[HN Gopher] Critics say EU risks ceding control of its tech laws...
___________________________________________________________________
Critics say EU risks ceding control of its tech laws under U.S.
pressure
Author : nickslaughter02
Score : 209 points
Date : 2026-04-03 10:58 UTC (12 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.politico.eu)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.politico.eu)
| picafrost wrote:
| 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).
| petcat wrote:
| > personal injury attorney
|
| > ... a degraded culture
|
| Do matters of personal injury liability not apply in Europe?
| raverbashing wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| Not on dirty great billboards, no. Not yet.
| stavros wrote:
| 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".
| petcat wrote:
| "damages" can be a lot more than just "missed a week of
| work" or "got medical bills". It can be lifetime
| debilitation.
| stavros wrote:
| Obviously it can, but it usually isn't. If 90% of your
| target market isn't there, the economics are different.
| pjc50 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| em-bee wrote:
| lawyers or law firms are very limited in how they are allowed
| to promote themselves.
| skrebbel wrote:
| FWIW it took me multiple US television shows to figure out
| what "ambulance chasers" are and why they exist.
| bavell wrote:
| Pretty sure this is illegal now across the board.
| kasperni wrote:
| mostly handled by insurance. Payouts are also a lot less, and
| typically standardized.
| inexcf wrote:
| Insurance and worker rights probably takes care of that here.
| What is it that personal injury lawyers usually do?
| petcat wrote:
| Insurance and "worker rights" don't cover cases of lifetime
| pain or loss of energy due to negligence causing trauma.
| They'll cover your medical bills and your time off work.
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| 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.
| dismalaf wrote:
| Most non-US countries only award money for actual damages,
| not punitive charges.
|
| It's also assumed that people have at least a little common
| sense and that your average adult knows more than a toddler.
| moogly wrote:
| 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.
| gherkinnn wrote:
| Better Call Saul was a docudrama.
| WarmWash wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| but the result _is_ loud, crass and distasteful so...
| martin-t wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| Most banking apps now allow that using Zelle but it came many
| years after PayPal.
| pjc50 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| Also, I'm not sure there's much pressure involved. Mass
| surveillance is a thing "centrist" EU politicians very much
| want themselves.
| mc32 wrote:
| 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.
| benoau wrote:
| > 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.
|
| 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...
| peyton wrote:
| > they should have been fined tens of billions of dollars
| by now!
|
| Maybe cartoonishly large fines levied against powerful
| entities wasn't such a great idea. Other incentives may
| have been better suited to getting the populace what they
| want in the long term.
| benoau wrote:
| I don't think there is an incentive lawmakers could offer
| that is worth more to Apple than monopolizing fees and
| subverting competition, there is practically no limits
| they will go to to preserve that status quo around the
| world.
|
| The only time they have _eagerly complied_ with anything
| relating to this is when Judge YGR gave them this
| ultimatum, they approved Fortnite a full day early once
| someone had to be personally responsible for defying her
| order a second time:
|
| https://x.com/TimSweeneyEpic/status/1924499498513862720/p
| hot...
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| That seems like a better model than stupefying fines
| against the corporate entity then. Forget about billion
| dollar fines, just give them a slap on the wrist while
| telling them explicitly what they have to stop doing, but
| then if they keep doing it the executives are
| _personally_ held in contempt.
|
| It also solves the perverse incentive of "fine the
| foreign companies as a revenue generation method" because
| the result is getting them to comply instead of either
| repeatedly fining them for not doing it or trying to
| extract a fine so large it becomes an international
| political issue.
| bryanrasmussen wrote:
| >Maybe cartoonishly large fines levied against powerful
| entities
|
| right, the tradition is that fines be cartoonishly small
| so that breaking the law can be factored into the cost of
| doing business, who the hell does the EU think they are
| to go against tradition!!?
| rayiner wrote:
| The EU should abandon the stupid Commission structure and have
| a real Parliament that can actually draft legislation. The
| current one can just vote down legislation drafted by the
| Commission.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| What they ought to do is have a process for passing EU-wide
| laws where they get introduced by a popularly elected
| legislature but to be enacted they also have to be approved
| by the majority of the legislatures of the member states.
| That gives you a good check on centralized power grabs
| because the member states have to approve anything that could
| usurp their role, but you can still pass things that make
| sense at that level like a common set of antitrust rules.
| pjc50 wrote:
| Isn't that how QMV works?
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| The current system is new legislation has to be drafted
| by the Commission, which is the indirectly elected
| executive branch. That allows what would otherwise be
| popular proposals to never even be introduced. Whereas if
| you have legislation introduced by the directly elected
| body, popular proposals at least get a public debate and
| people get to see what they are and who is blocking them,
| but you still ultimately want the check on power grabs
| and populist nonsense before it actually gets enacted.
| rayiner wrote:
| That's similar to the original US model, except instead of
| the member state legislatures directly approving
| legislation, they appointed two proxies to the federal
| Senate. It's a good system.
|
| But being able to originate legislation in the directly
| elected legislature is important. Even the original U.S.
| constitutional design, which was quite anti-populist, made
| the directly elected House the main originator of
| legislation. (Either the House or Senate could do it, but
| only the House could introduce appropriations bills giving
| it primacy in the legislative process.)
| shevy-java wrote:
| Isn't it strange how Washington makes laws in the EU?
|
| I wonder if these lobbyists get paid a lot.
| skrebbel wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| I like how out of all examples to pit up against eroding
| privacy protections was consumer vacuum stuff from ages ago.
| skrebbel wrote:
| Who cares where a law originates? What matters is whether
| it's a good idea or bad. Eroding privacy protections is
| bad. If the EU had come up with that all on their own (and
| they try that aplenty too; chat control anyone?) then it's
| _also_ bad.
| malicka wrote:
| Money is the international language, after all. Why would
| oligarchs limit their influence to their own country?
| benoau wrote:
| All this so Meta and X can sell politically divisive and hateful
| advertising with zero transparency.
| m-s-y wrote:
| Is it just me or is there not actual meat to this article? Like
| what specifically are the rules at issue here?
| benoau wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| mikkupikku wrote:
| 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.
| Gud wrote:
| Levy harder fines until they go away? At least some money goes
| into the union
| alephnerd wrote:
| > 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].
|
| [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/
| szszrk wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| dzink wrote:
| 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.
| Xelbair wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| > 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.
| troyvit wrote:
| This talk from Cory Doctorow made the rounds on HN when it
| happened:
|
| 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.
| mikkupikku wrote:
| Brilliant idea, my appreciation for Doctorow has grown even
| more than before.
| dehrmann wrote:
| 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.
| mikkupikku wrote:
| Haven't you heard? Google is changing their traditional
| policy on """side loading""" apps and are, quite soon from
| now, planning to lock the whole thing down and make users
| submit to anal probing to opt out. Android has been good
| but times are changing and we need to stop trusting old
| institutions.
| CalRobert wrote:
| That's cool, but on a practical level, can I generate
| whatever the APK equivalent for iOS is and just give it to
| my friends with iPhones?
| SirMaster wrote:
| Yes. They will have to reload the app every 7 days, but
| yes.
| SllX wrote:
| Or: a guy who is anti-copyright is performing an angle shoot
| to see if he can get some legislators to bite.
|
| The EU taking staunchly anti-American positions and targeting
| American businesses looking for a way to "legally" rob them
| blind is probably not going to work out for them in the long
| run.
| troyvit wrote:
| Not rob them blind, just rob them a tiny bit to make up for
| a generation's worth of extortion.
| SllX wrote:
| So rob American businesses blind, but say you didn't, but
| if you did, they had it coming anyway because of an
| unsubstantiated flimsy moral justification that
| disregards the purchasing choices of the EU citizenry,
| businesses and governments?
| benoau wrote:
| What is not substantiated?
|
| Practically everything the EU DMA/DSA addresses was
| highlighted in the "House Antitrust Report on Big Tech"
| back in 2020.
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/10/06/technology
| /ho...
|
| But if that's not enough, since then:
|
| Apple's policies banning developers from referring
| customers to alternative payments has been widely ruled
| illegal around the world, first and foremost in the USA
| where they were even referred for criminal investigation
| for continuing to do it after being court ordered to
| stop.
|
| Google has been _twice_ convicted of antitrust monopoly
| abuse in the last year in the USA, and found to have
| exploited user privacy settings several times.
|
| Meta's harmful practices have been continuously revealed
| in court: allowing sex trafficking and prostitution to
| help train their AI, allowing scam ads because they're
| profitable, deliberately exploiting children spending in
| games because it's profitable, and illegally tracked
| users.
|
| Amazon's antitrust for exploiting vendor data is ongoing,
| so I guess you can have a point there.
| cookiengineer wrote:
| You are free to not trade with EU citizens then. Nobody
| forces you to accept their money.
| rescbr wrote:
| > Free trade has already broken down, what do they have to
| lose?
|
| The US parking an aircraft carrier nearby so the crew can
| enjoy a sunny vacation.
|
| Or meddling with elections.
|
| Or both.
| vincnetas wrote:
| I doubt this would work for the better. As we have recently
| seen when carriers got parked near Iran.
| troyvit wrote:
| That second one is already happening.
| SunshineTheCat wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| >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.
| runarberg wrote:
| 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.
| anthk wrote:
| >"The goverment take care"...
|
| So, like Boeing and tons of corpos too big to fail.
| SunshineTheCat wrote:
| You can not like the statement, and call it whatever you
| like, however, it is objectively true.
|
| You are far more likely to find a government regulation on
| a US business/product than you are to find any EU-based
| product used widely in the United States.
|
| That is the main point I was making and it is true by any
| objective measure.
|
| There is far more leverage with the country exporting
| goods/services globally then there is importing those
| things and then nanny-stating them into a form they think
| is better.
| whateverboat wrote:
| 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.
| vincnetas wrote:
| what do you mean by single country? All the cultures in these
| countries can not disappear in 10, hell even 100 years. And i
| would prefer that they would not.
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| 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.
| abletonlive wrote:
| Hint: the reason why your observations about reality doesn't
| match up to your expectations is because the premise you've
| built for yourself is wrong.
|
| This is obvious to the outsider. The premise that you made up
| for yourself is that Europe wants to change Meta and how it
| works to protect its citizens. It's obvious to me that this is
| not the goal. The goal is to extract wealth from those
| companies under the guise of consumer protection.
|
| The EU makes more from regulating and taxing US tech companies
| than it makes from its own quaint tech sector. Ban and blocking
| those companies is never going to happen for this reason. Why
| destroy your cash cow?
| vincnetas wrote:
| Do you have any numbers for this? I somehow have doubts that
| US tech companies pay more taxes in EU.
| amazingamazing wrote:
| Why no ban like china? Weak
| elric wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| >"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.
| budududuroiu wrote:
| I don't buy the superstate argument, since the EC
| consistently avoids or waters down attempts towards
| federalisation (full fiscal union, directly elected
| Commission, Parliament with legislative initiative, yada
| yada). Making a superstate would constrain the Commission,
| not empower it. The current ambiguity of having enough
| integration to override member states, but not enough to be
| democratically challenged and kept in check is the sweet spot
| for unaccountable technocratic capture.
|
| Don't get me wrong, I'm completely against the EC, but I wish
| they were actually trying to create a superstate
| ViewTrick1002 wrote:
| Because the commission is proposed by the national
| governments through the European council.
|
| Meaning any attempt at making the commission directly
| elected reduces the national governments powers.
|
| What you see isn't the commission watering down the
| proposals, what you see is the natural tug of war between
| the national governments and the European Parliament.
| pndy wrote:
| The EU overall either will start acknowledging that there are
| problems and serious reforms are needed or history will repeat
| once _again_ and we 'll have another fallen empire situation.
|
| It's not just the age verification and chat control - the list
| _crimes_ is much longer and doesn 't revolve solely around IT
| sector. The recent Mercosur agreement that just showed how the
| heads of EU pissed over its own agricultural sector.
|
| Somehow, I'm afraid that we're already for at least 15 years on
| a path of slow fall - we're once again in the history the
| peasants and EU politicians has become king and queens, again
| not listening to vox populi at all.
| elric wrote:
| Oh there are definitely fuckups beyond the IT sector. But I
| think the two examples I listed are particularly egregious.
| In part because the Chat Control proposal had explicit
| exemptions for politicians (who's watching the watchmen? no
| one, obviously!), and because the chilling effect widespread
| surveillance has.
|
| The EU has definitely done a lot of good over the years as
| well, but the system is beginning to lean away from democracy
| and towards a weirdly inscrutible authoritarianism.
| jmyeet wrote:
| 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.
|
| [1]: https://www.huffpost.com/entry/venmo-cuba-
| sanctions_n_571f80...
|
| [2]:https://europeanbusinessmagazine.com/business/europes-24-tri.
| ..
| lioeters wrote:
| 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?
| klooney wrote:
| The EU has been a huge free rider on defense and pharma
| spending from the US, they're going to have a rough time
| reorganizing their economies.
| Gareth321 wrote:
| 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.
| kpw94 wrote:
| > I don't know how to force this issue as a European. There are
| just too many levels of abstraction between me and Brussels.
|
| > 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.
|
| Rediscovering the principle of subsidiarity from first
| principles...
| Arubis wrote:
| 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.
| FpUser wrote:
| European countries should try to get off those training wheels
| and learn to live their own lives.
| PeterStuer wrote:
| Those same Europeans so fond of their DSA would scream bloody
| murder if a Trump like administration would do the same. They
| have created this monster, and there will be tears and the
| gnashing of theeth should their factions ever lose control and
| their opponents get to wield those same weapons.
|
| And no, the USAans are not in it for the 'free speech' either.
| sylware wrote:
| In my country, I discovered a few days ago that my gov (EU
| country), had its web technical directives line-up with big tech
| web (in 2015/2016): during the last decade I have been suffering
| the breakage of the classic web interop of the gouv admnistration
| web replaced using a lot of bucks by "exclusive big tech" web
| apps, aka requiring only those massive bloat and kludge web
| engines from the "whatng" cartel (mozilla/apple/google): no more
| small, alternative and reasonably sized (SDK included) web
| browsers anymore.
|
| The most amazing thing is with everything I did in the last
| decade, the consulting of lawyers, member of internet/IT/software
| specialized user groups, I still don't know how I have managed to
| be aware _NOT_ for years that those very web technical directives
| are actually... law.
|
| Only the prime minister, then also the president, have the power
| to modify/fix those technical directives. The parliaments, or any
| technical authorities have ZERO power over them.
|
| The EU, via a directive, only requires for the member states to
| publish those technical directives to the other member states for
| "discussion" before final approval.
|
| In other words, deciding on those technical directives requires
| the same power than to decide to build an ICBM submarine or an
| aircraft carrier, not less. Maybe because they are not that un-
| important...
|
| The irony, the gov of 2015/2016 which approved those technical
| directives which would, without any doubt, end up with everything
| web being big tech exclusive (and this is what actually happened)
| was... a left-ist gov(!!). I suspect corruption or brain washing
| grade lobbying (maybe with fraud while consulting experts, or
| those experts were mostly from big tech).
|
| The bright side, if those technical directives are fixed in order
| to restore the classic web, the whole gov with its dependencies
| have 3 years to comply. Just need to tell the president or the
| prime minister... baw...
| tracker1 wrote:
| I'm mixed on this... the article itself is relatively one-
| sided... of course you negotiate among concerned parties when it
| comes down to laws regarding anything largely produced outside
| your nation's purview.
|
| The EU can absolutely make all the invasive laws they want, the
| US has been happily doing the same... the individual EU nations
| and US states with more variations than practical on top of that.
| Age verification as a prominent example.
|
| Concerned parties will of course try to leverage what they are
| able to.. if that is a prominent political figure, foreign or
| domestic, it happens. This can be good, bad or even very bad.
| While I can totally understand criticism at any level... US in EU
| politics, or UK trying to coerce entirely US companies with fines
| that don't apply to them.
|
| The reality is negotiations happen all the time... you an
| accept/reject/renegotiate on every aspect of every topic.. and to
| some extent, make take it or leave it laws, where you are simply
| no longer a customer.
|
| For example, really curious to see how the foreign router ban
| (US) is going to shake out. As long as my OpnSense box and
| commercial AP continue to work, I should be okay for now... but
| who knows.
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