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Comment by sievebrain | Hacker News Reader

Of course people benefit. And if the EU had never existed, many of those same benefits would have been created via a patchwork of treaties and deals anyway.

The EU is not a choice between integration and chaos, despite what Brussels wants people to believe. European economies were integrating before the EU anyway.

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Many benefits for sure, especially if you live in one of the richer countries. But what the EU gives you are certain rights, which are guaranteed to any EU citizen. Movement is no longer governed by treaties, but a right. As a business, you have the right to sell across Europe, without local regulations being able to ban you unilaterally.

I think a lot of EU members would rather take the Swiss[1] deal.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Switzerland%E2%80%93European_U...

Instead, you get European regulations that ban you locally.

Good luck selling software across the EU if you live there. Check out the new VAT rules the EU imposed. It's less paperwork to sell to everywhere but the EU, which is madness.

That's a different thing, you sure have the right to sell your software. Unification of VAT policies would be a hard sell for the member countries.

How is this different from having to account for different state and local taxes when selling software inside the US?

Your payment processor tacks on sales tax. Just list where you have nexus. You get a number at the end of the quarter that you pay when you file taxes.

With VAT, you have to keep careful track of input VAT and sometimes later claim repayment from various governments.

There is a lot of obligatory registration and document submission.

The velocity of legislative change is high, especially when summed across member states.

Small entities have an incentive to underreport. Thus, a lot of enforcement activity is targeted at small entities.

> European economies were integrating before the EU anyway.

No no no, the EU is an artefact of that integration. Just because it's grown a head and legs, and started to talk isn't an excuse to kill it though. Better off talking back. But when the quality of representative you send over is Nigel Farage you can't expect much of a conversation.

Definitely a frank discussion to be had about the behaviour of the EU (in particular the EC) and maybe such a discussion will be the good that arises from this ill wind.

People vote for Farage because the only difference between MEPs is how much of a symbolic protest against the Commission they will make. There's no other difference: it's not like an MEP can introduce a bill to change freedom of movement or reduce the EU's budget.

So the UK sends Farage. He achieves nothing. Nobody cares, because nobody expected him to achieve anything anyway. No MEP could.

Yes you are right. Political parties need to present a Euro agenda that their representatives will commit to advancing. Currently we only have the false dichotomy of (a) do what Brussels tells us or (b) tell Brussels to GFT which really isn't good enough. Sending the prime minister over there every 6 months or so to "get concessions" that the representatives should have been coherently campaigning for in the first place doesn't count.

In that case the EU isn't a choice at all.

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