction between me and Brussels. It looks like many layers of bureaucracy and a lot of opaque backroom deals and discussions. I don't like it at all. Especially given that the EU moves so much faster when it comes to regulations like forcing all of us in Denmark to use timesheets, annoying lids on our bottles, and invasive surveillance laws. All I see is my life getting worse with their actions. I am not alone. Sentiment towards the EU internally is not good right now. Either they start creating regulations which benefit ordinary people, or we're going to get a pretty radical rightward shift in leadership soon, and there are many risks associated with this.
Over the years the control has grown ever-more pervasive, such as with the control over banking and international payments. One anecdote of the extent of this influence is that if one European Venmos another European and puts "Cuba" or "Syria" in the memo field, they can have their account flagged or permanently banned [1]. The US gets to decide who can use credit cards and what for, which is something the EU has finally picked up on as an issue [2].
What's clear in all this is that China was completely correct to maintain sovereignty over their tech companies, platforms and data. What the US risks is that the EU is going to follow the China model. That means EU versions of cloud platforms, computing platforms, networking infrastructure and so on. And they'll do it similar to how China did by creating demand. Specifically, the EU will mandate the use of European platforms with all their contracts, the European parliament will pass laws as such for national governments and generally the pressure will increase to wean off of US tech companies.
IMHO this shift is as big a change as the post-1945 world order.
[1]: https://www.huffpost.com/entry/venmo-cuba-sanctions_n_571f80...
[2]:https://europeanbusinessmagazine.com/business/europes-24-tri...
If anything it's more interesting that it has American origins. At it's core, the model provides flat rate access to anyone of any class at no upfront cost. High value users with high ad conversion rates subsiding the platforms for low income low consumer spending users. That's something that is particularly European, and not very American.
> ... a degraded culture
Do matters of personal injury liability not apply in Europe?
But no you don't have ambulance chasers or personal injury lawyers trying to get millions out of someone who had a car crash and now their neck feels funny
No idea if this claim is true. How do Americans transfer money? Don't your banking apps allow that?
> How do Americans transfer money? Don't your banking apps allow that?
If the exchange isn't online and is a fairly large amount of money, something like buying a car, checks (cheques) or even envelopes of cash are a lot more common than PayPal. Online, those aren't easy so that's where Paypal and their competitors shine. Americans also now use other apps for small money exchanges, like paying somebody for mowing your lawn, although refusing the app and offering/demanding cash is still relatively normal.
"They hate our freedom!"
"They want to destroy our culture!"
Since every accusation is a confession with these people, I guess this is what they want to do to others.
I wonder if these lobbyists get paid a lot.
- bans targeted advertising based on a person’s sexual orientation, religion, ethnicity, or political beliefs and puts restrictions on targeting ads to children
- requires transparency on content algorithms and advertising
- requires online platforms prevent and remove posts containing illegal goods, services, or content in a timely fashion
The "Digital Markets Act" requires interoperability and competition:
- requires Apple to allow competing app stores, very contentious for Apple who invented a stack of fees for this
- requires Apple and Google to allow apps to freely use 3rd party payments, this is very contentious for Apple and they still charge for doing so
- allow 3rd parties interoperability, eg headphones and smartwatches for Apple and messaging clients for Meta, this is starting to improve
- allow removal of preinstalled apps, settings of new defaults, this is largely done although malicious compliance has kept rival browsers at bay on iPhone
More specifically, both are already in effect, outlawing certain things, and designating certain companies as "digital gatekeepers" when they reach a certain threshold of users within the EU.
These regulations don't really specify what every gatekeeper needs to actually do (above the bare minimum), but say that once a company is designated as a gatekeeper, corrective action to prevent their monopolistic behaviour are going to be decided on a case-by-case basis. In practice this means that corrective actions can be something very significant (like iOS having to ask EU users to set a default browser during device setup instead of defaulting to Safari) or nothing, which is why this direct line of conversation shows spinelessness.
It's pretty much an equivalent of a judge having open discussions with a criminal about how the court should interpret the law to suit the criminal better.
also, "EU is bad" is suspicious in itself because it can't possibly be that everything about the EU is bad. a good faith opinion will find some good things about the EU and be specific in what they are criticizing.
As for digital rules, the EU should definitely stand firm and invest in its own tech sector, instead of caving to the US. Same with everything else where our standards are higher than theirs (food, human rights).
This is another one of those cases where people say "Europe" when meaning something much more country specific.
I can't find any detailed breakdown of this; I'm guessing it's something to do with coal mining in Germany?
France has absolutely no excuse, though. Largest nuclear power generation in Europe and subsidizing fossil fuels? I bet it's something to do with farming.
Or to quote an old TV show: Hacker: One of your officials pays farmers to produce surplus food, while on the same floor, the next office is paying them to destroy the surpluses. Maurice: That is not true! Hacker: No? Maurice: He is not in the next office, not even on the same floor!
Maybe next time you imply my government is incompetent on a specific subject, do your research first. It is incompetent on a lot, don't get me wrong, but no one here need more disinformation hidden as a quip.
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/fossil-fuel-subsidies-per...
It's an ugly and wasteful system set up instead of other, simpler measure that were politically unacceptable at the time, like higher VAT, excise duties on all fossil fuels across all industries without exception, including fuel oil for heating and aviation fuel.
Economists as a profession understand extremely well that they have no ability predict the economic future beyond what the futures markets say.
- decade of money printing (quantitive easing, covid, petro-dollar)
- decade of low interest rate free (created bubbles in stocks and assets)
- oil price increase (war in ukraine, war in iran)
as for EU climate rules this is IMHO still more a smoke screen - otherwise they wouldn't put tarriffs on chinese solar panels and EVs.
/s
Them, Table Media, and Indigo Publications will give you the best pulse on what's happening in Bruxelles.
It's a very common metonym for the EU - like how I'd use "Berlin" or "Paris" as a metonym for political leadership in Germany and France respectively.
Also, I ain't a Brit and have made that clear in my history on HN.
> The simple fact that a politician gives any kind of quote, let alone an interview, to politico is a clear sign he/she is on the declining part of a political career
In what way? You only give an assertion and no actual reasoning, and appear to be a long-living throwaway account. Meanwhile, I've been very open on HN about my past career in the policy space.
"Bruxelles" is the official French spelling, and French is the city's most spoken language, so maybe they just, you know, live there.