4 ms·

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

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.

general1465 9mo ago
> "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...
- lucasRW 9mo ago
  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.
  - myrmidon 9mo ago
    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.
chongli 9mo ago
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.
- epolanski 9mo ago
  I have a decade of experience working with european companies, digital and not. Language is not a barrier at all. Laws and regulations are.
- ekaryotic 9mo ago
  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.
  - ethbr1 9mo ago
    Esperanto for all! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Esperanto https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Esperanto
    - mothballed 9mo ago
      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?
      - direwolf20 9mo ago
        If my concern is % of GDP I'd rather learn Mandarin.
        yetihehe 9mo ago
        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.
tistoon 9mo ago
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!
- Tom1380 9mo ago
  And I am Ligurian, before Italian. If I can be both, I can be all three
- OKRainbowKid 9mo ago
  By that logic, Germany would have never formed.
  - croon 9mo ago
    I'll add Italy, the UK, Spain, Switzerland, Greece.
  - tistoon 9mo ago
    By this logic, we'll never get rid of nations and become one federated people of Earth... See? I can switch eras and make an irrelevant comment too! :)
    - OKRainbowKid 9mo ago
      By what logic? The one in your comment I replied to? Yeah I don't subscribe to that logic. I don't see how my comment was irrelevant or why you mention "switching eras", when in your comment you used the quite absolute "never". I honestly don't get your point.
- epolanski 9mo ago
  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)..

general1465 9mo ago

> "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...

lucasRW 9mo ago
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.
- myrmidon 9mo ago
  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.

chongli 9mo ago

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.

epolanski 9mo ago
I have a decade of experience working with european companies, digital and not. Language is not a barrier at all. Laws and regulations are.
ekaryotic 9mo ago
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.
- ethbr1 9mo ago
  Esperanto for all! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Esperanto https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Esperanto
  - mothballed 9mo ago
    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?
    - direwolf20 9mo ago
      If my concern is % of GDP I'd rather learn Mandarin.
      - yetihehe 9mo ago
        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.

tistoon 9mo ago

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!

Tom1380 9mo ago
And I am Ligurian, before Italian. If I can be both, I can be all three
OKRainbowKid 9mo ago
By that logic, Germany would have never formed.
- croon 9mo ago
  I'll add Italy, the UK, Spain, Switzerland, Greece.
- tistoon 9mo ago
  By this logic, we'll never get rid of nations and become one federated people of Earth... See? I can switch eras and make an irrelevant comment too! :)
  - OKRainbowKid 9mo ago
    By what logic? The one in your comment I replied to? Yeah I don't subscribe to that logic. I don't see how my comment was irrelevant or why you mention "switching eras", when in your comment you used the quite absolute "never". I honestly don't get your point.
epolanski 9mo ago
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)..