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Comment by skrebbel | Hacker News Reader

Wow, as an EU citizen I can't figure out whether I think it's good or bad that we're now funding foreign companies.

Sure, Switzerland is very much European, but they're not in the EU. Romanian taxpayers are now contributing more to ProtonMail than Swiss taxpayers are.

This would be very much like the US government subsidizing a Canadian software company, on the grounds that 40% of their users are American plus some of their developers live in Vermont and Kentucky.

But, well, at least it goes to the good guys! So yay ProtonMail, I guess!

EDIT: I stand corrected, please do read some of the very insightful replies people posted. Thanks everyone!

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Switzerland takes part in a lot of EU programs. The treaties are very complex and include financial contributions, free movement of people (with minor restrictions) and many other rights and obligations.

You can rest assured that Switzerland is not getting anything for free.

Yep, there ain't no such thing as a free lunch.

> The Confederation made compulsory contributions of CHF 724 million to the European Union from the launch of Horizon 2020 to the end of 2017 [...]. According to the most recent official data from the European Commission (as at 6 March 2018), between 2014 and 2017 Swiss institutions received a total of CHF 654 million from the EU (not including Euratom and ITER). This means that Switzerland’s payments to the EU to date are CHF 70 million higher than the amount researchers in Switzerland have received in funding from Europe.

https://www.sbfi.admin.ch/sbfi/en/home/news/medienmitteilung...

This ignores that the calculation of this is really difficult. It's not 1 contract = 1 country, rather it's often consortia of dozens of institutions. One of these is coordinating and that will usually for various reasons be one based in an EU country. In many of the cases the complexity will be so high that it's difficult to say which institution/country gets the biggest share. But this might pay for conferences, travel cost and service contracts and other things that others benefit from too. In addition part of the funds will also cover the programme overhead. Swiss staff will be seconded to (and paid by) the EU. Etc etc etc.

Finally it's not all about the funds. Participation in this kind of calls bring prestige, partnerships, postdoc positions, etc.

Plain and simple Switzerland benefits significantly from being part, as do all other countries.

Switzerland pays into Horizon 2020. From 2014 to 2017 Swiss projects received over €60M less than those payments.

https://www.sbfi.admin.ch/sbfi/en/home/news/medienmitteilung...

Romania receives more funds from EU than it provides. Afaik Switzerland pays large sums to be a Schengen member and associate to the EU. Thus, likely, no worries for Romanian taxpayers...

€2M is a drop in the ocean and companies can be and are routinely multi-national.

I'm a Romanian and I would be glad if my taxes actually went to projects such as ProtonMail.

Also Switzerland might not be in the EU, but they have strong treaties with the EU and they might become part of the EU in the future, because right now they basically have many of the obligations of member states without a seat at the table. And such awards only strengthens our relationship with them.

I think the distinction is artificial. I'm glad the EU is starting to fund more privacy related initiatives. For too long the only people putting funding behind tools like Signal, Tor and (our own) Umbrella App were organisations like the Open Tech Fund and other (largely US based) non-profit funders. It's important that this pool of resources has become diversified.

Interestingly enough, the US paid $840 million for a Canadian company, CGI, to develop the Obamacare health insurance website.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/healthcare-gov-has-already-cost...

I don't know anything about the Obamacare website but from what you say that sounds very different since the US purchased something. It just happened to be from a foreign country. That sounds perfectly reasonable and common, assuming their was some kind of competitive selection process.

This is a grant:

> This grant also does not create any commitments on our part, other than using the funding for the purposes that we have outlined in our proposal

What am I missing?

Mutual openness of public procurement to companies of the partner country are a key ingredient of any trade agreement.

> Romanian taxpayers are now contributing more to ProtonMail than Swiss taxpayers are.

Yeah, but Romanian taxpayers can profit from it by (for example) using ProtonMail. This is only possible IF the project survives.

I find the nation state important, but to "put it back" into the Internet is a huge mistake!

It is also an untrue statement. Romania is a net recipient of EU funds, while Switzerland gives more money into the EU than it receives. So actually, the opposite is true. Swiss taxpayers are contributing to Romania ;-)

Better not spread such nonsense. The numbers shared in other places in this thread just don't show the whole picture. Switzerland benefits in many both financial and other ways from the partnership with the EU countries (from more tourism to a seat at the table to access to many opportunities in research and more that would otherwise be closed).

The EU is a very open body. It allows partner countries such as Switzerland or Norway in a large number of its programmes (actually Switzerland is currently not participating in most due to the Swiss not allowing free travel for Croatians, but as soon as they fix that they'll be back in).

In return those countries participate in the pot and the organisations involved (universities, SMEs, ..) can benefit from wider expertise. Links and exchange are strengthened. All benefit. Why those countries are in the EU programmes is the same why Brexit is idiotic: the collaboration benefits everyone, reduces overall costs and builds trust and strengthens all partners.

Let's be honest: Romanian taxpayers do not contribute any money to the EU or to ProtonMail. Romania is a net recipient state within the EU.

Let's be honest: Romanian (and other country) taxpayers contribute loads of money to the EU. Then some entities in that country, namely:

* those well-connected to politicians, or

* those able to push through the red tape of market-warping subsidies such as Horizon2020 using the right intermediary agencies for a cut (yes, it's a huge business!)

are the net recipients.

The money that arrives from the EU is significantly dissolved in nonsense projects (notorious hyper-expensive bicycle paths from-nowhere to-nowhere) and bureaucratic overhead. Equating the ingress EU money to taxpayers' benefits is too hopeful.

>> The money that arrives from the EU is significantly dissolved in nonsense projects (notorious hyper-expensive bicycle paths from-nowhere to-nowhere)

Why do you think this is nonsense? I was born in one of the poorer regions in Germany. When I was back on holiday I was positively suprised that one of those EU-funded bicycle lanes has been built there. It mostly connects villages (nowhere-to-nowhere so to speak) and the road has been a death-trap for cyclists for as long as I can think of. Since this lane was established the number of car-bicycle accidents has been reduced significantly.

From the outside these kinds of investment can seem like nonsense, but they are usually granted with close cooperation on the municipal level. For the people living in that region, it can be very beneficial...

I don't know about Germany; my understanding is it's quite a specific country in many ways (rich and orderly).

But at least in Romania (this thread), in my home country CZ, and I suspect in the rest of East Europe, "close cooperation on the municipal level" is a big part of the problem.

If you're interested, here are a few articles about the veritable EU money embezzlement business of bicycle paths (use Google translate). It runs deep, deep into politics:

https://ihned.cz/c1-51748500-cyklostezky-byznys-pro-vyvolene

https://www.lidovky.cz/byznys/statni-pokladna/praha-ma-nejdr... (1700 EUR / metre)

https://prahounakole.cz/2011/03/kauza-cyklostezka-sedlec-dus... (2300 EUR / m)

https://www.idnes.cz/jihlava/zpravy/cyklostezka-havlickuv-br... (3000 EUR / m)

https://domaci.ihned.cz/c1-52527290-cyklolavka-vede-odnikud-... (9000 EUR / m)

https://www.idnes.cz/jihlava/zpravy/cyklostezka-tunel-doprav...

https://www.idnes.cz/hradec-kralove/zpravy/cyklostezka-koste...

etc etc

Do you think the taxpayers, given a choice, would willingly contribute their tax money to such projects? Hence "nonsense".

Also note these projects often go against the wishes of local residents, and cost participation is ≫0% (EU/gvt subsidizes part of the cost + local municipality pays the rest). Which means, the local taxpayers get fucked over twice. Local politicians and their connected businesses profit.

I don't get it. Is that EU's fault? It's not like EU is saying "hey, here's €100m, build bicycle paths from nowhere to nowhere". It is your local politicians doing this kind of crap.

Nobody made a claim to the contrary (or even in agreement; no claim in that direction at all). You're going on a tangent, off-topic.

Following the rabbit hole.

Romania is a net recipient, doesn't mean it's not also contributing.

And now you understand brexit..

In terms of EU R&D budgets, the UK is a net receiver by 63%. It contributes 5.410^9€, and receives 8.810^9€, says the Royal Society [0].

To find a stick to beat a dog in the EU budget is easy.

After looking closely at UK financial contributions to the EU, the conclusion of a London School of Economics study[1] summarises things quite more eloquently: "In assessing the UK contributions to the EU’s finances, there are interpretations which are reasonable and those which are ‘spun’ to make political points, even though they are – bluntly – an abuse of statistics. A normative judgement about whether what the UK’s contributes (however measured) to the EU budget could be better spent on other public projects or whether the ‘membership fee’ yields sufficient benefits to be justified is beyond the scope of this paper. But the evidence is clear that, although it is a net contributor to an extent comparable with several other Member States of a similar level of prosperity, the UK does not face an unfair share of the burden of the gross costs of paying for Europe."

[0] https://royalsociety.org/~/media/policy/projects/eu-uk-fundi... (page 12)

[1] https://eprints.lse.ac.uk/67030/1/Begg_EU%20budget.pdf

Analyses of only the R&D budget is surely a biased interpretation of the statistics. To spell it out: If XYZ nation contributes 100bn and receives 10bn back to spend on R&D (because it has loads of high skilled workers / industry perhaps) and 20bn back to spend on everything else - that still makes it a net contributor to the tune of 70bn.

The EU is saving the UK money in many ways. All the costs of standardisation, trade negotiation, etc alone, of Britain needed to do all the processes itself, get the cost difference back. One of the first things UK did after the article 50 notice was to hire 4000 people for trade stuff that it didn't need to manage before - similar in many other fields. Medicines approval, aviation safety, maritime observation, Galileo, border protection, student exchanges, research, climate action, food standards and safety, development aid, election observation missions, ... All this is done through the EU budget.

Of course not the same amount of £££ flows to and fro, but anyone who thinks that should be the case really should start reading on what the EU actually does.

Exactly, you can understand the misguided reasoning that leads to Brexit.

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