© Viory
The Creeping Death of the Single Market
Eurointelligence discussed the EU's Slide Towards Irrelevance
The EU has zero chance to emerge as a geopolitical power like the US or China. Strategic autonomy was only a slogan. It came with no strategy, and most importantly, with no financial commitments. The way EU countries are currently raising military spending, through debt mostly, and without common procurement, will reinforce their dependency on the US and US-dominated financial markets. At no point did the EU have an agreed end-game strategy for Ukraine - something that goes beyond wishful thinking.
But the EU has a few, sadly neglected, assets. It has a customs union, a single market and a single currency. They don't win wars, but they matter. If the EU had not fallen behind the US in productivity growth, and if it had not given up on 21st technologies, the EU would be a formidable soft power. The threat of being banned from the world's largest single market would have been a real choke-hold. The purpose of frugal fiscal policies is not to pay homage to a protestant work ethic, but to give financial headroom to act during emergencies.
If you accept, as everybody seems to do, that treaty change is impossible, an intelligent soft power strategy is the only thing that is left. But that would have meant a lowering of ambitions: no Green deal; no anti-tech legislation; the completion of the banking union with the goal to end the bank-sovereign nexus. In particular, it would have meant more integration.The balance between widening and deepening is way off.
For the talking heads that roam our airways and social media, it is cooler to talk about foreign policy. But for the EU it would be better if its leadership took an interest in the work of standard committees. They should not invite Zelensky to their European Council meetings, but the three economics Nobel Laureates, to give a presentation of the importance of technology to economic growth. The creeping death of the single market is the real existential crisis of the EU. It is not Trump.
If the EU wants to acquire hard power, that would have to be preceded by political reforms: treaty change to establish the EU as a federal union, with tax raising and debt issuing powers, money to fund an army, and a politically accountable military command structure. You don't acquire hard power with people sitting around tables.
The EU's tragedy is that it abandoned the necessary to seek the impossible.
Treaty Change Impossible
Yes, I do accept that a treaty change is impossible unless and until some currency crisis forces that outcome.
I have been writing about this for years.
The EU is governed by nannycrats with impossible goals and no way to act on them.
The Green Deal is now dead. Trump demand 5 percent military spending when budget constraints are such that 2 percent will be a struggle.
The US strives to innovate. The EU strives to regulate. It wants to regulate AI without knowing what AI is even about.
EC fines X €120 million under the Digital Services Act
Please note that on December 4, the EC fined X €120 million under the Digital Services Act
Deceptive design of X's 'blue checkmark'Nannycrat Nonsense
X's use of the 'blue checkmark' for 'verified accounts' deceives users. This violates the DSA obligation for online platforms to prohibit deceptive design practices on their services. On X, anyone can pay to obtain the 'verified' status without the company meaningfully verifying who is behind the account, making it difficult for users to judge the authenticity of accounts and content they engage with. This deception exposes users to scams, including impersonation frauds, as well as other forms of manipulation by malicious actors. While the DSA does not mandate user verification, it clearly prohibits online platforms from falsely claiming that users have been verified, when no such verification took place.
Lack of transparency of X's ads repository
X's advertisement repository fails to meet the transparency and accessibility requirements of the DSA. Accessible and searchable ad repositories are critical for researchers and civil society to detect scams, hybrid threat campaigns, coordinated information operations and fake advertisements.
X incorporates design features and access barriers, such as excessive delays in processing, which undermine the purpose of ad repositories. X's ads repository also lacks critical information, such as the content and topic of the advertisement, as well as the legal entity paying for it. This hinders researchers and the public to independently scrutinise any potential risks in online advertising.
Seriously, doesn't the EU have anything better to do than worry about blue checkmarks on X?
Unfortunately, this kind of nannycrat nonsense is all that the EU can do.
Q: Why?So the EU launches commissions and studies again and again and again because commissions and studies are the only thing that can be approved.
A: Because, with few exceptions, it takes unanimous or nearly unanimous agreement to do anything.
By treaty, France has veto power over anything agricultural (every nation actually, but France and Italy are at the forefront). Global trade summits fail every year because of single-nation veto power. It useless to even invite the EU because the outcome is known from the beginning.
Germany and other Northern European countries have veto power over budget rules. That won't change until German banks blow sky high, if then.
In the rare case the EU ever does anything, it's usually wrong. Green energy, carbon border taxes, and the ridiculous digital services act are good examples.
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Dealing With the EU
Mercosur is the perfect example of what it's like dealing with the EU. Any country can damn near block any deal for any reason, or no reason at all.
I repeat my congratulations to the UK for escaping this madness. Of course, the UK has not made the best of Brexit, but that is the fault of UK politicians, not the Brexit vote itself.
Regulation and roadblocks are all the EU knows how to do. That's why Google, Amazon, Microsoft, Tesla, Nvdia, and all the key AI players outside of China are in the US. The EU would regulate them to death before they ever got going.
To repeat: The US strives to innovate. The EU strives to regulate. Deals take 25 years. Knowing that, one would have to be crazy to want back in.
NATO's role was expansion and large countries were divided into small countries through engineered conflicts. The strategy meant that no country could support itself, and through IMF loans became debtor nations, like Greece. This was the strategy of the proxy-Ukraine conflict was to break up Russia into smaller countries.
The hubris of the EU's von der Lying and others was they had no other strategy. They expected that Russia would fall like the USSR fell, through economic warfare. Stupidity knows no bounds.