Macron Vows Retaliation If Europe's Digital Sovereignty Attacked (bloomberg.com) 69
French President Emmanuel Macron vowed a strong response [non-paywalled source] if any country takes measures that undermine Europe's digital sovereignty. From a report: Earlier this week, US President Donald Trump threatened to impose fresh tariffs and export restrictions on countries that have digital services taxes or regulations that harm American tech companies. France was among the first nations to implement a digital services tax.
"We will not let anyone else decide for us on this matter," he told reporters in Toulon, France, on Friday. "We cannot allow our digital sector or the regulations we have chosen for ourselves, which are a necessity, to be threatened today." Trump has long railed against EU tech and antitrust regulation over US tech giants including Alphabet's Google and Apple.
"We will not let anyone else decide for us on this matter," he told reporters in Toulon, France, on Friday. "We cannot allow our digital sector or the regulations we have chosen for ourselves, which are a necessity, to be threatened today." Trump has long railed against EU tech and antitrust regulation over US tech giants including Alphabet's Google and Apple.
What's going on here? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:What's going on here? (Score:5, Interesting)
Largely it is taxes. Entrepreneurs tend to move to the US and build their ideas here because the barriers and costs are lower, as well as greater return on their ideas if they succeed.
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But there are more data protections (GPDR) in the EU, so it's harder to exploit data there.
Re: What's going on here? (Score:1)
Healthcare is cheap but failing in Europe. It takes 6 months to get a dermatologist appointment in Paris (source French government news last week), so good luck if you have skin cancer.
I have family in France and my grandmother had brain hemorrhage after a fall. My parents had to drive her one hour to the next town as the local hospital was clueless. A young doctor scheduled her for surgery then my parents saw him being ripped a new one by an older Dr for wasting government money on an old woman.
I have many
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The captive market is far smaller, Europeans generally don't chase trends as much, leading to more competition and therefore there are fewer venture capitalists willing to throw money around in the hope of makings a huge RoI.
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Why
Europe isn't compatible with the internet. And it's getting less compatible with it every passing day. It's leaders have expectations of control that aren't compatible with it. It's people have expectations of privacy and security that aren't compatible with it. The whole place should just turn it all off and go back to printed news, landlines and broadcast television. Both Europe and the remaining internet would be better off for it.
Re:What's going on here? (Score:5, Insightful)
Why
Europe isn't compatible with the internet. And it's getting less compatible with it every passing day. It's leaders have expectations of control that aren't compatible with it. It's people have expectations of privacy and security that aren't compatible with it. The whole place should just turn it all off and go back to printed news, landlines and broadcast television. Both Europe and the remaining internet would be better off for it.
America's biggest companies, Google (an advertising company), Facebook (an advertising company), Amazon (an advertising company that also happens to sell stuff) are not exactly the sort of great advances for the human race that America was once famous for. One could even argue they are a net negative. In any case one could turn those off in Europe without turning off the whole internet and a case could indeed be made that it would be better for everyone.
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Re:What's going on here? (Score:5, Insightful)
Maybe Europe doesn't see it as a pissing contest and is more concerned with the well being of citizens?
Correct, THEIR Citizens (Score:2)
Correct, EU set the rules that helped EU citizens. US says "we like our people too", and sets its rules, benefiting it.
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Why create when you can just tax and fine what someone else creates?
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So you are Trump's advisor for economics?
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Only advice I have for Trump is "Trump, go fuck yourself."
Re:What's going on here? (Score:5, Insightful)
That's a bullshit narrative. Europe's tech industry is thriving. It is just not driven by the same motivations as the psychopaths that are running US' tech giants.
The difference is cultural, not about competence.
Both the UK and the EU have real problems with politicians being clueless, pushing things that have implications that they don't understand, sure. But that is the situation more or less in every democracy, but as long as there is one, they can still be challenged.
Everyone with a little insight and who is in his right mind understands that some US tech giants need to be reined in, for the benefit of us all.
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Indeed. The news cycle in the last month has been full of claims that the EU is under performing economically. Reading between the lines, these are US conservative talking points coordinated with administration officials, to try to stem the brain drain out of the US due to MAGA/Trump mismanagement. The aim is to confuse early career STEM graduates and trick them into opting for a career in the US instead of the EU and elsewhere.
Advice to young entrepreneurs: ignore the claptrap, the US is dying. Base your
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Its about capital markets. One thing that unifies almost all major tech companies in the past 20 years is that they spent a lot of time not making any money or profit, and had to live off the goodwill of their investors in one way or another, often for a long time.
The capital markets in Europe (and the UK) lack the scale and flexibility to facilitate this in any reliable sort of way, so people find it easier to move to the US where they can reliably get the investment funding.
Out Competed (Score:3)
They complain about US hegemony but never seem to put forth any home-grown alternatives.
Europe had lots of home-grown alternatives prior to the web - which ironically is a European invention. The problem was that the web provided a global platform where a company in any one country could reach consumers anywhere on the planet. This meant that the lower tax burden of the US, enabled by a lack of social programs to support the most vulnerable in society, allowed US companies to out-compete European ones who paid higher taxes to support Europe's higher social care standards.
Many of the reform
Re:Out Competed (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem was that the web provided a global platform where a company in any one country could reach consumers anywhere on the planet.
That single sentence illustrates the crux of the issue.
-Europeans view the internet as allowing US companies to reach consumers in Europe -and feel that the transactions should be regulated under European laws.
-Americans view the internet as allowing European consumers to reach US businesses -and feel that the transactions should be regulated under American laws.
Businesses who set up a local presence in a country affirmatively agree to do business in the country under that country's rules. Tariffs, import prohibitions, sales tax/VAT, etc are known and (mostly) solved questions. Nations have centuries of history of trade agreements dealing with physical goods.
But for purely internet based transactions, it is an unsettled political issue. Which government gets to make the rules? What if the rules of the source and destination countries conflict? Who gets the tax revenue? Who has access to the user data? What court handles customer complaints? etc. There are no standard answers. It has to be negotiated among the sovereign nations as any other trade agreement.
Americans Like Europeans with Chinese Companies (Score:3)
Americans view the internet as allowing European consumers to reach US businesses -and feel that the transactions should be regulated under American laws.
Not really. Consider the opposite situation: I doubt very much that many Americans think that non-US companies reaching US consumers should have their transactions regulated in that other country. Indeed, just look at all the upset about TikTok and other Chinese companies that have to comply with Chinese laws and the fact that the US is banning and blocking these companies from reaching US consumers specifically because these laws will deny US consumers of the protections they have under US law and will ex
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Not really. Consider the opposite situation: I doubt very much that many Americans think that non-US companies reaching US consumers should have their transactions regulated in that other country.
No "should" is involved. Americans understand that when they order something from Alibaba or the like, they are operating in the Chinese e-commerce system -and that they essentially have no recourse as foreigners doing business in China.
Indeed, just look at all the upset about TikTok and other Chinese companies that have to comply with Chinese laws and the fact that the US is banning and blocking these companies from reaching US consumers specifically because these laws will deny US consumers of the protections they have under US law and will expose their private data to the Chinese government.
TikTok, Inc is a US corporation in Los Angeles, CA. Its parent corporation is TikTok, LTD in the Cayman Islands. Its parent corporation is ByteDance, in China. By setting up a local business in the USA, they affirmatively agreed to do business in the USA under American r
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What is your problem then? All the companies that are to be regulated have EU offices.
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What is your problem then? All the companies that are to be regulated have EU offices.
I didn't say I had one.
-I went out of my way to say that "businesses who set up a local presence in a country affirmatively agree to do business in the country under that country's rules".
-I pointed out a conflicting viewpoint between US and EU with regard to "purely internet based transactions".
To which I get mansplained that our point of view is not actually our point of view, because China. So I gave the example of Americans having EXACTLY the point of view I stated when doing business on Alibaba, etc.
N
Re: Americans Like Europeans with Chinese Companie (Score:2)
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There's something about European society or culture that dissuades the type of entrepreneurship that is required to bring about a home-grown Microsoft, Apple or Google.
Or SAP. Oh, wait.
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Monopolies are hard to overcome. It's different to foster e.g. a new cloud company when a $1tr foreigner can come and curb stomp you.
But you're begging the question saying that Europe can't foster their tech industry. The reality is they do, they just keep getting absorbed by the massive mega corporations in America which have grown unchecked to dominate everything. Not even something as simple as high tech lithium power controllers can be designed in Germany without Apple coming along and buying the entire
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As soon as something interesting shows up here, it is bought by some American or Chinese company.
Case in point: LanguageTool. It was a promising German company and was hosted in Germany, so EU regulations applied. Then they were bought by LearnEO (a californian company) and their servers moved to California. This prompted me to cancel their service.
Another issue is that our governments just keep buying Microsoft, while we do have European alternatives available (one such is Suse (German) Linux Enterprise De
I'm sure it will be the strongest letter (Score:2)
You are sovereign, and can decide how you tax. French are easily the most punitive in terms of cultural protectionism in Europe, as they see Anglos as their primary enemy for centuries, and Anglo culture is the one currently crushing them world wide.
But you're sovereign, so you have to deal with the fact that other sovereigns more powerful than you will demand that you don't. Including Anglos. And in this case, French don't really have many tools that they can use left from previous round of trade negotiati
Re:I'm sure it will be the strongest letter (Score:4, Funny)
Could any of his DEI staff locate France on a map?
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Could any of his DEI staff locate France on a map?
They wouldn't be able to locate a map, period.
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Could any of his DEI staff locate France on a map?
They wouldn't be able to locate a map, period.
They do have that one with Gulf of Mexico crossed out. In crayon.
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They do have that one with Gulf of Mexico crossed out. In crayon.
And I have one in my office with "Shit Hole of America" where it used to say 'USA', because the rest of the world can rename things too!
Not Near France (Score:2)
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If you don't live in the USA... (Score:5, Interesting)
Countries other than the USA have the following choices:
1. Continue being dependent on American technology and being subjected to the whims of American companies and administrations. Lose control of your data. Live with a national security risk if the US ever decides you're not being cooperative enough. Or,
2. Decouple from American tech companies and develop home-grown replacements, or at least open-source replacements that you can maintain for yourself in the worst-case. Massively difficult and massively painful, but in the long run, a much better choice than (1).
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The problem is that the people who could create a home-grown replacement are going to leave Europe as soon as they can. So any attempt to do so will simply end up being some sclerotic government bureaucratic program which finally releases a new Twitter in 2055.
If Europe wants to disconnect from America it needs to become more like America and less like Europe. Which they don't want to do.
Re:If you don't live in the USA... (Score:5, Insightful)
Nobody needs a new Twitter. Social media is a stupid distraction and not a critical part of a country's infrastructure.
I'm talking about critical things like cloud computing, email hosting, operating systems, etc... all the things that make a country and an organization run. There are non-American alternatives for all of those things; they're just not widely-known or widely-marketed.
I've actually worked with European organizations who provide this sort of infrastructure, and they are competent and not sclerotic at all, and the people who work for them have no intention of leaving Europe. The issue is more the network effect: Everyone uses Microsoft, so everyone develops for Microsoft. That's what needs to be broken.
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Three choices. You missed the third:
3. Decouple from American tech companies and use Chinese tech.
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That's no better. The USA is merely on its way to being a dictatorship; China's been there for decades.
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That's no better. The USA is merely on its way to being a dictatorship; China's been there for decades.
I didn't say it was a better choice!
But it is a very possible choice.
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1. Continue being dependent on American technology
You're begging the question here. Countries aren't depending on American technology. Americans are dependent on other country's technology. Just look to the AI industry, one of the most prominent examples of in your face AI is Gemini search results. These are brough to you by Google, from a division of Google that Google wholly purchased from a European company - yes all of Google's AI efforts which are providing "American" value is rooted in London.
A similar story is across the board. From the Cloud, to se
Re:do they make tech in EU ? (Score:5, Insightful)
ARM (UK). ASML (NL). Siemens (DE). Airbus (FR/UK). All pretty major tech companies.
Re:do they make tech in EU ? (Score:5, Interesting)
No, you see "tech company" in American English means software. A targeted advertising network disguised as some sort of chat web site usually.
And I suspect that's a good hint to the reason why there are no big "tech companies" in Europe. If your business is slurping up data in order to manipulate people into buying stuff for the highest bidder you don't base yourself in countries with strong consumer protection and privacy laws.
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[...] you don't base yourself in countries with strong consumer protection and privacy laws.
"[...] you don't base yourself in sane countries".
There FTFY.
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SAP maybe?
I don't like them, but they are from Germany.
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Sure. SAP is a software services company, but their business isn't advertising. Wolters Kluwer is another, and Siemens and Dassault also have big software divisions.
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Airbus is FR/DE with branches in other countries. The UK branch was acquired by Airbus after the British government left the project.
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ARM (UK). ASML (NL). Siemens (DE). Airbus (FR/UK). All pretty major tech companies.
Worse, a lot of American tech companies are nothing more than money poured at European tech to change the logo on the office building. If you look this up in Google you may get an AI result from Gemini. Gemini being entirely devised by their DeepMind division, something that Google "Invented" by throwing $625million at DeepMind Technologies Ltd - a UK company. Even now the division is still headed up in the UK.
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Why do people always seem to forget Alstom (FR)? They've gobbled up numerous other transport technology companies (railway signalling, high-speed rail, electric traction equipment). They previously made other stuff like gas turbines and power generation equipment before selling off "non-core businesses". They're definitely a huge European technology company.
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So I guess Suse GmbH (German) isn't a tech company, then...
Or Phillips (Netherlands) isn't a tech company, then...
TomTom (Netherlands) isn't either...
NXP (Netherlands) doesn't produce any chips, of course...
They want backdoors this badly? (Score:2)
Oh no, not the French! (Score:3)
Whatever shall we do?
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Bring back Freedom Fries? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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Fart in their general direction.
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Negotiate. I mean that's what happened right? Trump negotiated because it turns out Americans don't want to pay more for French products despite pretending to thumb their noise at them in public?
So what Trump is saying... (Score:1)
So Trump wants Americans to buy things that were exclusively made in America and be less reliant on foreign countries (and punish us with tariffs for not pre-emptively having the infrastructure and expertise to support that). On top of that he wants to punish foreign countries for doing the same and be less reliant on America? Go fuck yourself Trump. He does not have realistic expectations, he does not have a plan to meet his expectations, he does not meet with businesses and companies to develop a realisti
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Don't be afraid of him (Score:2)
He's a US puppet since the beginning.
To point only three examples, remember
- how he made a deal with Uber to help them avoid paying employees as real employees.
- how he got help from McKinsey and many others, and paid them back with our tax € for fake studies. We're talking of billions and billions of €.
- how he sold Alstom's nuclear knowledge, maintenance and patents. And bought it back for double the price, but without the knowledge, maintenance and patents.
We,