this post was submitted on 05 Apr 2025
983 points (99.2% liked)

Europe

5257 readers
1500 users here now

News and information from Europe ๐Ÿ‡ช๐Ÿ‡บ

(Current banner: La Mancha, Spain. Feel free to post submissions for banner images.)

Rules (2024-08-30)

  1. This is an English-language community. Comments should be in English. Posts can link to non-English news sources when providing a full-text translation in the post description. Automated translations are fine, as long as they don't overly distort the content.
  2. No links to misinformation or commercial advertising. When you post outdated/historic articles, add the year of publication to the post title. Infographics must include a source and a year of creation; if possible, also provide a link to the source.
  3. Be kind to each other, and argue in good faith. Don't post direct insults nor disrespectful and condescending comments. Don't troll nor incite hatred. Don't look for novel argumentation strategies at Wikipedia's List of fallacies.
  4. No bigotry, sexism, racism, antisemitism, dehumanization of minorities, or glorification of National Socialism.
  5. Be the signal, not the noise: Strive to post insightful comments. Add "/s" when you're being sarcastic (and don't use it to break rule no. 3).
  6. If you link to paywalled information, please provide also a link to a freely available archived version. Alternatively, try to find a different source.
  7. Light-hearted content, memes, and posts about your European everyday belong in [email protected]. (They're cool, you should subscribe there too!)
  8. Don't evade bans. If we notice ban evasion, that will result in a permanent ban for all the accounts we can associate with you.
  9. No posts linking to speculative reporting about ongoing events with unclear backgrounds. Please wait at least 12 hours. (E.g., do not post breathless reporting on an ongoing terror attack.)

(This list may get expanded when necessary.)

We will use some leeway to decide whether to remove a comment.

If need be, there are also bans: 3 days for lighter offenses, 14 days for bigger offenses, and permanent bans for people who don't show any willingness to participate productively. If we think the ban reason is obvious, we may not specifically write to you.

If you want to protest a removal or ban, feel free to write privately to the mods: @[email protected], @[email protected], or @[email protected].

founded 9 months ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[โ€“] [email protected] 24 points 1 day ago (1 children)

The Cali data companies will be in for a shock when they suddenly have to comply with any regulation, let alone the GDPR

[โ€“] [email protected] 7 points 1 day ago (1 children)
[โ€“] [email protected] 3 points 1 day ago (2 children)

What I imagine that to contain:

  1. USA! USA! USA!

  2. Communism bad!

  3. See 1 and 2

[โ€“] [email protected] 1 points 10 hours ago

Except if youโ€™ve done any privacy work youโ€™d know that GDPR and CCPA are accounted for simultaneously in almost every case, so they end up being equivalent in reality.

[โ€“] [email protected] 1 points 1 day ago (3 children)

Aren't EU technically a Social Democracy ?

[โ€“] [email protected] 2 points 10 hours ago

The EU is a bureaucratic organization with some purely symbolic democratic rituals. Governments (not citizens) of member countries really affecting it are supposed to be democratic, but at this point they are just OK, mostly. Nothing good to compare with.

Anyway - all these names are as meaningless as flags. Every decision made defines a system. You might call something a social democracy, but through 1, 2, 3 decisions overnight it's suddenly something different, if there was a critical point.

[โ€“] [email protected] 2 points 10 hours ago

I wish.

You should look up "Parliament of the European Union" for more information, if you're actually interested. Currently the EVP (conservative party) is the largest, and overall there is a majority of centre-right to extremist right parties. The current President of the EU Comission (basically EU government) is Ursula von der Leyen, a member of the EVP.

It's been a long time since the EU was lead by social democrats, and even then, they were in a coalition with conservatives.

So no, the EU is neither technically nor actually a social democracy

[โ€“] [email protected] 4 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (2 children)

The EU is not a country.

Some countries in the EU currently have or have had Social Democratic governments, but mainly they have governments which are Neoliberal, though a milder form than the US: generally the mainstream Rightwing around this parts has policies which are to the left of the Democrat Party in the US, though not by much, so for example nobody has a Healthcare system which is as bad as the US - even the ones with a Health Insurance based system have way more rules and consumer protections around it - and even in the worst countries Public Transport is better than in the in US.

Then again at least one country in the EU - Hungary - currently has Fascism whilst the other ones which are said to have Far-Right governments (such as Italy) politically sit between the US Democrats and Republicans.

In the things which are the responsibility of the EU (i.e. trade-related subjects), the EU is significantly more pro-consumer than the US, with for example the precautionary principle - i.e. proven safe before allowed, rather than the US' method of allowing until proven unsafe - being used for chemical substances which people tend to come in contact with, and more broadly with consumers having way more rights all across the EU than they have in the US (were it massively depends on the State) and with stricter rules when it comes to pollution and more broadly Environmental damage.

I supposed that in the things which fall under the responsibility of the EU, it tends to be sort of half-way between Neoliberal and Social-Democrat, for example it's very Neoliberal when it comes to Finance, but it's Social Democrat when it comes to consumer rights and protections, especially for things like food, though even there it's sort of somewhere between lax and strict in regulatory terms. I suspect this is due to different countries caring more about different domains and hence the politics of countries which care more about a specific domain getting more strongly imprinted in legislation at an EU level so it ends up reflected into very different political spins for different trade domains.

[โ€“] [email protected] 1 points 10 hours ago

That said, Nordic countries (notoriously Finland) and France and Spain and Baltics have pretty right-wing national identities, not even speaking about Poland, and Italy, eh, has seemingly harmless morons on top. Greece too, but frankly neighboring with Turkey it's normal to be nationalist, having an example of a really inferior culture. Can't blame even Armenians for that (while in other regards their pride for a mountain village with crooks and thugs on top seems kinda too big.)

[โ€“] [email protected] 1 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I didn't say EU was a country, who do you think I am ? An American ?

[โ€“] [email protected] 3 points 1 day ago

Then why did you ask what the current policies of 27 countries' governments were as if there were only one?