Europe needs a private European identity provider. Until this happens, Europe will remain a technological vassal state of the US.

These are expensive products, you need depth of expertise and experience to create a system that could compete with the likes of gmail and Microsoft and ... so it's not a wonder that this hasn't happened yet. But pretending like this can be a public service is foolish (too high stakes ~~if~~ when it gets hacked), and pretending like existing providers that offer identity and email are sufficient is equally foolish. Google and ms and apple etc all offer the basics for free, and this is necessary for mass adoption. It will be an expensive project. But necessary, if the eu wants strategic autonomy.

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Oh and requiring a us based account is not even the most egregious part of this proposal, ffs

Not only that, be we also need a European payment system that's not tied to VISA / MasterCard, etc.

We're currently paying a small tax to the US for each card transaction we have.