Political decision to close modern nuclear powerplants without replacement - Germany. Experts made a petition to reopen them.
Migration - EU failed for many years to protect its border against illegal imigration - millions came, half a mil now legalized in Spain.
Overregulation - EU institutions themselves now acknowledge that regulatory and administrative burdens are hurting EU competitivenes
"Integration"/security - imigrants choose rich countries with good social benefits while in some areas inner security drops (car attacks, knife attacks, ra*es)
Greendeal-carbon pricing paid by industries to meet strict quotas, soon also paid by households, very expensive for europeans while having near zero effect on global emmisions in commparisson to China/rest of the world aka too much pain/costs for "nothing".
Digital regulation - via DSA, fight against so called "hate speech" and "disinformation"
Unrealized gains taxes - Netherlands
Exit taxes - France, Germany, Denmark, Netherlands, Spain, Belgium (conditions vary in each coountry).
Demographical colapse - all EU countries have born rate below replacement level 2.1 (average 1.34 for EU in 2024)
Strategic dependency - Europe made itself super dependent on Russia for energy and from military POV on USA, both of these dependencies are now being painfully corrected
Digital ID/CBDC: EU is building digital ID and digital euro, tools with obvious future potential for surveillance and control.
Concerning being "hard" I meant mainly protecting our borders, being hard on enforcing them and our own laws equally on everybody, being strong independent just Europe in general
Obviously I am no expert in (geo)politics, just an average Joe observing concerning tendencies and not liking direction EU is heading.
I don't really see these as problems. I think the world needs someone to lead on the environment and Europe is more than rich enough that they can handle some short term pain. The countries aren't trying to maximize for short term gains like some other countries and thinking more long term and I think that is a great thing.
From the top. Nuclear - many people in Europe are anti nuclear
Migration - Europe is going to need migrants and I think most Europeans are in favor of a kinder Migration system
I like European regulation, particularly food regulation - I think it makes for high quality food. Besides, companies always complain about regulation.
Crime has decreased substantially in Europe since 2000 - lots of people are stoking tensions though for their own political ends
Carbon tax is good, the world should adopt one, Europe can lead on this.
Digital Regulation, more problematic for me but people are beginning to see the issues are social media and online porn, something has been needed here for a while
Taxes, lots of countries have taxes. Many countries have exit taxes - seems to be a problem for richer people.
Birth rate - as countries get richer they have less kids... not going to be forcing people to have kids so I'm not sure what the solution is there but I think Migration will play a role. ....
basically all of these sound like a bunch of Fox news soundbites rather than real world issues that Europeans have and I feel most Europeans are in favor of these things so this is how Democracy works.
I like that they are thinking longer term and not doing stupid shit like invading countries and killing people. I think thats a win in and of itself. Also, Europe has been peaceful for several generations now which is also a huge win.
I think that main difference is, that you look at Europe from outside, I live here and talk to people from mentioned European countries living with these consequences and problems.
One more typical example: we have no big AI company in the EU, because EU was busy being "world first AI regulator" before the industry even started here.
And no, EU is not that rich that it can sustainably pay for policies which make its own energy and industry significantly less competitive with little to no effect on CO2: https://www.climate.gov/sites/default/files/styles/full_widt...
Btw would you be so optimistic about Green Deal and regulation if you too had to pay EU price for petrol of about $8/gal ?
Yes peace since WW2 is great, but we have one war on EU borders and other in Middle East.
Freedom of speech is a bedrock of democracy. I dont thinkt we can bent it for different "noble" reasons or because regulators label smth as hate speech or misinfo. https://prostasia.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/image_2022-...
I think we can agree that we disagree, I wish you well.
I’m actually European and live in the US so I have plenty of perspective.
For what it’s worth I think the US should increase petroleum tax to limit usage - not going to fly here but I’m all for Europe doing it. Especially without domestic oil sources - bring on the EV revolution, makes tons of sense for everywhere in the world especially Europe.