| ▲ | petcat an hour ago |
| > However, stopping working with Microsoft and other US tech companies is not an option in the short term, he told the magazine. > Van der Burg is currently grappling with the issue of Solvinity, a Dutch cloud service provider which is widely used by government departments including the Digid identity system, and which is on the verge of being sold to a US company. > The Dutch tax office is also currently switching to Microsoft systems, despite MPs’ concerns. They all talk about the importance of European digital sovereignty and then continue to do the exact opposite behind the scenes. |
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| ▲ | microtonal an hour ago | parent | next [-] |
| 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. |
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| ▲ | miohtama an hour ago | parent | next [-] | | 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 an hour ago | parent [-] | | > 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. | | |
| ▲ | rafram 23 minutes ago | parent | next [-] | | The US alone spends 1.5x as much on consumer goods (yes, adjusted for PPP) and nearly 2x as much on R&D as the entire EU. It’s very sweet that the EU is trying to decouple itself from the US economy, but I highly doubt its ability to become “leader of the free trade world” when it has so little money to throw around. | |
| ▲ | joe_mamba 17 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | >whilst the EU is out there building the new free [trade] world, with itself as the biggest lynchpin. Source? Also free trade isn't always a benefit for your own citizens and companies. Do you want to import low quality agriculture made by slave labor that will undercut your own farmers? There's a reason borders and goods have some restrictions. The recent free trade agreements the EU has been signing are just short term gain for long term pain down the road, since everyone has the EU by the balls right now so they're squeezing as much as they can from them now while they're busy with Russia and expensive energy. It's not gonna create a superpower like dreamers think, it's gonna create new dependencies with other countrie, which is gonna backfire like their dependency to US tech and Russian gas did, while the core issues plaguing the EU(demographics, debt, government speeding on welfare, lack of innovation and manufacturing in key sectors, no funding) will remain and continue to grow. Signing deals to import more people and cheap stuff from India or wherever to depress wages and prices, doesn't fix any of that. | |
| ▲ | inglor_cz 17 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | "the EU is out there building the new free [trade] world, with itself as the biggest lynchpin" At its usual pace ... do you know when the negotiations with Mercosur started? Year 2000. Only now we have an agreement. Still, better than not doing anything at all. But I wonder how many of the original negotiators are still alive. It also yet remains to be seen what happens if China puts a real pressure on us. Our list of allies is now somewhat thin and we have to cozy up to India, which indirectly funds the Russian war against Ukraine by importing Russian weapons and Russian oil/gas, the latter in huge quantities. Still, better than cozying up to China, because the possibility that Beijing teaches Brussels some cool tricks to keep the population under perfect surveillance scares me. | |
| ▲ | skippyboxedhero 28 minutes ago | parent | prev [-] | | 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. | | |
| ▲ | phatfish 7 minutes ago | parent | next [-] | | The only people that think global free trade is a good thing are the top .001% net worth individuals which use it to wield power. Trading blocks (like the European single market) are specifically designed to protect their members from shit that global corporations or other nations attempt to get away with. I'm not sure what "Trade within Europe has massive restrictions." means without context. Compared to some Randian capitalist utopia where there are no rules and no governments? Or compared to before the creation of the European single market? | |
| ▲ | dgellow 9 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | > Hostile to all forms of change and innovation I don’t understand how you can believe that about the EU. The union has been evolving so much since its creation. It is itself one of the greatest innovation in governance ever created. GDPR is an innovative framework making the EU leader in privacy protection. European open banking initiatives/frameworks are unique and have been leading the way forward for the past 20 years, and we are now reaping all the benefits with the latest payment system developments (PSD2 and others were already awesome but the payment standard is what makes the day to day citizens actually see the results). The 28th regime[0] in development is innovative. Schengen/TFEU Art. 45 is such an innovative policy. Where else can you move freely between so many countries? That’s only from the top of my head and the few examples I’m familiar with 0: https://the28thregime.eu/ | |
| ▲ | inglor_cz 15 minutes ago | parent | prev [-] | | 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 2 minutes ago | parent [-] | | Almost every 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. |
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| ▲ | dgellow 42 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | > 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 25 minutes ago | parent [-] | | 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. |
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| ▲ | stingraycharles 26 minutes ago | parent | prev [-] | | 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. |
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| ▲ | TrackerFF 11 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| It takes time. Hence whey Microsoft has a stranglehold on big gov. customers in other countries. From my own experience, big changes can take place in smaller gov. organizations, and pretty fast too. I've worked at a place where we swapped out all Microsoft and commercial products to open source alternatives in just a couple of weeks. But it was a smaller and specialized part of an organization, with 30 users. Trying to do the same change, where there are millions of users involved? It will almost certainly take a decade or more. The only thing that would accelerate such a process, would be Microsoft shutting down services at the command of, say, the US president. But that would only be the case if said country ended up being sanctioned by the US. |
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| ▲ | petcat 8 minutes ago | parent [-] | | > It takes time. [...] It will almost certainly take a decade or more. > The Dutch tax office is also currently switching to Microsoft systems They're not even trying though. They're not even starting the clock. They are actively going in the opposite direction. It will never happen. |
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| ▲ | pjc50 an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Rather like pre 2022 Russia, governments get warnings that something bad is going to happen that it would be expensive to prepare for, and put off preparing because you don't get political rewards for that. |
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| ▲ | skippyboxedhero 23 minutes ago | parent [-] | | The reason Germany didn't prepare for it was because multiple leading politicians were bought and paid for by Russia. Be totally clear about that. Former German president was working for Gazprom on the project whose stated aim was to facilitate an invasion of Ukraine at some point (which Trump pointed out, and EU politicians literally laughed at him). The issue with the EU is that they lack the capacity for any kind of strategic thought. There are multiple reasons why but the underlying cause is that it is possible to move into local minimum where there is a very strong disincentive for any kind of change. Countries in the EU have generally been in that place since before the EU...that is why the EU was created, to limit change. It is isn't political incentives, it is a fundamental aspect of the political culture. If you also look at the stuff that has changed, this only becomes more strange (i.e. government intervention, immigration, regulations). Change is limited to preserve control. | | |
| ▲ | bob001 12 minutes ago | parent [-] | | > The reason Germany didn't prepare for it was because multiple leading politicians were bought and paid for by Russia. Be totally clear about that. Former German president was working for Gazprom on the project whose stated aim was to facilitate an invasion of Ukraine at some point (which Trump pointed out, and EU politicians literally laughed at him). To add to your point, despite this the German population seems to strongly believe there is no corruption in their government. Local minima, everything is fine, there is no fire, I'm going to make some tea while the tables turns to ash under the pot. | | |
| ▲ | joe_mamba 7 minutes ago | parent [-] | | >despite this the German population seems to strongly believe there is no corruption in their government Germans only believe what their media is telling them. The prussian school is based on respecting authority not about free critical thinking. They also don't believe any foreigners pointing out their internal issue: "you're wrong, we make ze best cars in ze world(not anymore lol), so our country can't be doing anything wrong". |
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| ▲ | softwaredoug an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Ironically GOP talks about European sovereignty over their own defense, but economically want to treat them like a vassal |
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| ▲ | roenxi 41 minutes ago | parent [-] | | If you think about it in terms of game theory that is actually a fair approach - you have an ally, you propose a best-case path forward for the alliance where both members are strong. If the ally don't want to take that path then you exploit the ally instead since a technically incompetent ally is a liability who needs to be kept under tight control. |
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| ▲ | roysting 4 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Greed is the easiest way to compromise anything. It is a central theme covered in too many sources to list, but it is always a deal with the figurative devil, treason, betrayal of not just oneself, but everyone else who trusted you, lifted you, and relied on you. It is why treason is such a pernicious and evil act even when one is ignorant of perpetrating it, because you may personally advance your own position for a moment by making a deal with the devil, but the real price is always immeasurably greater. It is also why no one hates the traitor more than the devil himself, because he knows best what a vile and untrustworthy traitor the person is that would betray his own people. Even the devil cannot even respect that, hence why the only thing one can be sure of when making a deal with the devil is that the devil and his children will always stab you in the back. It is the existential question all of “the west” is wrestling with right now. Whether they can stop the traitors among them who have long ago made many deals with many devils and his many children…or will they personally “profit” in the short term all the way to figurative hell. |
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| ▲ | spockz an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| There are many different tracks underway in government in different branches. Completely vetoing everything to use Microsoft is a difficult decision as it also stops a lot of features that depend on it, or were made to depend on it, such as updating tax codes. Therefore it is a risk/benefit assessment rather than outright lying. (The latter also happens obviously but just wanted to state that reality is more gray than black and white.) |
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| ▲ | hulitu 34 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| US tech companies pay well, the cost of living is increasing, so politicians have to think about the future. |
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| ▲ | throwaw12 an hour ago | parent | prev [-] |
| Because there is no punishment for lying in politics. Look at the Trump, connected to p*dos, instead of stopping wars, started a war, betrayed MAGA, but still no action taken against him, because there is no legal action for lying to become a politican |
