We definitely need more focus on creating a true single market.
It is difficult to scale across Europe.
Most countries will gladly fall back to "we do how we please in our country, Europe won't tell us what to do!" which is the usual nationalistic rally to which many fall prey not realizing how good it would be to start making small but steady steps into common regulations.
We definitely need more focus on creating a true single market.
It’s going to be difficult to achieve this without the establishment of a single official language. That’s where the US gets most of its advantage: a large population of English speakers means a large single market for products in English.
Sure, lots of products (like food) don’t care about language but software and media (literature, music, video games, movies, TV) definitely do. It’s no coincidence that the US dominates the global market for those cultural and technology products.
>> It’s going to be difficult to achieve this without the establishment of a single official language
Swiss confederation solved this while having 4 official languages. Language is not the problem, especially nowadays when everything could be translated in a second.
Ehhh, the story of Swiss multilingualism is more than a bit romanticized. A lot of people under 40 know their region's language, English at a decent level, and at best a barely passable 2nd national language (exception would be those living in the actually bilingual regions).
I think there's a strong case to be made that, while the different Swiss linguistic regions strongly prefer to associate together, in reality they draw a lot from the countries they share their languages & borders with when it comes to business and markets, etc. But between linguistic regions, there is additional friction for sure. If anything, the share competency in English has been a major boon.
Source: been living in Switzerland for 10 years and very interested in its system.
software is a bad example since all the coding is done in english. the translation tools are inexpensive nowadays.
bilingual persons have lower rates of dementia so it's not even sure that standardising on one language would be a net benefit. also it's universally accepted that english is one of the more difficult languages to learn.
If there was a revival of the movement for a single language then english wouldn't be picked by non native english speakers.
How much easier is it to learn Esperanto than some broken form of simplified English that gets the message across and then also enables you to speak the native language of 26% of the world GDP?
I feel the perceived difficulty varies from person to person. Personally I found Mandarin much easier to pick up than German or Spanish, since you don't have to worry about conjugation.
It's not the language that is a problem. The economic statistics simply show that A LOT of people are going to have to work harder for less money (and with inflation I'm sure they can make it look like they earn more, they just can't actually earn more)
This will never happen, or at most, it will be a half-baked clunky "federation" like today. Why? Because you will always say first: "I am Italian" and not "I am European" when introducing yourself. All the dreamy one powerful Europe will never happen because of this. Which makes sense because Europe, by definition, is multiple countries, identities and cultures!
I'm not sure where are you from, but we Europeans do also feel Europeans.
This isn't about countries losing sovereignty over night, but about creating common frameworks and regulations step by step.
This is already a reality in some sectors, e.g. agriculture.
Agriculture sits under exclusive or near-exclusive EU control in the whole EU and the model works (albeit it's not perfect, like no model is). EU promotes countries to produce what they are good at. Thus, it doesn't incentivize Italy to produce cereals much, because Italy does not have the right land to grow cereals and that would not make much sense in economic terms. Instead Italy is incentivized to grow cheese, meat, grapes, olives, etc, things that Italy is good at and sells well.
There's other things on which all countries delegate to EU: trade (tariffs and custom rules), goods standards, aviation safety rules, competition and state aid regulations, etc, etc.
So I would say that EU has been very successful on multiple fronts in harmonizing and taking responsibility for multiple things.
But I'm gonna give you of a simple blocker at EU level: why gdpr or dma/dsa are very EU centralized, ultimately digital and data regulations are still not really delegated and national law takes precedence: this is a very heavy blocker to scale any company that requires any kind of business involving data. As soon as you cross a border you need to know the ins and outs of every single country. So it's not that trivial to build a software service company and have it scale painlessly across Europe.
Examples include: contract law, consumer protection, liability rules, and all courts remain national. Terms of service, refund rules, dispute handling is always country-specific. Expanding beyond your own borders is very expensive. Then you have tax complexity, payment and banking, labor law, data protection (as mentioned)..
> "we do how we please in our country, Europe won't tell us what to do!"
This is like people who will be pointing on weak, indecisive Europe. But when somebody suggests that we should get rid of unanimous voting so one country can't sabotage everybody else, suddenly those people love weak and indecisive Europe and won't give their veto right. Wanting their cake and eating it too...
By that standards, an EU army would have gone to war in Irak in 2003, dragging french soldiers and the french aircraft carrier despite them being right from the very start.
Sure, but how many "correct" decisions are not made or drag on forever because of vetos?
Allowing veto power to single participants is often crippling for institutions in practice, because you allow every political adversary (internal and external) to freely pick the weakest link whenever he wants to sabotage or paralyze decisionmaking.
This already happens in practice with the EU, and the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth is a textbook example of how such a mechanism essentially doomed the whole thing.
Absolutely. One should just talk with people in the military about procurement. Europe wastes a lot of money and opportunity by having so much duplicated efforts. The innovation and manufacturing power in the EU is absolutely not the problem. But the lack of coordination means that countries inevitably favor local industry, resulting in overly expensive and incompatible systems, with gaps everywhere. There needs to be a central authority that is able to lead a defense program.
Just one example: I am hearing far too often that France is overly protecting their own interests and as such can't reach important deals with Germany about sharing burdens and profits. So it results in duplicated, incompatible systems. Germany is generally more open to share benefits and intel with other countries.
Such deal-making can drag on for decades, to only fall out. For industries to scale, they need long term planning and a guaranteed pipeline of orders.
I am talking about ships, planes, MBT's, air defence, missile tech--not riffles.
It is a shame, because both countries are powerhouses in engineering. Also, this costs EU taxpayers billions of dollars, and perhaps their safety even.
> resulting in overly expensive and incompatible systems
This can occur even with a more integrated market. The problem is that military suppliers deliberately make as many things 'sole source' as possible so they can be the only supplier and hence charge even higher rates. I'm don't mean the big items like tanks and planes, but the little consumable stuff like lubrication oils, fasteners, gears, etc. that are made to be non-compatible with other systems on purpose. Harder to fix because of the usual corporation-military-lobbying feedback loops and because it requires standards which can be technically intensive to develop.
Good point, but sure, I didn't say it would solve all problems with humanity. But at least it would be a giant step forward from the lose-lose situation.
If there is one body on earth that is able to cut with standards and regulation through enterprises, it is the EU I think, so even that is not hopeless. But large capital flows through the mil.industry comes with risks, yes.
Agreed, they do have to start somewhere. I'm not trying to put out the 'if the solution isn't completely perfect, then we should do nothing' type argument. Only that compatibility/interoperability is a much deeper problem that stems from financial incentive not just for military application but civilian ones as well. Just look at printer ink. But the EU did standardize phone chargers, so its possible to some extent.
The EU seems very willing to pass a law to end widespread corporate silliness, at least more than the USA, and it's a breath of fresh air when it happens!
And this is where standardization and regulation should show up. It can start from details like only standardized bolts and screws with standardized heads are allowed to be used all the way to jet engine must have exactly these dimensions and these inputs and outputs in these positions so it is possible to use same jet engine in Rafale, Eurofighter or Gripen.
They have this to some degree in NATO, the problem is that you have to allow for some exceptions. For example, a design requires a special bolt head because the standard one just won't work. No standard can be absolute and still allow for innovation. Military suppliers just milk this loop-hole and claim they need an exception even when they don't. Being able to evaluate when an exception is warranted and when the design could be altered to accommodate a standard would require enormous technical oversight.
It is totally and obviously untrue that the only way to solve whatever issue of the day is federalisation. Especially regarding desindustrialisation, if you look at what's happening in the world and the development of, say, East Asian and South East Asian countries (or even Europe's own industrialisation), or desindustralisation in the US, this becomes an obviously ridiculous claim.
There is no "need" to for a "central authority to lead defence programs", either. That is a political view to justify integration. Integration is the goal, not a tool to an end and justifications are sought afterwards.
This is a long running campaign of disinformation to manufacture consent and convince people that there is no other way, there is no choice, and we're seeing that dissent is less and less tolerated. Not too long ago being against EU integration was simply an opinion among others, usually seen as being patriotic, now people immediately face accusations of extremism, being "far right", being "Russian shills", you name it, basically it is becoming wrongthink.
Even here on HN, I have been recently accused of being a socketpuppet account, of being effectively a Russian shill (or is it Chinese?), of being an extremist, an idiot, an "alt right troll", my comments expressing a counter-opinion have been flagged... people are losing their minds.
There are many nice pragmatic ideas. But which king will give away the throne for greater good? For example Germany is federation with 16 states and 16 administrations. The country could shrink to two administration areas like South and North and become 8 times more efficient. Never gonna happen! To have this on continental level is even more never gonna happen probability.
So why not just merge into one and be 16 times as effective? Sorry for the sarcasm but your calculation is just a wild assumption.
How does the US do it? They have a fair amount of states too with their own laws, don't they?
Sure, federalism produces some overhead and inefficiencies. But it also has many benefits. Especially to avoid too much power in one hand but also others. E.g. you can have different school systems in different states and see what works better and adapt the other systems (if you actually do that is another question).
People are also different in different states. This also applies to Europe and its member states. Just merging all into one is just a recipe to fail epically.
Afaik, the bulk of the US' federal centralization of commerce is based on the Commerce Clause of the US Constitution [0], which based on reading (and more so on precedent) grants the US federal legislature the ability to regulate commerce between states. As most commerce crosses state boundaries, this de facto allows the federal legislature to define and enforce regulatory standards.
In practice, it's more nuanced and subject to continual back-and-forth arguing. E.g. California and Texas trying to decide their own standards, by virtue of their economic size, then hashing it out with the federal government in court.
I'm not sure what the EU regulatory cornerstone equivalent of the Commerce Clause would be.
> So why not just merge into one and be 16 times as effective? Sorry for the sarcasm but your calculation is just a wild assumption.
The division is on purpose, to divide power and make it harder for a second Hitler to rise again. And the calculations are no assumption, it's a common topic in Germany how much additional time and money this all costs.
> How does the US do it? They have a fair amount of states too with their own laws, don't they?
Why do you assume they are different? Or better?
> E.g. you can have different school systems in different states and see what works better
You can also have this without federalism, without maintaining a dozen different administrations which are all doing the same in different flavour.
> People are also different in different states. This also applies to Europe and its member states.
Compared to Europe, people in the USA are not that different per state. At least not on the level where individual administration is necessary. The different groups are mainly independent of the state they are living in.
It's not unsubstantiated. The federalism is a well known expensive hindrace for any progress. Everyone doing their own shit also means everyone has to fight it out with everyone on how they work together. There are good reasons for this, but the price is also obvious.
Is it, though? What’s so different between Thuringia and Saxony that they both need separate administrations?
Why is it, that when you move between states, your tax office needs to print out your records, send them to your new state's office, only for some poor soul to type them into their system because each state uses a different system without any common exchange format? Make it make sense!
Basically all centralization of political power in human history has been accomplished by force. See Rome, Persia, Germany, USSR, etc. etc. etc. Even the USA's transition from a union of united States to The United States occurred under force of arms.
Sadly, this centralization of political power has been a disaster for mankind IMO.
Even as we've transitioned from monarchies to democracies over the last few centuries, the trend has largely resulted in the replacement of actual, determinative choices with merely having a millionth of a share of a choice. Not a determinative choice, but a say.
Consider the holy roman empire, for example. [0]
Under this scheme of decentralization, people had an actual choice of their government. Say you were a merchant in Mühlhausen circa 1700, and you found yourself in opposition to your local government. You could simply move a short distance to a different area and be beholdened to an entirely different government. You'd have 50 choices within 100 miles! While it's true that the HRE was all under the administration of one government, but it was extremely weak. It lacked, for example, the ability to levy direct taxes. After unification in 1870, the same merchant would've had to move much further to escape his government, and his options had been diminished by 95%. After European unification, he would have to travel to another continent!
While democracy has given us control of our governments in theory, in practice the "choice" it offers is much less empowering than the determinative choice afforded by decentralization. The larger our political entities grow, the more diluted our "say" and the fewer full choices are available to us. In the United States, we have less than 1/100,000,000th of a share of the choice in our chief executive!
While democracy is obviously preferable to Aristocracy/Monarchy/Tyranny, on it's own it is still only a marginal improvement. At worst, you can still end up with 49.9% of people living under a government they oppose. Decentralization solves this lingering problem, because it allows people to self-sort in and out of countries they don't like, allowing for people who truly despise their governments to choose themselves a new government.
In the absence of such a safety valve, people are forced into a zero-sum struggle for power. It is rule or be ruled. Dominate or be dominated. We're seeing this in the United States right now. We're not at each other's throats because we hate each other. Not even because we hate each other's politics in the abstract. We're at each other's throats because neither side is content to be ruled by the other.
The same reason that centralized entities only arise by force is the same reason they fall apart in the end. People don't want them. They don't want to be dominated.
Centralization of political power forces people into an inescapable struggle for power. It is the enemy of peace and tranquility, and a blight on humanity.
I believe your view of what democracy is tainted by what USA democracy looks like.
Quite a few countries have more or less successful parlamentary democracies, where winner-takes-all situations are avoided by design. In these, a party rarely has the upper hand and coalitions are the only means of reaching power. The agreements these coalitions forge to govern are a proxy of the compromises all societies have to agree on to function.
Which countries do you have in mind? In my experience, most parliamentary democracies have rules which actually exacerbate the issue. See for example the elections last year in Germany, where the CDU/CSU + SPD coalition won a majority in the Bundestag with less than 45% of the popular vote!
How do you account for the increased competitiveness of economies of scale in a globalized economy with free international trade in your recommendation?
I'm not quite sure what you mean by "economies of scale", which is normally a benefit of mass production.
It's true that centralization of political power can bring economic benefits, but the economic benefits stem from the elimination of economic/trade friction, not directly from the centralization of power per se. Which is to say that (most of) these economic benefits can be had without incurring the non-economic costs of political centralization.
I work around German bureaucracy, and the loss of efficiency is real. Every state creates its own bureaucracy and its own software. Different people, departments and offices that rarely combine efforts, barely talk to each other, and never share data.
I was told that this decentralisation of power was a deliberate effort after Nazism, but as far as I know such issues were endemic in the Nazi government and military. Germany really is a union of small states, and perhaps never fully changed that.
This is slowly changing though. There is a visible effort to build software and processes at the federal level.
The federation in Germany is one lesson from the Nazis. Centralised power makes it easier for fascism or totalitarian governments to emerge. Recent example is the US with the instrument of executive orders. So it is deliberately designed to keep Germany small.
The regulations mentioned there are not necessarily wrong though. Decarbonisation and renewables are no longer purely environmental concerns, they are key objectives for the European security strategy to remove dependence on foreign tyrants and dictators. These jobs would have disappeared sooner or later anyways. But lots of new ones will be created in these new industries. The EU is merely getting dragged down by the established traditional fossil industry that wants to delay the transition as long as possible to squeeze every cent out of the market while they can. But this is bad for literally everyone involved in the long term. The only thing that is benefiting are next-quarter based exec bonuses. If Europe actually allowed for a disruptive startup environment (which unfortunately has its own set of safety issues), these companies would have been handed their lunch by now.
There are countries in the EU with sizeable coal reserves like Poland, Germany or Czech Republic. Current policies force them to abandon it and switch to natural gas which needs to be imported.
1.) In Germany without subsidies coal would phase out because it is too expensive. e.g. In western Germany since the 70s.
2.) People are Much more reluctant for coal mining anyway as it destroys lots of landscape.
Renewables are a thing for the upper-class. I am refering to plain old heating in winter, which is being switched over from russian gas to american lng. Great achievement!
At the time it made sense, we believed the US to be an ally, like in the past. Obviously not true anymore so yeah, a mistake that needs to be corrected.
And no, renewables aren't for the upper class, the sun is free for everyone with panels, and panels can be bought relatively cheap today.
I'm sure it depends on the country, but in my country (Spain) you can literally go and buy solar panels in the local hardware store and install them without permits, even for renters given you don't destroy anything. And besides that, most owners (as a renter) are OK with you installing solar panels.
Never owned a place, had solar panels installed in the last three places I lived in, the first two were apartments, currently renting a house. None of the owners had problems with us installing solar panels.
> they are key objectives for the European security strategy to remove dependence on foreign tyrants and dictators.
Lol european security strategy? We switched from Russian dependence, to a more expensive US dependence. While also being strongly dependent on middle eastern gas and oil. What the hell kind of strategy is that?
> We switched from Russian dependence, to a more expensive US dependence
To be fair, most of us believed the US to be a reliable partner, based on previous track record, but things like that change quickly. So we thought we were changing something cheaper from a hostile entity, to something more expensive from an ally, but turns it we got it wrong, so new direction now.
The repeated failing of the EU (90s+) was under-appreciation of the economic / political / military pressure that could be brought by constraining key material and energy supplies.
If the EU (specifically Germany) had more presciently modeled out Russian foreign policy with a shift to increased EU reliance on Russian natural gas, there were steps it could have taken.
E.g. building in a tripwire for territorial invasion with the express responses of cutting Russian gas purchases on day 1, freezing Russian assets and access to European banking, and building storage / LNG terminals
Had the EU done this, loudly, Ukraine likely wouldn't have been invaded.
The EU's biggest mistake was presuming that everyone took the international order as inviolate as it did. (China, Russia, the US)
Yeah the EU got it wrong. Like they did for pretty much every policy of the last 20 years.
edit: Since I can no longer repy I will edit in place:
Just the kind of regulation that drives out investment and growth. Now we have no money printing tech giants and our best and brightest work for US companies. But we do have bragging rights with the desktop linux crowd, so that is something.
Yup, clearly making websites and platforms responsible for the data they store and process is absolutely horrible. How is one supposed to make money on selling user data if I have to give notice to the users that this is what I'm doing? Give me laissez faire markets or no market at all!
Everything is made out of or requires fossil fuels. From concrete, your clothes, to your food. Phasing out fossil fuels is complete insanity.
edit: I cant reply so I will edit.
The policies are clearly insanity because EU industrial self immolation does nothing for the rest of the world. Does China, Indonesia, Africa, South America, India give a crap about saving the environment? They sure as hell do not. Most of them throw their trash directly into the ocean. All we do in europe is self harm while the broad problem goes entirely unsolved. How the hell are you going to develop and sell new technology, while destroying our economies at the same time. Complete pipe dream insanity.
> Everything is made out of or requires fossil fuels. From concrete, your clothes, to your food. Phasing out fossil fuels is complete insanity.
That's not true, but ok...
> Does China, Indonesia, Africa, South America, India give a crap about saving the environment?
Actually, they do. China is the biggest spender on investing in renewable energy-sources and moving away from fossil fuels. Africa and South America are continents, not Countries. And not sure why India or Indonesia are related here?
Other than that, I'm not sure if you are a troll, victim of poor sources or paid actor, but your quality of data really sucks.
Because the source of plastics in the ocean is traced back to those places. What exactly am I wrong on? China is mostly powered by coal and they are still building new coal plants.
> Because the source of plastics in the ocean is traced back to those places.
That's actually a bit disputed. But ok, it wasn't just really obvious from your writing what you meant here.
> China is mostly powered by coal and they are still building new coal plants.
Yes, and no. China is moving away from coal, they reduced their share by 20% in the last decades. It's now around 57% of their total usage. The number of new coal plants is also a bit disputed. First, they modernize many coal plants by building new, more efficient ones, and shutting down the old plants. Second, they are building many backup-plants, which are not really used outside of emergencies, which does happen from time to time it seems. And third, they are master of overplanning. Around 80% of their planned coal-plants were actually cancelled in the last years before the building started for real. This seems related to how their local and federal levels are handling budgets.
The only real problem is that their absolute coal consumption is still growing, because their consumption as a whole is growing. But long-term, there is likely a point where it's reaching its peak, and start shrinking. And speculation is here, that we are talking about ~10 years, not 50. So at that point, China, which is already producing for the whole world, will have acquired another good selling point which European countries have to beat.
What does plastic pollution have to do with carbon emissions?
China's coal usage is dropping every year. They build new coal plants to replace older ones, or leave them idle. Almost 90% of their new energy comes from solar power.
Please stop spreading fossil fuel industry lies here.
Insanity or opportunity? Like, the climate is already messed up, if we want to maintain our species standard of living then we need to move towards a society that emits much much less carbon.
If we don't then we'll either go extinct or regress to a level where we use less. Sure, it's gonna really really suck for the next while but there isn't really any other options.
As a benefit, if we do this then we can sell the technology to the rest of the world.
The regulations are for the long-term-benefit of the EU, and it's citizen, even though they may come with some short-term-harm. This is always a bit of a problem, does one plan for the coming 50 years, or just the next reports of whatever makes you rich.
The joke here is, China is a master of long-term-planning and execution, which is why they are on the rise now. Yet many complain, take china as a threat and demand brain-dead short-term-solutions, leading to even more long-term-problems.
Yes, it will, unless there will be a nuclear war or something..there is very little actual problems. People are very busy with looking on numbers and focusing on single problems, but hardly the big picture. Any complaints about EU and their countries are high-level nagging, people complaining whether they can buy two golden pools or have to be satisfied with one. EU and most of their countries are filthy rich, have a good foundation and while they have the occasional internal problems, they are not on a road to burn down and lose everything.
Bad things can always happen, of course, we just had multiple of them in the last 5+ years. But we did survive it and adapted, so the probability is much higher that nothing catastrophical world-shattering will be happening again in the next decades. We are moving back to the "normal" trouble and EU so far has shown a very good survivability in those years. Heck, in 2008-2012 there was far more trouble for EU than today.
Renewables don't just benefit the environment. They're literally free energy machines, perpetual motion alike. You want as much energy as possible for as cheap as possible, you want renewables. You want energy sovereignty without fuel imports, you want renewables.
Apart from the part where you don't get to choose when they generate. Hopefully less of an issue in a continent–sized interconnected grid.
Solar is the cheapest form of energy averaged over the whole year. 2025 was the first year where more total electricity was produced by renewables than not.
It has the obvious problem that it doesn't work at night and in winter. That's a big problem. I don't know how to fix that.
Yeah that's a theory. Practically you have something called electricity exchange in Leipzig where price bottom is set by the most expensive power source.
That's how every electricity market works and the only way that's been discovered for them to possibly work. It means solar producers, if they're getting paid the sky–high USA natgas price while paying nothing at all, are making huge profits, which explains why there are suddenly so many solar farms, eh?
Every study I've read that supports the "cheap solar" thesis assumes sunny days in normal temperatures, and never includes enough storage to maintain consistent output overnight (after sunny days in normal temperatures, let alone bad days).
In other words, they count on non-solar backup... which not only makes solar more expensive, but basically redundant.
Until Solar+storage is the cheapest form of energy while delivering its promised output at 4AM after a cloudy day in freezing temperatures, the "solar is cheap" stuff is simply dishonest.
That is true. We should not discount the drawbacks of solar and wind, nor their upsides. When they are working, they are producing energy almost completely for free. The advantage of free energy, even when intermittent, is so great that we should spend considerable effort trying to make the grid use it as much as possible.
As an entrepreneur with businesses in both the US and EU, a federation is probably several steps too far from political will. Instead:
- Let banks operate and merge across borders, especially neobanks/fintechs. European banks are easily 10+ yrs ahead of the US in terms of tech and customer service but they lack scale and capital, especially in the credit side of things.
- Credit, again: we need the equivalent of D&B/Fico for Europe: a single credit bureau that can judge creditworthiness of people and organizations. Even the US has solved this through private companies, why can't Europe? Fellow Euros are shocked when I tell them that a 0-day LLC in the US can get $20k in credit card limits almost immediately.
The rest are easy, especially for web/internet companies. But if we have to raise credit/money based on the rules of the biggest (and slowest!) economies, then the EU is fucked.
>Let banks operate and merge across borders, especially neobanks/fintechs.
I'm not sure more centralisation of banking is a good idea. Too big to fail and all that. The UK has never really recovered from the banking crisis thanks to its oversized financial activities.
You got it, FICO/Equifax/Transunion stop it. The $20k is basically raised on the founders' credit, not the LLCs; richer founders can get a lot more credit right up front. And yes, FICO is probably infeasible in the EU with current laws, that's the point. Fix that first, these businesses are just as critical as actual banks.
Mass surveillance laws don't prevent a bank from doing due diligence on a loan when you ask for a loan, or from suing you if you lied. In Germany it's hard to get a liability shield and there's no compassion for idiots — if you borrowed $20k by lying to the bank about your other loans, your wages will be garnished for life until you pay it back including punitive interest. They could rely on that instead of mass surveillance.
I have a feeling FICO would be more destructive than beneficial for Europe. Look what it's done to America. Borrowing $20k for a startup is not worth that.
The problem isn't that. The problem is that I can't go to a German bank with a non-German tax ID (and without German residency) and get a loan. I am limited to the handful of banks in my country (and Germans to theirs).
FICO doesn't just do aggregation, they also do integration: as an American, running away from credit card debt to a small credit union (a community bank in the States) is as bad as stiffing Citi or JPMorgan.
The American credit market is far more liquid than Europe, partly because it's much larger (one market as opposed to 27) but also because its graded and stratified: as a bank/fund you can choose the risk you want to take and take it accordingly. We're definitely missing that down to individual/SME scale.
Are they forbidden or do they just not want to? There's a service called Raisin which aggregates interest–bearing savings accounts from across the EU from participating banks. Maybe that is now your profitable business idea: build a Raisin for loans.
Credit scores are mass surveillance. Essential to the idea is that you already have one in the background. If a bank uses some calculation based on information you provide to decide to give you credit, it's still not a credit score.
Not going to happen without an agreed single working language, which can't realistically be anything other than English, and that'll be unacceptable, so the idea is (very sadly) dead on arrival.
The EU itself (not the countries) does every communication in every EU country language. I think it's the second largest employer of translators in the world, behind only the UN.
For a business, the language is whatever you agree with your customers. You are free to choose. If you communicate with the EU itself, any EU country language is accepted.
Language diversity is just a fact of life in Europe and not going away soon, that's like asking the US to give up the idea of states and become a single country.
English is the most widely spoken language. It is the language you are most likely to have in common with a random European citizen — in the same way Chinese is the language you are most likely to have in common with a random Earthling. This doesn't mean if you do something in English (Chinese) the whole continent (planet) will understand it. It is very useful to know. Especially if you talk to someone who travels internationally a lot, some rich businessman or non–local politician, they surely speak English too.
How does Poland manage to be industrially active and growing? Despite having only 10 per cent of the total EU population and not being in a federalist relation with Malta, Cyprus and Portugal?
Partly by not importing Germano-French bureaucratic dysfunction (Papiere, Papiere über alles). Which would only grow more prominent with further integration.
Brute force does not matter nearly as much as quality of governance does. Qing China was a big, helpless monster eaten alive by smaller, more agile competitors.
Moldova or Pakistan has even cheaper labour. South Sudan has even cheaper labour than Moldova.
Surely there must be more factors at play. For example, the general educational level in the country or its perceived reliability when it comes to FDI.
>How does Poland manage to be industrially active and growing?
Because in a single market new capacity will grow where costs are cheaper. If (Cost of Good X in PL) + (Transport Cost PL->FR) < ( Cost of Good X in FR) then it is clear where the growth will be.
With France it's pretty clear, in a single market with low cost Eastern Europe it can only be competitive in very high tech industries given how prohibitive its welfare/retirement system is from the business point of view.
"given how prohibitive its welfare/retirement system is from the business point of view."
True, the French government redistributes the most money in the entire OECD (close to 60 per cent of GDP) and this is mostly driven by heavy welfare and old-age rent spending. They are pushing the ceiling to see what is still possible.
One interesting question is: if this French model spreads across the rest of the EU, will the EU as a whole become more or less competitive on the global stage? I would guess "less".
0 chance it can spread. PAYGO systems in general were set up when expanding demographics were not in question. Nobody is stupid enough now to switch to a system that requires an ever growing labor pool in perpetuity.
The problem is that there is no "democratic" way to get rid of them because in most WEU countries retirees/close to retired already make up enough of the population to block any such measure at the ballot box. See for example France.
If you start from the bottom, it's easy to grow fast when you have others to copy and learn from. It's similar with startups and enterprises. The startup always appears sleek, fast, agile, sexy, but the slow enterprise, still moves much more in a short timeframe than the startup in their whole lifetime. It's the simple difference between relative and absolute numbers, and the caps of growth.
Moldova and Ukraine were economically comparable to Poland in 1990 per capita. They have fallen far, far behind it.
Always compare comparable countries (or startups for that purpose). It is easy to explain away successes as long as failures in very similar conditions are ignored.
That's German propaganda. The Poles have more common sense when it comes to welfare and work ethic. Most Ukrainians that went there are working and not even complaining (I mean why would they? they are a normal hard-working people), while in Germany most of them are on welfare (one gets spoiled very fast when you get free money and have no obligations).
Again, it is not the amount of money you receive as whether you can use them in a productive way. Poland invested heavily into infrastructure and was able to reduce the NIMBY problem that is so prominent in Czechia or Germany and leads to decade-long paper wars over every railway, road and housing project. Of course they now reap the benefits.
As a neighbour, I am a bit frustrated by the difference that is becoming ever more visible. CZ is stuck in a bad vetocracy, hopefully the new government, populist as it may be, will change it a bit. (One reason for my hope is that the Mayor party is in opposition. They were the biggest fans of the vetocracy, because it gave power to regional politicians.)
In general, if you can learn from somebody, adapt the good things and not the bad ones. If you are allowed to choose, of course. But that requires some degree of freedom.
Sure, but significant != dominant. That is why you compare comparable countries which had comparable EU funding available and look at the outcomes.
I know Poles quite well. There is a can-do optimistic mentality present there that is long gone from Germany. Young people aren't afraid to start their own businesses etc. There is much, much less "climate depression", ideas like degrowth barely survive on the intellectual fringes.
This, too, makes quite a lot of difference. Strong Green movements seem to be rather dangerous to most industries, not just directly (through regulation and fees), but indirectly, by nudging young people away from industrial professions. For example, the pool of nuclear engineers in many countries of Western Europe has seriously shrunk, which limits the general ability to revive the sector, even though there is some political will now.
They had one of the longest streaks of growth since the 1990s until Covid, even during times when Russia was a failed state with a drunken guy at the top.
Polish growth does not correlate with fluctuating levels of Russian menace at all.
EU is a rare coalition in history, carefully implemented but still an expirement. There are three types of members: low (south/east), middle (north/west) and Germany. Basically money is flowing in producing Germany and then back to the consuming lows. The middles are neutral to money flow.
This vital rotation is expected to continue in the future albeit with slower speed. The recent collaborations with South America and India aim to help this flow go on.
The current US policy is making a great favor to Europe as they cause a uniting instinct against a common danger. There is no need for same language and same most common surname 'Smith' to span 5000km.
You re more likely to see the creation of the Spanish federation than the political union of disparate european interests currently held together via monetary injections
The number of times I've read articles about the upcoming "Silicon Valley in Europe" warrants an article running through the last twenty years of the EU getting its act together "any day now".
Yeah of course, Europe has already been destroyed by the EU bureaucracy, but lets give them even more powers to implement their dumb ideas even faster, such as... "oh, how about we stopped producing cars by 2030?", or again... "oh, war is bad, guns kills, how about we pass CSR laws that dissuade banks from funding military companies".
When I visited Europe, or talk to a European in the US, the first question you always get asked:
"Where are you from?"
This makes me quite uncomfortable, because I'm immediately getting stereotyped based on my parents DNA. (In the US, the question is often "What do you do for work? What do you do for fun?")
I have strong doubts that Europe can actually become a single nation of states. If France doesn't screw it up by demanding to be first among equals, Germany or Poland will probably side with the US who will be against this from happening.
Too late to change the fact that EU is no longer competitive despite historically strong core competencies and no shortage of talented people.
Manufacturing? Energy is way too expensive.
Tech? Admirable attempts using relatively little financial resources to keep up with the US and China haven't worked out. An issue of scale, not talent.
The complex regulatory body and risk-averse politics slows everything down (except the process of creating new regulations)
Germany is a prime example of all of the above.
Oh, and let's also make our energy supplies dependent on an adversary after shutting down perfectly fine nuclear power plants while fantasizing about a green hydrogen future while operating coal plants into the 2040s. (Also Germany)
I think supporters of this idea take the citizens' loyalty for granted. Much like the nations within Europe do.
It would be super easy for the EU to charm the European populations into EU loyalty instead of national loyalty. All it would take is to offer good deals to the individual person. To start, a minimum €10 000 per month salary for any citizen taking up military duty. Home ownership to young people who contribute to the federation. And such things, the possibilities are endless.
But we all know that the disdain that the EU leaders and national European leaders have against their own population is bottomless, and that they would rather do anything except building loyalty among their population.
I think you just presented good evidence for my suggestion. All the greatest soccer teams are successful because they are willing to spend big money on getting loyal players, from anywhere.
I think and hope EU leaders are wary of the idea of becoming a federation, and would only do that if it had clear widespread support among both the population and country leaders.
The stagnation in Europe (compared to the US) is due to EU over-regulation and industrial suicide caused by net zero policy.
> [chemicals sector] investments fell from 1.9 megatonnes of capacity in 2024 to 0.3 megatonnes last year, as the sector struggled with high energy prices, suffocating bureaucracy and an expansion of Chinese imports
From 2019 to 2023, the EU recorded over 853,000 manufacturing job losses, with the largest losses in automotive sectors in Poland, Czech Republic, Romania, and Germany.
The European Green Deal was forecast to put up to 11 million jobs “at risk” in various sectors if adjustments weren’t made:
We seem to think that if we destroy our own industry, ship emissions abroad, and marginally reduce global CO2 emissions, we will inspire the rest of the world (i.e. China and India) to follow suit. That's self-evidently ridiculous.
EU national leaders need to stop peacocking in Davos and Brussels, and start listening to their own people, and their own businesses, who are crying out for sensible energy costs, and for red tape and bureaucracy to get out the way of business.
The population of Africa is estimated to be 5-6 times the population of Europe by 2060. For context, in 1990 Africa had slightly less people than Europe. Today more than double.
I wonder how that can happen once climate change starts affecting their ability to grow food. It might make the current immigration problems look quite minor once you have 500 million people knocking on the door and wanting to come in.
No matter the structure there, without affordable gas from a certain neighbor - Europe simply no longer has the capability to be an industrialized block. You can't smelt aluminum with solar nor make fertilizer, chemicals - can run AI data centers with it - sorry. Energy is EVERYTHING. Without it, Europe becomes a tourist Disney Land for the worlds rich.
Why can't you do those things on solar? Actually, I'd think they're ideal matches. Aluminium smelters use so much electricity that even ones that are connected to non-renewable grids have contracts to ramp production up or down at a moment's notice, to absorb supply and demand swings in the rest of the grid. However much electricity you think they use, they use twenty times that. These are places wired with 100 kiloamp busbars.
The point is they're well used to variable electricity supply. Cloud comes past? No problem, the furnaces run slower for a moment. I think they need a certain base load to keep them hot as they can't restart them if the aluminium solidifies inside.
Aluminium smelting is an electrochemical process. Running electricity through the ore turns it into the metal and that's why they need so much. It's not just electric heating. They use direct current, so that's a good match for solar panels too. Two and a half volts per cell.
Fertilizer is something similar, as far as I know. They use electrochemical arc reactors to make nitrogen compounds from air. These can also scale up and down instantly.
AI training is pretty good too. If a cloud comes past you can pause the training run for a moment or underclock. The firmware for that might not be there yet, but the laws of physics quite like the idea.
Why do you think these particular things require natural gas?
It’s the exact same reason you wouldn’t want the lights failing in an operating theater, nor a lift not going to the 30th floor just because the power became unavailable.
Singapore executes transit travellers with personal amounts of drugs and men with long hair. Not my picture of freedom, no matter what their economy is doing.
A ban from the 60s refused entry to hippies, it fell out of use and was removed from the books early in the 1990s.
At no point in time were Led Zeppelin, the Bee Gees, Cliff Richard, Kitarō or other long haired men transiting Singapore during that period (1960-1990) executed.
Like the USofA, freedom in Singapore is f(wealth).
Legally, justice wise, it's still rooted in English common law from it's time as a colony prior to the British getting over run by Japanese on bicycles.
Even its class bigotry is rooted in colonial British attitudes.
It's wild watching people damn them for being authoritarian, yet by various polls 77% of Singapore want the death penalty for drug traffickers. This is high enough that i.e. in USA it would definitely be popular enough to pass an amendment to civil rights to guarantee execution even if the freedom from jeopardy to death penalty had been prior enshrined.
When "authoritarianism" used to secure economic freedom, "authoritarianism" bad. When authoritarianism used to stop the majority from executing drug traffickers, authoritarianism ... good?
Which polls? Political elections? Professional polls from experts? Or some random poll on the streets from some TV-Station or influencer? People also answer very different depending on the prospected outcome, thus the "seriousness" of their answer.
> This is high enough that i.e. in USA it would definitely be popular enough to pass an amendment to civil rights to guarantee execution even if the freedom from jeopardy to death penalty had been prior enshrined.
And legal system in Singapore works like USA? This seems like a strange claim.
>Which polls? Political elections? Professional polls from experts? Or some random poll on the streets from some TV-Station or influencer?
All the above. Political elections of people that are pro death penalty, professional polls commissioned by the MHA (and done continually in separate years), and also you can hear them from people on the streets if that's your preferred way.
>People also answer very different depending on the prospected outcome, thus the "seriousness" of their answer.
It's not simply a "prospected" outcome, the people in the polls literally are living in a country actively doing it and has been doing it for quite awhile. The information is out there to see what they're getting.
>And legal system in Singapore works like USA? This seems like a strange claim.
This is your fifth consecutive interrogative cross-examination question which is clearly aimed at presenting a counter-narrative without having to use the courage of making any assertions of your own, I only note here that your "question" implies a straw man that I've presented they work the same. But if you insist, the requirement of amending Singapore constitution is easily met in the context of the death penalty for drugs (2/3 MP + possibly 2/3 national referendum), were it that their civil rights were prior codified there to prohibit it.
Of course not. But show me a good system where 23% minority of the people can define civil rights in contradiction to the 77% and you will be better off, because that's the only way you can answer my prior question with inconsistencies presented.
Sure. It's any system where the 77% want something really bad, and the 23% don't. For example, a system where 77% of people want drug traffickers executed and 23% don't. That's a system where listening to the 23% is better than listening to the 77%.
A system like this cannot remain stable, and because it's unstable, it is not good.
Why is Europe being outdone by authoritarian racists? Singapore started out as a little shithole in the corner of Malaysia, nothing particularly special to start from and a long ways from any rich country to trade with, maybe you can learn something from the racists.
1.) Someone complains about racism in Europe. In this regard Singapore is not an alternative.
2.) Sure European countries can learn something from Singapore or China. But definitely not on topics like racism and freedom of press.
3.) Was Singapore a shithole place giving its location? I doubt it because it started as a harbour where location matters. On the other hand Singapore government was quiet capable. So very interwined topic and longer discussion is needed.
Just as the US is proving that giving power to federations will make states powerless, Draghi finds it the perfect time to suggest a federation.
We all knew this would eventually be the proposed path. The EU politicians and staffers obviously have a vested interest in saying yes. It means the EU will stop having to fight for ratification. It also means centralized planning and less fine-grained adjustments for local needs. As always.
This is not more power to the people or "we're stronger together." This is a simple attempt at an opportunistic power grab. Please don't let it happen here too.
We definitely need more focus on creating a true single market.
It is difficult to scale across Europe.
Most countries will gladly fall back to "we do how we please in our country, Europe won't tell us what to do!" which is the usual nationalistic rally to which many fall prey not realizing how good it would be to start making small but steady steps into common regulations.
We really need a strong internal market.
We definitely need more focus on creating a true single market.
It’s going to be difficult to achieve this without the establishment of a single official language. That’s where the US gets most of its advantage: a large population of English speakers means a large single market for products in English.
Sure, lots of products (like food) don’t care about language but software and media (literature, music, video games, movies, TV) definitely do. It’s no coincidence that the US dominates the global market for those cultural and technology products.
I have a decade of experience working with european companies, digital and not. Language is not a barrier at all.
Laws and regulations are.
>> It’s going to be difficult to achieve this without the establishment of a single official language
Swiss confederation solved this while having 4 official languages. Language is not the problem, especially nowadays when everything could be translated in a second.
Ehhh, the story of Swiss multilingualism is more than a bit romanticized. A lot of people under 40 know their region's language, English at a decent level, and at best a barely passable 2nd national language (exception would be those living in the actually bilingual regions).
I think there's a strong case to be made that, while the different Swiss linguistic regions strongly prefer to associate together, in reality they draw a lot from the countries they share their languages & borders with when it comes to business and markets, etc. But between linguistic regions, there is additional friction for sure. If anything, the share competency in English has been a major boon.
Source: been living in Switzerland for 10 years and very interested in its system.
software is a bad example since all the coding is done in english. the translation tools are inexpensive nowadays. bilingual persons have lower rates of dementia so it's not even sure that standardising on one language would be a net benefit. also it's universally accepted that english is one of the more difficult languages to learn. If there was a revival of the movement for a single language then english wouldn't be picked by non native english speakers.
Esperanto for all! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Esperanto
How much easier is it to learn Esperanto than some broken form of simplified English that gets the message across and then also enables you to speak the native language of 26% of the world GDP?
If my concern is % of GDP I'd rather learn Mandarin.
I tried to learn Mandarin and it's really hard! That's coming from someone who is able to say Grzegorz Brzęczyszczykiewicz without a problem.
I feel the perceived difficulty varies from person to person. Personally I found Mandarin much easier to pick up than German or Spanish, since you don't have to worry about conjugation.
It's not the language that is a problem. The economic statistics simply show that A LOT of people are going to have to work harder for less money (and with inflation I'm sure they can make it look like they earn more, they just can't actually earn more)
This will never happen, or at most, it will be a half-baked clunky "federation" like today. Why? Because you will always say first: "I am Italian" and not "I am European" when introducing yourself. All the dreamy one powerful Europe will never happen because of this. Which makes sense because Europe, by definition, is multiple countries, identities and cultures!
And I am Ligurian, before Italian. If I can be both, I can be all three
By that logic, Germany would have never formed.
I'll add Italy, the UK, Spain, Switzerland, Greece.
I'm not sure where are you from, but we Europeans do also feel Europeans.
This isn't about countries losing sovereignty over night, but about creating common frameworks and regulations step by step.
This is already a reality in some sectors, e.g. agriculture.
Agriculture sits under exclusive or near-exclusive EU control in the whole EU and the model works (albeit it's not perfect, like no model is). EU promotes countries to produce what they are good at. Thus, it doesn't incentivize Italy to produce cereals much, because Italy does not have the right land to grow cereals and that would not make much sense in economic terms. Instead Italy is incentivized to grow cheese, meat, grapes, olives, etc, things that Italy is good at and sells well.
There's other things on which all countries delegate to EU: trade (tariffs and custom rules), goods standards, aviation safety rules, competition and state aid regulations, etc, etc.
So I would say that EU has been very successful on multiple fronts in harmonizing and taking responsibility for multiple things.
But I'm gonna give you of a simple blocker at EU level: why gdpr or dma/dsa are very EU centralized, ultimately digital and data regulations are still not really delegated and national law takes precedence: this is a very heavy blocker to scale any company that requires any kind of business involving data. As soon as you cross a border you need to know the ins and outs of every single country. So it's not that trivial to build a software service company and have it scale painlessly across Europe.
Examples include: contract law, consumer protection, liability rules, and all courts remain national. Terms of service, refund rules, dispute handling is always country-specific. Expanding beyond your own borders is very expensive. Then you have tax complexity, payment and banking, labor law, data protection (as mentioned)..
> "we do how we please in our country, Europe won't tell us what to do!"
This is like people who will be pointing on weak, indecisive Europe. But when somebody suggests that we should get rid of unanimous voting so one country can't sabotage everybody else, suddenly those people love weak and indecisive Europe and won't give their veto right. Wanting their cake and eating it too...
By that standards, an EU army would have gone to war in Irak in 2003, dragging french soldiers and the french aircraft carrier despite them being right from the very start.
Sure, but how many "correct" decisions are not made or drag on forever because of vetos?
Allowing veto power to single participants is often crippling for institutions in practice, because you allow every political adversary (internal and external) to freely pick the weakest link whenever he wants to sabotage or paralyze decisionmaking.
This already happens in practice with the EU, and the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth is a textbook example of how such a mechanism essentially doomed the whole thing.
Absolutely. One should just talk with people in the military about procurement. Europe wastes a lot of money and opportunity by having so much duplicated efforts. The innovation and manufacturing power in the EU is absolutely not the problem. But the lack of coordination means that countries inevitably favor local industry, resulting in overly expensive and incompatible systems, with gaps everywhere. There needs to be a central authority that is able to lead a defense program.
Just one example: I am hearing far too often that France is overly protecting their own interests and as such can't reach important deals with Germany about sharing burdens and profits. So it results in duplicated, incompatible systems. Germany is generally more open to share benefits and intel with other countries.
Such deal-making can drag on for decades, to only fall out. For industries to scale, they need long term planning and a guaranteed pipeline of orders. I am talking about ships, planes, MBT's, air defence, missile tech--not riffles.
It is a shame, because both countries are powerhouses in engineering. Also, this costs EU taxpayers billions of dollars, and perhaps their safety even.
> resulting in overly expensive and incompatible systems
This can occur even with a more integrated market. The problem is that military suppliers deliberately make as many things 'sole source' as possible so they can be the only supplier and hence charge even higher rates. I'm don't mean the big items like tanks and planes, but the little consumable stuff like lubrication oils, fasteners, gears, etc. that are made to be non-compatible with other systems on purpose. Harder to fix because of the usual corporation-military-lobbying feedback loops and because it requires standards which can be technically intensive to develop.
Good point, but sure, I didn't say it would solve all problems with humanity. But at least it would be a giant step forward from the lose-lose situation.
If there is one body on earth that is able to cut with standards and regulation through enterprises, it is the EU I think, so even that is not hopeless. But large capital flows through the mil.industry comes with risks, yes.
Agreed, they do have to start somewhere. I'm not trying to put out the 'if the solution isn't completely perfect, then we should do nothing' type argument. Only that compatibility/interoperability is a much deeper problem that stems from financial incentive not just for military application but civilian ones as well. Just look at printer ink. But the EU did standardize phone chargers, so its possible to some extent.
The EU seems very willing to pass a law to end widespread corporate silliness, at least more than the USA, and it's a breath of fresh air when it happens!
And this is where standardization and regulation should show up. It can start from details like only standardized bolts and screws with standardized heads are allowed to be used all the way to jet engine must have exactly these dimensions and these inputs and outputs in these positions so it is possible to use same jet engine in Rafale, Eurofighter or Gripen.
They have this to some degree in NATO, the problem is that you have to allow for some exceptions. For example, a design requires a special bolt head because the standard one just won't work. No standard can be absolute and still allow for innovation. Military suppliers just milk this loop-hole and claim they need an exception even when they don't. Being able to evaluate when an exception is warranted and when the design could be altered to accommodate a standard would require enormous technical oversight.
It is totally and obviously untrue that the only way to solve whatever issue of the day is federalisation. Especially regarding desindustrialisation, if you look at what's happening in the world and the development of, say, East Asian and South East Asian countries (or even Europe's own industrialisation), or desindustralisation in the US, this becomes an obviously ridiculous claim.
There is no "need" to for a "central authority to lead defence programs", either. That is a political view to justify integration. Integration is the goal, not a tool to an end and justifications are sought afterwards.
This is a long running campaign of disinformation to manufacture consent and convince people that there is no other way, there is no choice, and we're seeing that dissent is less and less tolerated. Not too long ago being against EU integration was simply an opinion among others, usually seen as being patriotic, now people immediately face accusations of extremism, being "far right", being "Russian shills", you name it, basically it is becoming wrongthink.
Even here on HN, I have been recently accused of being a socketpuppet account, of being effectively a Russian shill (or is it Chinese?), of being an extremist, an idiot, an "alt right troll", my comments expressing a counter-opinion have been flagged... people are losing their minds.
The US federalised a long time ago. It is not the counterexample you think it is. If it were still a bunch of little states, it would be irrelevant.
There are many nice pragmatic ideas. But which king will give away the throne for greater good? For example Germany is federation with 16 states and 16 administrations. The country could shrink to two administration areas like South and North and become 8 times more efficient. Never gonna happen! To have this on continental level is even more never gonna happen probability.
So why not just merge into one and be 16 times as effective? Sorry for the sarcasm but your calculation is just a wild assumption.
How does the US do it? They have a fair amount of states too with their own laws, don't they?
Sure, federalism produces some overhead and inefficiencies. But it also has many benefits. Especially to avoid too much power in one hand but also others. E.g. you can have different school systems in different states and see what works better and adapt the other systems (if you actually do that is another question).
People are also different in different states. This also applies to Europe and its member states. Just merging all into one is just a recipe to fail epically.
Afaik, the bulk of the US' federal centralization of commerce is based on the Commerce Clause of the US Constitution [0], which based on reading (and more so on precedent) grants the US federal legislature the ability to regulate commerce between states. As most commerce crosses state boundaries, this de facto allows the federal legislature to define and enforce regulatory standards.
In practice, it's more nuanced and subject to continual back-and-forth arguing. E.g. California and Texas trying to decide their own standards, by virtue of their economic size, then hashing it out with the federal government in court.
I'm not sure what the EU regulatory cornerstone equivalent of the Commerce Clause would be.
[0] https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/commerce_clause
> So why not just merge into one and be 16 times as effective? Sorry for the sarcasm but your calculation is just a wild assumption.
The division is on purpose, to divide power and make it harder for a second Hitler to rise again. And the calculations are no assumption, it's a common topic in Germany how much additional time and money this all costs.
> How does the US do it? They have a fair amount of states too with their own laws, don't they?
Why do you assume they are different? Or better?
> E.g. you can have different school systems in different states and see what works better
You can also have this without federalism, without maintaining a dozen different administrations which are all doing the same in different flavour.
> People are also different in different states. This also applies to Europe and its member states.
Compared to Europe, people in the USA are not that different per state. At least not on the level where individual administration is necessary. The different groups are mainly independent of the state they are living in.
> The country could shrink to two administration areas like South and North and become 8 times more efficient
In Germany, we call unsubstantiated calculations like this "Milchmädchenrechnung" (milkmaid calculation).
It's not unsubstantiated. The federalism is a well known expensive hindrace for any progress. Everyone doing their own shit also means everyone has to fight it out with everyone on how they work together. There are good reasons for this, but the price is also obvious.
Is it, though? What’s so different between Thuringia and Saxony that they both need separate administrations?
Why is it, that when you move between states, your tax office needs to print out your records, send them to your new state's office, only for some poor soul to type them into their system because each state uses a different system without any common exchange format? Make it make sense!
And there is Saarland too…
And there are hundreds of electrical grid operators with different hardware requirements. In my eyes efficiency looks different.
Every country in the EU was created through warfare. Germany only unified because Prussia had the guns.
And the compromise was the Federation of Germany.
Basically all centralization of political power in human history has been accomplished by force. See Rome, Persia, Germany, USSR, etc. etc. etc. Even the USA's transition from a union of united States to The United States occurred under force of arms.
Sadly, this centralization of political power has been a disaster for mankind IMO.
Even as we've transitioned from monarchies to democracies over the last few centuries, the trend has largely resulted in the replacement of actual, determinative choices with merely having a millionth of a share of a choice. Not a determinative choice, but a say.
Consider the holy roman empire, for example. [0]
Under this scheme of decentralization, people had an actual choice of their government. Say you were a merchant in Mühlhausen circa 1700, and you found yourself in opposition to your local government. You could simply move a short distance to a different area and be beholdened to an entirely different government. You'd have 50 choices within 100 miles! While it's true that the HRE was all under the administration of one government, but it was extremely weak. It lacked, for example, the ability to levy direct taxes. After unification in 1870, the same merchant would've had to move much further to escape his government, and his options had been diminished by 95%. After European unification, he would have to travel to another continent!
While democracy has given us control of our governments in theory, in practice the "choice" it offers is much less empowering than the determinative choice afforded by decentralization. The larger our political entities grow, the more diluted our "say" and the fewer full choices are available to us. In the United States, we have less than 1/100,000,000th of a share of the choice in our chief executive!
While democracy is obviously preferable to Aristocracy/Monarchy/Tyranny, on it's own it is still only a marginal improvement. At worst, you can still end up with 49.9% of people living under a government they oppose. Decentralization solves this lingering problem, because it allows people to self-sort in and out of countries they don't like, allowing for people who truly despise their governments to choose themselves a new government.
In the absence of such a safety valve, people are forced into a zero-sum struggle for power. It is rule or be ruled. Dominate or be dominated. We're seeing this in the United States right now. We're not at each other's throats because we hate each other. Not even because we hate each other's politics in the abstract. We're at each other's throats because neither side is content to be ruled by the other.
The same reason that centralized entities only arise by force is the same reason they fall apart in the end. People don't want them. They don't want to be dominated.
Centralization of political power forces people into an inescapable struggle for power. It is the enemy of peace and tranquility, and a blight on humanity.
[0] https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Droysens-26.jpg
I believe your view of what democracy is tainted by what USA democracy looks like.
Quite a few countries have more or less successful parlamentary democracies, where winner-takes-all situations are avoided by design. In these, a party rarely has the upper hand and coalitions are the only means of reaching power. The agreements these coalitions forge to govern are a proxy of the compromises all societies have to agree on to function.
Which countries do you have in mind? In my experience, most parliamentary democracies have rules which actually exacerbate the issue. See for example the elections last year in Germany, where the CDU/CSU + SPD coalition won a majority in the Bundestag with less than 45% of the popular vote!
How do you account for the increased competitiveness of economies of scale in a globalized economy with free international trade in your recommendation?
I'm not quite sure what you mean by "economies of scale", which is normally a benefit of mass production.
It's true that centralization of political power can bring economic benefits, but the economic benefits stem from the elimination of economic/trade friction, not directly from the centralization of power per se. Which is to say that (most of) these economic benefits can be had without incurring the non-economic costs of political centralization.
Agreed, there needs to be an immediate existential threat for European countries to give up their autonomy
I work around German bureaucracy, and the loss of efficiency is real. Every state creates its own bureaucracy and its own software. Different people, departments and offices that rarely combine efforts, barely talk to each other, and never share data.
I was told that this decentralisation of power was a deliberate effort after Nazism, but as far as I know such issues were endemic in the Nazi government and military. Germany really is a union of small states, and perhaps never fully changed that.
This is slowly changing though. There is a visible effort to build software and processes at the federal level.
The federation in Germany is one lesson from the Nazis. Centralised power makes it easier for fascism or totalitarian governments to emerge. Recent example is the US with the instrument of executive orders. So it is deliberately designed to keep Germany small.
> the European Union risks subordination, division and deindustrialision all at once
Whose fault is that? Who is constantly forcing regulations which hurt EU industries?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Green_Deal#Job_losses...
https://www.euronews.com/my-europe/2025/12/16/eu-carmakers-t...
Instead of fixing the problems they have created they are now placing taxes on imported heavy goods.
https://www.euronews.com/my-europe/2026/01/01/eus-carbon-bor...
The regulations mentioned there are not necessarily wrong though. Decarbonisation and renewables are no longer purely environmental concerns, they are key objectives for the European security strategy to remove dependence on foreign tyrants and dictators. These jobs would have disappeared sooner or later anyways. But lots of new ones will be created in these new industries. The EU is merely getting dragged down by the established traditional fossil industry that wants to delay the transition as long as possible to squeeze every cent out of the market while they can. But this is bad for literally everyone involved in the long term. The only thing that is benefiting are next-quarter based exec bonuses. If Europe actually allowed for a disruptive startup environment (which unfortunately has its own set of safety issues), these companies would have been handed their lunch by now.
There are countries in the EU with sizeable coal reserves like Poland, Germany or Czech Republic. Current policies force them to abandon it and switch to natural gas which needs to be imported.
They could also build wind- and solar parks. They should, actually.
We do and the more renewables are present in the mix, the more expensive electricity gets. Despite using LED lights...
Oh my god there's European versions of the West Virginia "more coal jobs" grifters.
1.) In Germany without subsidies coal would phase out because it is too expensive. e.g. In western Germany since the 70s. 2.) People are Much more reluctant for coal mining anyway as it destroys lots of landscape.
So, no coal has no future in Germany
> remove dependence on foreign tyrants
Ahh, thats why the EU is moving to LNG, now I get it!
Those are exactly the same people who are dragging their feet in this case. The fossil industry is one of the most powerful lobbies.
> why the EU is moving to LNG
Is it? News for this resident of the EU. What exactly are you referencing?
Most states in the EU are focusing on renewables one way or another, are you talking about a specific country here or?
Renewables are a thing for the upper-class. I am refering to plain old heating in winter, which is being switched over from russian gas to american lng. Great achievement!
At the time it made sense, we believed the US to be an ally, like in the past. Obviously not true anymore so yeah, a mistake that needs to be corrected.
And no, renewables aren't for the upper class, the sun is free for everyone with panels, and panels can be bought relatively cheap today.
Having a place you can legally install panels is for the upper class. Do you own a house?
Got a balcony in your German apartment? Then you can use solar panels.
https://www.dw.com/en/boom-small-solar-devices-plugged-into-...
I'm sure it depends on the country, but in my country (Spain) you can literally go and buy solar panels in the local hardware store and install them without permits, even for renters given you don't destroy anything. And besides that, most owners (as a renter) are OK with you installing solar panels.
Never owned a place, had solar panels installed in the last three places I lived in, the first two were apartments, currently renting a house. None of the owners had problems with us installing solar panels.
I don't personally own infrastructure to import LNG either. Grid-scale renewables don't require people to own property.
> Having a place you can legally install panels is for the upper class. Do you own a house?
Owning a house does not require belonging to the "upper class" in Europe.
Middle class in Europe can't afford a single family home.
> Middle class in Europe can't afford a single family home.
At least for Germany, this statement is directly contradicted by visible evidence. I'm surrounded by middle class families owning single homes.
They own it or the bank owns it?
For the purposes of installing solar panels, does it matter?
LNG is just a temporary replacement. The machine is changing. Strange how people still just look at the little gears.
So interesting how Germany phased out their entire nuclear power program to dig more coal up.
That is still better than russian pipeline oil.
Your opinion.
> they are key objectives for the European security strategy to remove dependence on foreign tyrants and dictators.
Lol european security strategy? We switched from Russian dependence, to a more expensive US dependence. While also being strongly dependent on middle eastern gas and oil. What the hell kind of strategy is that?
> We switched from Russian dependence, to a more expensive US dependence
To be fair, most of us believed the US to be a reliable partner, based on previous track record, but things like that change quickly. So we thought we were changing something cheaper from a hostile entity, to something more expensive from an ally, but turns it we got it wrong, so new direction now.
The repeated failing of the EU (90s+) was under-appreciation of the economic / political / military pressure that could be brought by constraining key material and energy supplies.
If the EU (specifically Germany) had more presciently modeled out Russian foreign policy with a shift to increased EU reliance on Russian natural gas, there were steps it could have taken.
E.g. building in a tripwire for territorial invasion with the express responses of cutting Russian gas purchases on day 1, freezing Russian assets and access to European banking, and building storage / LNG terminals
Had the EU done this, loudly, Ukraine likely wouldn't have been invaded.
The EU's biggest mistake was presuming that everyone took the international order as inviolate as it did. (China, Russia, the US)
Yeah the EU got it wrong. Like they did for pretty much every policy of the last 20 years.
edit: Since I can no longer repy I will edit in place:
Just the kind of regulation that drives out investment and growth. Now we have no money printing tech giants and our best and brightest work for US companies. But we do have bragging rights with the desktop linux crowd, so that is something.
Yup, clearly making websites and platforms responsible for the data they store and process is absolutely horrible. How is one supposed to make money on selling user data if I have to give notice to the users that this is what I'm doing? Give me laissez faire markets or no market at all!
Isn't that precisely why they're trying to phase out fossil fuels?
A riddiculous pipe dream just like most EU policies.
https://youtube.com/shorts/s0yWk4cJT_I?si=dNXftp8bk3PY6Nfg
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/JZY38D3PtF4
I'm not clicking on a YouTube link. State your argument yourself.
Everything is made out of or requires fossil fuels. From concrete, your clothes, to your food. Phasing out fossil fuels is complete insanity.
edit: I cant reply so I will edit.
The policies are clearly insanity because EU industrial self immolation does nothing for the rest of the world. Does China, Indonesia, Africa, South America, India give a crap about saving the environment? They sure as hell do not. Most of them throw their trash directly into the ocean. All we do in europe is self harm while the broad problem goes entirely unsolved. How the hell are you going to develop and sell new technology, while destroying our economies at the same time. Complete pipe dream insanity.
> Everything is made out of or requires fossil fuels. From concrete, your clothes, to your food. Phasing out fossil fuels is complete insanity.
That's not true, but ok...
> Does China, Indonesia, Africa, South America, India give a crap about saving the environment?
Actually, they do. China is the biggest spender on investing in renewable energy-sources and moving away from fossil fuels. Africa and South America are continents, not Countries. And not sure why India or Indonesia are related here?
Other than that, I'm not sure if you are a troll, victim of poor sources or paid actor, but your quality of data really sucks.
Because the source of plastics in the ocean is traced back to those places. What exactly am I wrong on? China is mostly powered by coal and they are still building new coal plants.
> Because the source of plastics in the ocean is traced back to those places.
That's actually a bit disputed. But ok, it wasn't just really obvious from your writing what you meant here.
> China is mostly powered by coal and they are still building new coal plants.
Yes, and no. China is moving away from coal, they reduced their share by 20% in the last decades. It's now around 57% of their total usage. The number of new coal plants is also a bit disputed. First, they modernize many coal plants by building new, more efficient ones, and shutting down the old plants. Second, they are building many backup-plants, which are not really used outside of emergencies, which does happen from time to time it seems. And third, they are master of overplanning. Around 80% of their planned coal-plants were actually cancelled in the last years before the building started for real. This seems related to how their local and federal levels are handling budgets.
The only real problem is that their absolute coal consumption is still growing, because their consumption as a whole is growing. But long-term, there is likely a point where it's reaching its peak, and start shrinking. And speculation is here, that we are talking about ~10 years, not 50. So at that point, China, which is already producing for the whole world, will have acquired another good selling point which European countries have to beat.
> The only real problem is that their absolute coal consumption is still growing
As of last year I don't even think this is true. Do you have sources?
No, my source only included data until 2024; the recent numbers weren't added yet. Good to hear they reached a first bump.
What does plastic pollution have to do with carbon emissions?
China's coal usage is dropping every year. They build new coal plants to replace older ones, or leave them idle. Almost 90% of their new energy comes from solar power.
Please stop spreading fossil fuel industry lies here.
What do plastics in the ocean have to do with fossil fuels?
Insanity or opportunity? Like, the climate is already messed up, if we want to maintain our species standard of living then we need to move towards a society that emits much much less carbon.
If we don't then we'll either go extinct or regress to a level where we use less. Sure, it's gonna really really suck for the next while but there isn't really any other options.
As a benefit, if we do this then we can sell the technology to the rest of the world.
> Does China, Indonesia, Africa, South America, India give a crap about saving the environment?
That's precisely what the border carbon tax is about. They have to now, or their products will be noncompetitive in the worlds largest market.
Why doesn't this same argument apply to slave labor?
Those are the "sources" you chose to prove your claim? Is this supposed to be a parody?
The regulations are for the long-term-benefit of the EU, and it's citizen, even though they may come with some short-term-harm. This is always a bit of a problem, does one plan for the coming 50 years, or just the next reports of whatever makes you rich.
The joke here is, China is a master of long-term-planning and execution, which is why they are on the rise now. Yet many complain, take china as a threat and demand brain-dead short-term-solutions, leading to even more long-term-problems.
> The regulations are for the long-term-benefit of the EU
Will Europe still exist when they are done making it better?
Yes, it will, unless there will be a nuclear war or something..there is very little actual problems. People are very busy with looking on numbers and focusing on single problems, but hardly the big picture. Any complaints about EU and their countries are high-level nagging, people complaining whether they can buy two golden pools or have to be satisfied with one. EU and most of their countries are filthy rich, have a good foundation and while they have the occasional internal problems, they are not on a road to burn down and lose everything.
Bad things can always happen, of course, we just had multiple of them in the last 5+ years. But we did survive it and adapted, so the probability is much higher that nothing catastrophical world-shattering will be happening again in the next decades. We are moving back to the "normal" trouble and EU so far has shown a very good survivability in those years. Heck, in 2008-2012 there was far more trouble for EU than today.
Fossil Fuels are dead, man.
Renewables are the future and the EU is amongst the leaders. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2026/jan/22/wind-and...
Up until recently, paying a small price to benefit the environment made sense.
Unfortunately, with the recent geopolitical shenanigans it doesn't any more.
Heck, we'll start burning oil like mad to fuel the re-armament.
Maybe after the next large war, there won't be many humans left and at least it will be good for the environment I guess ?
Renewables don't just benefit the environment. They're literally free energy machines, perpetual motion alike. You want as much energy as possible for as cheap as possible, you want renewables. You want energy sovereignty without fuel imports, you want renewables.
Apart from the part where you don't get to choose when they generate. Hopefully less of an issue in a continent–sized interconnected grid.
> Heck, we'll start burning oil like mad to fuel the re-armament.
Drones are the hot new thing in warfare. They run on electricity.
Deindustrialisation is mostly a consequence of high energy costs which is due to carbon taxes. They are fighting a problem which they have caused .
Solar is the cheapest form of energy averaged over the whole year. 2025 was the first year where more total electricity was produced by renewables than not.
It has the obvious problem that it doesn't work at night and in winter. That's a big problem. I don't know how to fix that.
Yeah that's a theory. Practically you have something called electricity exchange in Leipzig where price bottom is set by the most expensive power source.
That's how every electricity market works and the only way that's been discovered for them to possibly work. It means solar producers, if they're getting paid the sky–high USA natgas price while paying nothing at all, are making huge profits, which explains why there are suddenly so many solar farms, eh?
These savings don't trickle to the end customers. It's only making middlemen richer.
Well then why aren't there competitive middlemen?
Companies can (and do) install solar for their own consumption. No middleman involved.
Every study I've read that supports the "cheap solar" thesis assumes sunny days in normal temperatures, and never includes enough storage to maintain consistent output overnight (after sunny days in normal temperatures, let alone bad days).
In other words, they count on non-solar backup... which not only makes solar more expensive, but basically redundant.
Until Solar+storage is the cheapest form of energy while delivering its promised output at 4AM after a cloudy day in freezing temperatures, the "solar is cheap" stuff is simply dishonest.
That is true. We should not discount the drawbacks of solar and wind, nor their upsides. When they are working, they are producing energy almost completely for free. The advantage of free energy, even when intermittent, is so great that we should spend considerable effort trying to make the grid use it as much as possible.
Deindustrialisation started well before the recent energy price hikes.
As an entrepreneur with businesses in both the US and EU, a federation is probably several steps too far from political will. Instead:
- Let banks operate and merge across borders, especially neobanks/fintechs. European banks are easily 10+ yrs ahead of the US in terms of tech and customer service but they lack scale and capital, especially in the credit side of things.
- Credit, again: we need the equivalent of D&B/Fico for Europe: a single credit bureau that can judge creditworthiness of people and organizations. Even the US has solved this through private companies, why can't Europe? Fellow Euros are shocked when I tell them that a 0-day LLC in the US can get $20k in credit card limits almost immediately.
The rest are easy, especially for web/internet companies. But if we have to raise credit/money based on the rules of the biggest (and slowest!) economies, then the EU is fucked.
>Let banks operate and merge across borders, especially neobanks/fintechs.
I'm not sure more centralisation of banking is a good idea. Too big to fail and all that. The UK has never really recovered from the banking crisis thanks to its oversized financial activities.
Oh, you mean the declining economy with (checks notes) the largest startup ecosystem in Europe? :-)
The economy where per capita gdp has hardly moved in the last 15 years.
Do we want more GDP? Look where that plan took America. Europe seems to feel it has enough GDP and can pursue additional goals.
What stops you spending $20k and declaring bankruptcy for your LLC?
Credit scores are probably illegal in the EU due to the laws against mass surveillance.
You got it, FICO/Equifax/Transunion stop it. The $20k is basically raised on the founders' credit, not the LLCs; richer founders can get a lot more credit right up front. And yes, FICO is probably infeasible in the EU with current laws, that's the point. Fix that first, these businesses are just as critical as actual banks.
Mass surveillance laws don't prevent a bank from doing due diligence on a loan when you ask for a loan, or from suing you if you lied. In Germany it's hard to get a liability shield and there's no compassion for idiots — if you borrowed $20k by lying to the bank about your other loans, your wages will be garnished for life until you pay it back including punitive interest. They could rely on that instead of mass surveillance.
I have a feeling FICO would be more destructive than beneficial for Europe. Look what it's done to America. Borrowing $20k for a startup is not worth that.
The problem isn't that. The problem is that I can't go to a German bank with a non-German tax ID (and without German residency) and get a loan. I am limited to the handful of banks in my country (and Germans to theirs).
FICO doesn't just do aggregation, they also do integration: as an American, running away from credit card debt to a small credit union (a community bank in the States) is as bad as stiffing Citi or JPMorgan.
The American credit market is far more liquid than Europe, partly because it's much larger (one market as opposed to 27) but also because its graded and stratified: as a bank/fund you can choose the risk you want to take and take it accordingly. We're definitely missing that down to individual/SME scale.
Are they forbidden or do they just not want to? There's a service called Raisin which aggregates interest–bearing savings accounts from across the EU from participating banks. Maybe that is now your profitable business idea: build a Raisin for loans.
They're definitely not. You can 100% have a list of late payments on loans by person and business. This already exists in some places.
You can't hoover up every other piece of personal data to build it, but you could definitely get consent to access this information for other loans.
Credit scores are mass surveillance. Essential to the idea is that you already have one in the background. If a bank uses some calculation based on information you provide to decide to give you credit, it's still not a credit score.
> Credit, again: we need the equivalent of D&B/Fico for Europe
Hell no, please! If recent years have shown anything, it's that the US shouldn't serve as a blueprint for the EU, or any other aspiring federation.
Not going to happen without an agreed single working language, which can't realistically be anything other than English, and that'll be unacceptable, so the idea is (very sadly) dead on arrival.
The EU itself (not the countries) does every communication in every EU country language. I think it's the second largest employer of translators in the world, behind only the UN.
For a business, the language is whatever you agree with your customers. You are free to choose. If you communicate with the EU itself, any EU country language is accepted.
Language diversity is just a fact of life in Europe and not going away soon, that's like asking the US to give up the idea of states and become a single country.
De facto it's English currently even if they don't want to admit it
I kind of assumed brexit would make people give up pretending, but that doesn’t seem to have happened
English is the most widely spoken language. It is the language you are most likely to have in common with a random European citizen — in the same way Chinese is the language you are most likely to have in common with a random Earthling. This doesn't mean if you do something in English (Chinese) the whole continent (planet) will understand it. It is very useful to know. Especially if you talk to someone who travels internationally a lot, some rich businessman or non–local politician, they surely speak English too.
>in the same way Chinese is the language you are most likely to have in common with a random Earthling
It's still going to be English, although not by a huge margin if you include non-Mandarin Chinese.
How does Poland manage to be industrially active and growing? Despite having only 10 per cent of the total EU population and not being in a federalist relation with Malta, Cyprus and Portugal?
Partly by not importing Germano-French bureaucratic dysfunction (Papiere, Papiere über alles). Which would only grow more prominent with further integration.
Brute force does not matter nearly as much as quality of governance does. Qing China was a big, helpless monster eaten alive by smaller, more agile competitors.
Compare Poland's per-capita GDP to that of Germany to get a different picture:
https://countryeconomy.com/countries/compare/poland/germany?...
Poland is growing quickly because it has cheap labour (for the moment).
Moldova or Pakistan has even cheaper labour. South Sudan has even cheaper labour than Moldova.
Surely there must be more factors at play. For example, the general educational level in the country or its perceived reliability when it comes to FDI.
Well we are having a discussion about the EU. Last time I checked Pakistan is not a member.
>How does Poland manage to be industrially active and growing?
Because in a single market new capacity will grow where costs are cheaper. If (Cost of Good X in PL) + (Transport Cost PL->FR) < ( Cost of Good X in FR) then it is clear where the growth will be.
With France it's pretty clear, in a single market with low cost Eastern Europe it can only be competitive in very high tech industries given how prohibitive its welfare/retirement system is from the business point of view.
"given how prohibitive its welfare/retirement system is from the business point of view."
True, the French government redistributes the most money in the entire OECD (close to 60 per cent of GDP) and this is mostly driven by heavy welfare and old-age rent spending. They are pushing the ceiling to see what is still possible.
One interesting question is: if this French model spreads across the rest of the EU, will the EU as a whole become more or less competitive on the global stage? I would guess "less".
0 chance it can spread. PAYGO systems in general were set up when expanding demographics were not in question. Nobody is stupid enough now to switch to a system that requires an ever growing labor pool in perpetuity.
The problem is that there is no "democratic" way to get rid of them because in most WEU countries retirees/close to retired already make up enough of the population to block any such measure at the ballot box. See for example France.
What if PAYGO adjusted based on tax revenue, automatically?
If you start from the bottom, it's easy to grow fast when you have others to copy and learn from. It's similar with startups and enterprises. The startup always appears sleek, fast, agile, sexy, but the slow enterprise, still moves much more in a short timeframe than the startup in their whole lifetime. It's the simple difference between relative and absolute numbers, and the caps of growth.
Again, compared to whom and what?
Moldova and Ukraine were economically comparable to Poland in 1990 per capita. They have fallen far, far behind it.
Always compare comparable countries (or startups for that purpose). It is easy to explain away successes as long as failures in very similar conditions are ignored.
I don't know, but would a significant component of Poland's growth stem from the fact that it is still a significant net recipient of EU funding?
That's German propaganda. The Poles have more common sense when it comes to welfare and work ethic. Most Ukrainians that went there are working and not even complaining (I mean why would they? they are a normal hard-working people), while in Germany most of them are on welfare (one gets spoiled very fast when you get free money and have no obligations).
1% of GDP (assuming my calculation isn't nonsense) when growth is between 3-4% isn't insignificant.
Net EU funding appears to be roughly 1% of GDP (source being random internet searches and rough calculation).
So are sluggish economies like Hungary.
Again, it is not the amount of money you receive as whether you can use them in a productive way. Poland invested heavily into infrastructure and was able to reduce the NIMBY problem that is so prominent in Czechia or Germany and leads to decade-long paper wars over every railway, road and housing project. Of course they now reap the benefits.
As a neighbour, I am a bit frustrated by the difference that is becoming ever more visible. CZ is stuck in a bad vetocracy, hopefully the new government, populist as it may be, will change it a bit. (One reason for my hope is that the Mayor party is in opposition. They were the biggest fans of the vetocracy, because it gave power to regional politicians.)
In general, if you can learn from somebody, adapt the good things and not the bad ones. If you are allowed to choose, of course. But that requires some degree of freedom.
For sure net funding isn't everything, but I am inclined to think it is something significant.
Sure, but significant != dominant. That is why you compare comparable countries which had comparable EU funding available and look at the outcomes.
I know Poles quite well. There is a can-do optimistic mentality present there that is long gone from Germany. Young people aren't afraid to start their own businesses etc. There is much, much less "climate depression", ideas like degrowth barely survive on the intellectual fringes.
This, too, makes quite a lot of difference. Strong Green movements seem to be rather dangerous to most industries, not just directly (through regulation and fees), but indirectly, by nudging young people away from industrial professions. For example, the pool of nuclear engineers in many countries of Western Europe has seriously shrunk, which limits the general ability to revive the sector, even though there is some political will now.
Poland’s constitutional court rules EU energy policies breach national sovereignty https://notesfrompoland.com/2025/06/11/polands-constitutiona...
"How does Poland manage to be industrially active and growing?"
Fear of Russia would be my guess.
They had one of the longest streaks of growth since the 1990s until Covid, even during times when Russia was a failed state with a drunken guy at the top.
Polish growth does not correlate with fluctuating levels of Russian menace at all.
Also by being a net recipient of billions of EU subsidiarias every year.
So are many other EU members whose economies aren't anywhere nearly as vibrant.
I may be skimming but isn't this what the EU currently is?
EU is a rare coalition in history, carefully implemented but still an expirement. There are three types of members: low (south/east), middle (north/west) and Germany. Basically money is flowing in producing Germany and then back to the consuming lows. The middles are neutral to money flow.
This vital rotation is expected to continue in the future albeit with slower speed. The recent collaborations with South America and India aim to help this flow go on.
The current US policy is making a great favor to Europe as they cause a uniting instinct against a common danger. There is no need for same language and same most common surname 'Smith' to span 5000km.
You re more likely to see the creation of the Spanish federation than the political union of disparate european interests currently held together via monetary injections
It certainly starts to feel like they view both of those as actual goals, not stated goals of course.
In WW2 the Germans wanted to incorporate the Netherlands into the Third Reich.
Even the Dutch Nazi party split over it.
The number of times I've read articles about the upcoming "Silicon Valley in Europe" warrants an article running through the last twenty years of the EU getting its act together "any day now".
Yeah of course, Europe has already been destroyed by the EU bureaucracy, but lets give them even more powers to implement their dumb ideas even faster, such as... "oh, how about we stopped producing cars by 2030?", or again... "oh, war is bad, guns kills, how about we pass CSR laws that dissuade banks from funding military companies".
When I visited Europe, or talk to a European in the US, the first question you always get asked:
"Where are you from?"
This makes me quite uncomfortable, because I'm immediately getting stereotyped based on my parents DNA. (In the US, the question is often "What do you do for work? What do you do for fun?")
I have strong doubts that Europe can actually become a single nation of states. If France doesn't screw it up by demanding to be first among equals, Germany or Poland will probably side with the US who will be against this from happening.
Your parent's DNA? Really? Not the experiences in your childhood that formed you?
it's too late.
Too late in what context? There have been diverse societies in Europe for thousands of years. To have got so far as a union is not a step backward.
Too late to change the fact that EU is no longer competitive despite historically strong core competencies and no shortage of talented people.
Manufacturing? Energy is way too expensive.
Tech? Admirable attempts using relatively little financial resources to keep up with the US and China haven't worked out. An issue of scale, not talent.
The complex regulatory body and risk-averse politics slows everything down (except the process of creating new regulations)
Germany is a prime example of all of the above.
Oh, and let's also make our energy supplies dependent on an adversary after shutting down perfectly fine nuclear power plants while fantasizing about a green hydrogen future while operating coal plants into the 2040s. (Also Germany)
Though to correct myself Hitler also had a shot at it in a different way.
I think supporters of this idea take the citizens' loyalty for granted. Much like the nations within Europe do.
It would be super easy for the EU to charm the European populations into EU loyalty instead of national loyalty. All it would take is to offer good deals to the individual person. To start, a minimum €10 000 per month salary for any citizen taking up military duty. Home ownership to young people who contribute to the federation. And such things, the possibilities are endless.
But we all know that the disdain that the EU leaders and national European leaders have against their own population is bottomless, and that they would rather do anything except building loyalty among their population.
> It would be super easy for the EU to charm the European populations into EU loyalty instead of national loyalty. All it would take is...
Lol, I suggest you start forming an EU soccer team :)
I think you just presented good evidence for my suggestion. All the greatest soccer teams are successful because they are willing to spend big money on getting loyal players, from anywhere.
I think and hope EU leaders are wary of the idea of becoming a federation, and would only do that if it had clear widespread support among both the population and country leaders.
The stagnation in Europe (compared to the US) is due to EU over-regulation and industrial suicide caused by net zero policy.
> [chemicals sector] investments fell from 1.9 megatonnes of capacity in 2024 to 0.3 megatonnes last year, as the sector struggled with high energy prices, suffocating bureaucracy and an expansion of Chinese imports
https://www.ft.com/content/6d7dee96-4d6f-431c-a229-b78f9298f...
From 2019 to 2023, the EU recorded over 853,000 manufacturing job losses, with the largest losses in automotive sectors in Poland, Czech Republic, Romania, and Germany.
The European Green Deal was forecast to put up to 11 million jobs “at risk” in various sectors if adjustments weren’t made:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Green_Deal#Job_losses...
We seem to think that if we destroy our own industry, ship emissions abroad, and marginally reduce global CO2 emissions, we will inspire the rest of the world (i.e. China and India) to follow suit. That's self-evidently ridiculous.
EU national leaders need to stop peacocking in Davos and Brussels, and start listening to their own people, and their own businesses, who are crying out for sensible energy costs, and for red tape and bureaucracy to get out the way of business.
[flagged]
The population of Africa is estimated to be 5-6 times the population of Europe by 2060. For context, in 1990 Africa had slightly less people than Europe. Today more than double.
I wonder how that can happen once climate change starts affecting their ability to grow food. It might make the current immigration problems look quite minor once you have 500 million people knocking on the door and wanting to come in.
[dead]
>Mass importation of third worlders
That's not a policy of the EU, it's controlled by individual countries.
Oh man... you're so right. We all know this is happening and none of us feels the freedom to combat this truths in EU anymore.
Sarcasm? Thanks to the EU, it's now legal to have a public wifi hotspot in Germany.
The EU will become another empire, which means that somebody gets to be Minnisota, and then exporting there worst contradictions, will need a Gaza.
No matter the structure there, without affordable gas from a certain neighbor - Europe simply no longer has the capability to be an industrialized block. You can't smelt aluminum with solar nor make fertilizer, chemicals - can run AI data centers with it - sorry. Energy is EVERYTHING. Without it, Europe becomes a tourist Disney Land for the worlds rich.
Why can't you do those things on solar? Actually, I'd think they're ideal matches. Aluminium smelters use so much electricity that even ones that are connected to non-renewable grids have contracts to ramp production up or down at a moment's notice, to absorb supply and demand swings in the rest of the grid. However much electricity you think they use, they use twenty times that. These are places wired with 100 kiloamp busbars.
The point is they're well used to variable electricity supply. Cloud comes past? No problem, the furnaces run slower for a moment. I think they need a certain base load to keep them hot as they can't restart them if the aluminium solidifies inside.
Aluminium smelting is an electrochemical process. Running electricity through the ore turns it into the metal and that's why they need so much. It's not just electric heating. They use direct current, so that's a good match for solar panels too. Two and a half volts per cell.
Fertilizer is something similar, as far as I know. They use electrochemical arc reactors to make nitrogen compounds from air. These can also scale up and down instantly.
AI training is pretty good too. If a cloud comes past you can pause the training run for a moment or underclock. The firmware for that might not be there yet, but the laws of physics quite like the idea.
Why do you think these particular things require natural gas?
It’s the exact same reason you wouldn’t want the lights failing in an operating theater, nor a lift not going to the 30th floor just because the power became unavailable.
Show us on a Hall–Héroult cell where the operating theatre elevator shaft is
The Dutch has ample gas in Gronigen, and Norway has a hell lot of gas also.
Doubt this. Europeans are "euroracist", protectionist and unable to see the bigger picture.
As a european I have exited the continent, sold all my properties and will never return to this place ever again.
> As a european I have exited the continent, sold all my properties and will never return to this place ever again.
Where did you move to?
100% guarantee either Thailand or Singapore. Always the case with these types of posts.
Well Singapore has higher economic freedom index than most (all) places in Europe, except maybe Lichtenstein which is sometimes not ranked.
Singapore executes transit travellers with personal amounts of drugs and men with long hair. Not my picture of freedom, no matter what their economy is doing.
A ban from the 60s refused entry to hippies, it fell out of use and was removed from the books early in the 1990s.
At no point in time were Led Zeppelin, the Bee Gees, Cliff Richard, Kitarō or other long haired men transiting Singapore during that period (1960-1990) executed.
Not very free regardless.
Like the USofA, freedom in Singapore is f(wealth).
Legally, justice wise, it's still rooted in English common law from it's time as a colony prior to the British getting over run by Japanese on bicycles.
Even its class bigotry is rooted in colonial British attitudes.
It's wild watching people damn them for being authoritarian, yet by various polls 77% of Singapore want the death penalty for drug traffickers. This is high enough that i.e. in USA it would definitely be popular enough to pass an amendment to civil rights to guarantee execution even if the freedom from jeopardy to death penalty had been prior enshrined.
When "authoritarianism" used to secure economic freedom, "authoritarianism" bad. When authoritarianism used to stop the majority from executing drug traffickers, authoritarianism ... good?
Which polls? Political elections? Professional polls from experts? Or some random poll on the streets from some TV-Station or influencer? People also answer very different depending on the prospected outcome, thus the "seriousness" of their answer.
> This is high enough that i.e. in USA it would definitely be popular enough to pass an amendment to civil rights to guarantee execution even if the freedom from jeopardy to death penalty had been prior enshrined.
And legal system in Singapore works like USA? This seems like a strange claim.
>Which polls? Political elections? Professional polls from experts? Or some random poll on the streets from some TV-Station or influencer?
All the above. Political elections of people that are pro death penalty, professional polls commissioned by the MHA (and done continually in separate years), and also you can hear them from people on the streets if that's your preferred way.
>People also answer very different depending on the prospected outcome, thus the "seriousness" of their answer.
It's not simply a "prospected" outcome, the people in the polls literally are living in a country actively doing it and has been doing it for quite awhile. The information is out there to see what they're getting.
>And legal system in Singapore works like USA? This seems like a strange claim.
This is your fifth consecutive interrogative cross-examination question which is clearly aimed at presenting a counter-narrative without having to use the courage of making any assertions of your own, I only note here that your "question" implies a straw man that I've presented they work the same. But if you insist, the requirement of amending Singapore constitution is easily met in the context of the death penalty for drugs (2/3 MP + possibly 2/3 national referendum), were it that their civil rights were prior codified there to prohibit it.
The Germans voted for Hitler. That doesn't mean Hitler was good.
Of course not. But show me a good system where 23% minority of the people can define civil rights in contradiction to the 77% and you will be better off, because that's the only way you can answer my prior question with inconsistencies presented.
Sure. It's any system where the 77% want something really bad, and the 23% don't. For example, a system where 77% of people want drug traffickers executed and 23% don't. That's a system where listening to the 23% is better than listening to the 77%.
A system like this cannot remain stable, and because it's unstable, it is not good.
Singapore is a very racist place and has an authoritarian regime.
Why is Europe being outdone by authoritarian racists? Singapore started out as a little shithole in the corner of Malaysia, nothing particularly special to start from and a long ways from any rich country to trade with, maybe you can learn something from the racists.
1.) Someone complains about racism in Europe. In this regard Singapore is not an alternative. 2.) Sure European countries can learn something from Singapore or China. But definitely not on topics like racism and freedom of press. 3.) Was Singapore a shithole place giving its location? I doubt it because it started as a harbour where location matters. On the other hand Singapore government was quiet capable. So very interwined topic and longer discussion is needed.
Of course. Where else?
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Just as the US is proving that giving power to federations will make states powerless, Draghi finds it the perfect time to suggest a federation.
We all knew this would eventually be the proposed path. The EU politicians and staffers obviously have a vested interest in saying yes. It means the EU will stop having to fight for ratification. It also means centralized planning and less fine-grained adjustments for local needs. As always.
This is not more power to the people or "we're stronger together." This is a simple attempt at an opportunistic power grab. Please don't let it happen here too.