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They all talk about the importance of European digital sovereignty and then continue to do the exact opposite behind the scenes. To be honest and I say this as

They all talk about the importance of European digital sovereignty and then continue to do the exact opposite behind the scenes. To be honest and I say this as a Dutch person, this is typical Dutch (government). Basically two rules in Dutch politics: (1) always choose the option that pleases the US the most; (2) always postpone solving issues to the latest possible moment (US dependence, nitrogen deposition, childcare benefits scandal, gas-induced earthquakes). France, Germany, etc. are much better examples when it comes to sovereignty. As an aside the parliament wants to stop the Solvinity acquisition or stop renewing the contract with Solvinity. But the VVD (one of the parties in government) is always going to choose what is best for big business (the party is one big revolving door) or the US.

miohtama 5mo ago
It's not only Dutch. Instead of building sovereignity, the EU thought they could regulate their way and force everyone to bend the knee because of their share as a trading partner. This started 20 years ago. However what has happened is that the EU's soft power is crumbling, but the politicians have hard to grasp with the reality they could somehow dictate things globally. AI will only further accelerate this. Only way to have control is to have domestic actors you can push around.
- jorvi 5mo ago
  > However what has happened is that the EU's soft power is crumbling Uh, no. The US soft power is turning to dust whilst the EU is out there building the new free [trade] world, with itself as the biggest lynchpin. What has happened the past ±30 years is that most EU countries cut spending on their militaries to the bone, because big brother USA would take care of it anyway. Now that we are returning to a multi-polar world, suddenly the EU is left scrambling for hard power that it doesn't have. That's why they can't play hardball when the US does a new ridiculous thing, because they simply lack the hard power to back up Ukraine. The US is sorely going to regret their antics though. Long term, the EU is going to switch to their own stacks, both for military but also things like cloud and other tech. It's trillions of $ the US economy will be missing out on. And voting in a Democratic president, senate and house is not gonna change a thing about it, because the US has proven itself to be a fundamentally unreliable, if not outright hostile partner.
  - skippyboxedhero 5mo ago
    It is difficult to think of an economic region that is more opposed to free trade than Europe (that isn't a comedy country). Possibly some countries in South America? Trade within Europe has massive restrictions. I have no idea why, given the stated aims of Europe...we are posting this on a post about the Netherlands trying to protect office software ffs, people think this isn't the case. One of the reasons why the EU created a trade bloc, and the same reasons why you see the same attempts in areas of the world like South America, was to limit the impact of free trade. This should be completely obvious given that the EU is not competitive in areas where they lack the ability to limit competition. Also, I will point out: US policy is for the EU to do exactly the thing that you are suggesting. This has been the consistent position of Trump since 2016. The main blockers for this have been politicians in the EU. I am not sure how you equate being unreliable with subsidising EU defence spending to the tune of multiple trillions so that EU countries can spend on welfare either. The EU self-image is totally bizarre, it is so out of touch with reality. Hostile to all forms of change and innovation: actually one of the greatest free traders there has ever been. Xenophobic and hostile to certain countries: possibly one of the greatest allies to these countries ever. Never gets any support on Ukraine, would be a leader if the US weren't such bastards: spent multiple decades fuelling Putin's state.
    - inglor_cz 5mo ago
      There are still some protectionist issues on the single market itself. For example, Poland defends its rail operator, PKP Intercity, against foreign competition by a series of dirty tricks, including "just never registering a sale of a depot to a competing corporation in the land registry".
      - joe_mamba 5mo ago
        Almost every major EU country, has implanted some domestic protectionist rules to protect some of its politically well connected lobbyist industries or jobs from cheaper or more efficient intra-EU competition buying them out. The restrictions almost never are in reverse.
    - 5mo ago
- graemep 5mo ago
  Europeans (and not just the EU) think they still have the influence on the world they had in the 1980s when their economies were a much larger proportion of the global economy. Europeans have no idea what the world looks like from Asia which contains most of the world's population and generates a third of global GDP.
  - ffaccount2 5mo ago
    Americans (and not just the US) think they still have the influence on the world they had in the 1980s when their economies were a much larger proportion of the global economy. Americans have no idea what the world looks like from Asia which contains most of the world's population and generates a third of global GDP.
    - graemep 5mo ago
      It is a general western problem to some extent, but the US has a a faster growing economy than any of the big European economies. It is still a super-power.
      - cess11 5mo ago
        The other year the US was beaten by a starved little country on the edge of the Arabian Peninsula, and recently by a somewhat large country by the Persian Gulf. Currently their only real ally is getting beaten by FPV drones handled by a guerilla force. The US has very little influence today compared to a decade or more ago. To the extent that the world at large cares about the US it's because they are committing genocide and destroying global trade logistics. All of their former allies are trying to substitute them out, or at least hedge with other international relations. As far as I can tell, outside certain parts of the Occident, no one cares about new US movies or television series anymore. The Oscars gather some interest because some people want to know if any entertainment industry people will go against the regime and say something negative about mass murder of children, but that's about it. Future generations will be shaped more by chinese and indian movies than usian ones. When apartheid South Africa was about to crumble it also initiated nasty military campaigns and faked political and military supremacy for a while, as did Idi Amin's Uganda. I'd bet something similar is going on in the US. Some people are still stuck in the late Cold War, notably EU politicians like von der Leyen and Kaja Kallas, as well as most swedish top politicians. They cannot imagine a world where the US is not calling the shots and will drag Europe further into global irrelevancy by idiotically paying tribute and kneeling for the US. Pretty much the rest of the world is disgusted and horrified by the bumbling nastiness of contemporary US empire.
- yxhuvud 5mo ago
  What? In this case the problem isn't that EU wants to dictate things globally, but US laws that do just that. EU laws just apply to Europe. As time goes on and European agencies get their shit together and actually start to follow their own rules, it will mean a shitton of business will leave US companies.
- iwontberude 5mo ago
  The problem for the EU is being so consumer centric but having a weak currency and diminished manufacturing (thanks to Russian invasion).
- miohtama 5mo ago
  We can see this already in the case of failed EU Digital Services Act that is teethless due to trade negotiations with the US https://www.politico.eu/article/eu-big-tech-law-meant-to-move-fast-it-hasnt/ https://www.politico.eu/article/eu-big-tech-law-meant-to-mov...
dgellow 5mo ago
> always postpone solving issues to the latest possible moment Germany has the exact same issue. Always looking to keep the status quo for as long as possible. It’s really a structural problem, it’s the result of the political system, elected leadership, demographics (mostly the voting population aging rapidly). I expect the same issue is shared by most Western European countries
- embedding-shape 5mo ago
  Isn't this simply a "human thing", keeping the status quo for as long as possible? I see the same European country I'm from, where I'm living currently, the South American country my wife is from and every single country I visit. Maybe another framing, is there any countries where this isn't true? Where truly the default is to go against the status quo and continuously improve no matter what? I know there are a few countries people think are like that, but when you start reading about it, turns out to be kind of "hyped" and not matching reality.
  - dgellow 5mo ago
    Some countries with different politics like China do not seem to suffer the same issues, or at least not yet. Or maybe the country is defending a different status quo (the mono-party)? But they seem to be eager to develop the infrastructure and country as a whole. Not that I would want to live under their political system, to be clear. I wish we could have a democratic system AND also be eager to develop our regions instead of being so protective of everything
    - legulere 5mo ago
      I don’t think it’s different politics directly in China. The people believe that change means change for the better. In the west people have lost all hope for progress.
      - dgellow 5mo ago
        The people of China don’t have much say, I’m not sure what they believe matters too much, the government has a strong control over the media and can and will silence dissenting voices. In europe we’ve been generally pretty bad over the past decades at presenting positive arguments for liberalism, which is a shame. Similarly the EU is notoriously bad at communicating how it benefits the people, most of the communication assumes people already accepted it was a positive thing and already bought into European values, isn’t of arguing why they matter. The fact EU members blame EU institutions for their own local issues whenever something goes wrong doesn’t help…
stingraycharles 5mo ago
Don’t forget that they’re in the process of letting our digital government identity being managed by a US company. It’s absolutely ridiculous.
Waterluvian 5mo ago
This is part of the point of Carney’s Davos speech. Us middle powers need to de-Americanize together or we don’t stand a chance at succeeding.
- WarmWash 5mo ago
  Which might be impossible given that sacrifices will have to be made in the interim, and people already riot if you even hint at moving retirement age up a year.
  - throwaway85825 5mo ago
    The problem is the government treating people like the enemy drowning them in paperwork. Western governments believe they can create the perfect citizen if they just surveill them and regulate them enough.
weinzierl 5mo ago
> France, Germany, etc. are much better examples when it comes to sovereignty. France maybe, Germany most definitely not.
- Georgelemental 5mo ago
  No, not France either. It used to be, and some inertia from the Gaullist past remains, but the current leadership is as useless as everyone else.
vanviegen 5mo ago
Another way to look at it is that things just move slowly in government land. The tax office moving towards Microsoft has probably been in preparation for half a decade... And do you really believe the government is technically capable of switching DigiD to a different provider on a (relative) moments notice without causing large scale outages? We'll start seeing government bodies moving away from US IT suppliers in a couple of years.
- WarmWash 5mo ago
  The actual question is if (capable) SWEs will choose working for (or be a founder of) Dutch/Euro tech companies over US ones, or even leave the US to live there. Europe is an excellent value prop if you want to be a bartender or baker. Its decidedly less so if you want to be a white collar/gold collar worker.
  - vanviegen 5mo ago
    > Its decidedly less so if you want to be a white collar/gold collar worker. If you want to earn big money, you're better of in the US, for sure. Quality of life though, as a white collar worker? That does probably have its effect on economic growth..
    - WarmWash 5mo ago
      >That does probably have its effect on economic growth.. Yes it does, it has kept the US economy growing and relevant. Europe has been economically stagnant and resting on its laurels for 30 years. Also QoL in the US is high, you just need something like an SWE job to access it.
  - CalRobert 5mo ago
    I left the US in my 20's to live in Europe and I like raising kids here (I'm now in my 40's) but honestly... it was a stupid thing to do. Meanwhile, my in-laws, who stayed in the US, are now retiring to France in their 40's with a few million dollars. The opportunity cost of living in Europe is absolutely enormous. You're basically lighting $1-2 million (or more, perhaps) on fire for every decade you're here instead of the US. Though I don't find myself wanting to move back to California any time soon...
CalRobert 5mo ago
Not to mention being overrun by Dodge Rams that do not meet EU safety roles but come in under a loophole. I like living here mostly but a lot of what makes it nice is threatened by the US.

miohtama 5mo ago

It's not only Dutch. Instead of building sovereignity, the EU thought they could regulate their way and force everyone to bend the knee because of their share as a trading partner. This started 20 years ago. However what has happened is that the EU's soft power is crumbling, but the politicians have hard to grasp with the reality they could somehow dictate things globally. AI will only further accelerate this. Only way to have control is to have domestic actors you can push around.

jorvi 5mo ago
> However what has happened is that the EU's soft power is crumbling Uh, no. The US soft power is turning to dust whilst the EU is out there building the new free [trade] world, with itself as the biggest lynchpin. What has happened the past ±30 years is that most EU countries cut spending on their militaries to the bone, because big brother USA would take care of it anyway. Now that we are returning to a multi-polar world, suddenly the EU is left scrambling for hard power that it doesn't have. That's why they can't play hardball when the US does a new ridiculous thing, because they simply lack the hard power to back up Ukraine. The US is sorely going to regret their antics though. Long term, the EU is going to switch to their own stacks, both for military but also things like cloud and other tech. It's trillions of $ the US economy will be missing out on. And voting in a Democratic president, senate and house is not gonna change a thing about it, because the US has proven itself to be a fundamentally unreliable, if not outright hostile partner.
- skippyboxedhero 5mo ago
  It is difficult to think of an economic region that is more opposed to free trade than Europe (that isn't a comedy country). Possibly some countries in South America? Trade within Europe has massive restrictions. I have no idea why, given the stated aims of Europe...we are posting this on a post about the Netherlands trying to protect office software ffs, people think this isn't the case. One of the reasons why the EU created a trade bloc, and the same reasons why you see the same attempts in areas of the world like South America, was to limit the impact of free trade. This should be completely obvious given that the EU is not competitive in areas where they lack the ability to limit competition. Also, I will point out: US policy is for the EU to do exactly the thing that you are suggesting. This has been the consistent position of Trump since 2016. The main blockers for this have been politicians in the EU. I am not sure how you equate being unreliable with subsidising EU defence spending to the tune of multiple trillions so that EU countries can spend on welfare either. The EU self-image is totally bizarre, it is so out of touch with reality. Hostile to all forms of change and innovation: actually one of the greatest free traders there has ever been. Xenophobic and hostile to certain countries: possibly one of the greatest allies to these countries ever. Never gets any support on Ukraine, would be a leader if the US weren't such bastards: spent multiple decades fuelling Putin's state.
  - inglor_cz 5mo ago
    There are still some protectionist issues on the single market itself. For example, Poland defends its rail operator, PKP Intercity, against foreign competition by a series of dirty tricks, including "just never registering a sale of a depot to a competing corporation in the land registry".
    - joe_mamba 5mo ago
      Almost every major EU country, has implanted some domestic protectionist rules to protect some of its politically well connected lobbyist industries or jobs from cheaper or more efficient intra-EU competition buying them out. The restrictions almost never are in reverse.
  - 5mo ago
graemep 5mo ago
Europeans (and not just the EU) think they still have the influence on the world they had in the 1980s when their economies were a much larger proportion of the global economy. Europeans have no idea what the world looks like from Asia which contains most of the world's population and generates a third of global GDP.
- ffaccount2 5mo ago
  Americans (and not just the US) think they still have the influence on the world they had in the 1980s when their economies were a much larger proportion of the global economy. Americans have no idea what the world looks like from Asia which contains most of the world's population and generates a third of global GDP.
  - graemep 5mo ago
    It is a general western problem to some extent, but the US has a a faster growing economy than any of the big European economies. It is still a super-power.
    - cess11 5mo ago
      The other year the US was beaten by a starved little country on the edge of the Arabian Peninsula, and recently by a somewhat large country by the Persian Gulf. Currently their only real ally is getting beaten by FPV drones handled by a guerilla force. The US has very little influence today compared to a decade or more ago. To the extent that the world at large cares about the US it's because they are committing genocide and destroying global trade logistics. All of their former allies are trying to substitute them out, or at least hedge with other international relations. As far as I can tell, outside certain parts of the Occident, no one cares about new US movies or television series anymore. The Oscars gather some interest because some people want to know if any entertainment industry people will go against the regime and say something negative about mass murder of children, but that's about it. Future generations will be shaped more by chinese and indian movies than usian ones. When apartheid South Africa was about to crumble it also initiated nasty military campaigns and faked political and military supremacy for a while, as did Idi Amin's Uganda. I'd bet something similar is going on in the US. Some people are still stuck in the late Cold War, notably EU politicians like von der Leyen and Kaja Kallas, as well as most swedish top politicians. They cannot imagine a world where the US is not calling the shots and will drag Europe further into global irrelevancy by idiotically paying tribute and kneeling for the US. Pretty much the rest of the world is disgusted and horrified by the bumbling nastiness of contemporary US empire.
yxhuvud 5mo ago
What? In this case the problem isn't that EU wants to dictate things globally, but US laws that do just that. EU laws just apply to Europe. As time goes on and European agencies get their shit together and actually start to follow their own rules, it will mean a shitton of business will leave US companies.
iwontberude 5mo ago
The problem for the EU is being so consumer centric but having a weak currency and diminished manufacturing (thanks to Russian invasion).
miohtama 5mo ago
We can see this already in the case of failed EU Digital Services Act that is teethless due to trade negotiations with the US https://www.politico.eu/article/eu-big-tech-law-meant-to-move-fast-it-hasnt/ https://www.politico.eu/article/eu-big-tech-law-meant-to-mov...

dgellow 5mo ago

> always postpone solving issues to the latest possible moment Germany has the exact same issue. Always looking to keep the status quo for as long as possible. It’s really a structural problem, it’s the result of the political system, elected leadership, demographics (mostly the voting population aging rapidly). I expect the same issue is shared by most Western European countries

embedding-shape 5mo ago
Isn't this simply a "human thing", keeping the status quo for as long as possible? I see the same European country I'm from, where I'm living currently, the South American country my wife is from and every single country I visit. Maybe another framing, is there any countries where this isn't true? Where truly the default is to go against the status quo and continuously improve no matter what? I know there are a few countries people think are like that, but when you start reading about it, turns out to be kind of "hyped" and not matching reality.
- dgellow 5mo ago
  Some countries with different politics like China do not seem to suffer the same issues, or at least not yet. Or maybe the country is defending a different status quo (the mono-party)? But they seem to be eager to develop the infrastructure and country as a whole. Not that I would want to live under their political system, to be clear. I wish we could have a democratic system AND also be eager to develop our regions instead of being so protective of everything
  - legulere 5mo ago
    I don’t think it’s different politics directly in China. The people believe that change means change for the better. In the west people have lost all hope for progress.
    - dgellow 5mo ago
      The people of China don’t have much say, I’m not sure what they believe matters too much, the government has a strong control over the media and can and will silence dissenting voices. In europe we’ve been generally pretty bad over the past decades at presenting positive arguments for liberalism, which is a shame. Similarly the EU is notoriously bad at communicating how it benefits the people, most of the communication assumes people already accepted it was a positive thing and already bought into European values, isn’t of arguing why they matter. The fact EU members blame EU institutions for their own local issues whenever something goes wrong doesn’t help…

stingraycharles 5mo ago

Don’t forget that they’re in the process of letting our digital government identity being managed by a US company. It’s absolutely ridiculous.

Waterluvian 5mo ago

This is part of the point of Carney’s Davos speech. Us middle powers need to de-Americanize together or we don’t stand a chance at succeeding.

WarmWash 5mo ago
Which might be impossible given that sacrifices will have to be made in the interim, and people already riot if you even hint at moving retirement age up a year.
- throwaway85825 5mo ago
  The problem is the government treating people like the enemy drowning them in paperwork. Western governments believe they can create the perfect citizen if they just surveill them and regulate them enough.

weinzierl 5mo ago

> France, Germany, etc. are much better examples when it comes to sovereignty. France maybe, Germany most definitely not.

Georgelemental 5mo ago
No, not France either. It used to be, and some inertia from the Gaullist past remains, but the current leadership is as useless as everyone else.

vanviegen 5mo ago

Another way to look at it is that things just move slowly in government land. The tax office moving towards Microsoft has probably been in preparation for half a decade... And do you really believe the government is technically capable of switching DigiD to a different provider on a (relative) moments notice without causing large scale outages? We'll start seeing government bodies moving away from US IT suppliers in a couple of years.

WarmWash 5mo ago
The actual question is if (capable) SWEs will choose working for (or be a founder of) Dutch/Euro tech companies over US ones, or even leave the US to live there. Europe is an excellent value prop if you want to be a bartender or baker. Its decidedly less so if you want to be a white collar/gold collar worker.
- vanviegen 5mo ago
  > Its decidedly less so if you want to be a white collar/gold collar worker. If you want to earn big money, you're better of in the US, for sure. Quality of life though, as a white collar worker? That does probably have its effect on economic growth..
  - WarmWash 5mo ago
    >That does probably have its effect on economic growth.. Yes it does, it has kept the US economy growing and relevant. Europe has been economically stagnant and resting on its laurels for 30 years. Also QoL in the US is high, you just need something like an SWE job to access it.
- CalRobert 5mo ago
  I left the US in my 20's to live in Europe and I like raising kids here (I'm now in my 40's) but honestly... it was a stupid thing to do. Meanwhile, my in-laws, who stayed in the US, are now retiring to France in their 40's with a few million dollars. The opportunity cost of living in Europe is absolutely enormous. You're basically lighting $1-2 million (or more, perhaps) on fire for every decade you're here instead of the US. Though I don't find myself wanting to move back to California any time soon...

CalRobert 5mo ago

Not to mention being overrun by Dodge Rams that do not meet EU safety roles but come in under a loophole. I like living here mostly but a lot of what makes it nice is threatened by the US.