Comment by Aachen
10 days ago
Ineffective? Extremely so? From open borders to open roaming to the various legislation that my tiny country would never be able to force corporations into if we didn't have it at the EU level. Heck, the currency. There's so many aspects I take for granted in life and don't even think about anymore. I can just pay anywhere without thinking or conversion fees. Must have been amazing for trade though it's nearly as old as I am so I don't know how things were before. How in the world you come to a worldview of the EU being extremely ineffective, I cannot imagine. Are you from the EU?
From open borders
Better check on that.
There was an article in the New York Times last week about how many E.U. countries have actually gone back to border checks. Most recently, Germany and Poland.
But border checks in the EU are a bit more relaxed. Sometimes they just wave you through - other times you just show your government id (which in many EU countries you are required to carry at all times) and they maybe check the car boot.
The border is still very much open.
Border checks are pretty rare still
Yeah, I'm not sure how to directly fight it yet (besides voting as I've always done) but I'm avoiding border queues on a weekly basis now. It's a shame, but for now you can still drive right through on a dozen other border points, just not the highway
France apparently also had this around their Olympics or soccer world cup or something. It's not unique and so far it has always been a fad, usually to please nationalist voters for a while
And it doesn't negate the broader point
Ineffective against the US corporations.
The European commission, the top of the EU's unelected and mostly unchecked bureaucracy, is currently suing its data protection office after it declared that its use of Microsoft 365 infringes data protection laws.
I mean, the EU wants to force browsers to recognize its own web certificates, while allowing Google to selectively deactivate your phone's capacity to conduct ID checks. It's the same with the "EU Cloud initiative", that at the end was full of non-EU companies.
The aim of the EU bureaucracy is not sovereignty, but extension of its power, nowadays called as "regulation". And when in place, it can't be removed, even if it's clearly self-harming.