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Comment by bitL | Hacker News Reader

> Poland and Hungary have found a loophole allowing them to ignore EU rules and sanctions while still profiting from subsidies and market access

AFAIK this was tit-for-tat: HU & PL closed/sold-off their industry in favor of WEU in exchange for subsidies. Removing these subsidies for any reason would violate the main economic agreement between them and EU. Mind you, there is no significant locally grown industry in those countries anymore (outside of a few state-owned industries), WEU profited from this enormously, especially Germany. As economic potential of this arrangement has been exhausted after 25 years already, incorporating UA is the next move to give EU (primarily DE/FR/NL) some nice economy boost for the next 10 years. EU is essentially playing Sim City.

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Same playbook as with Greece -- which up to the 80s and the EEC had a larger industry presence, and discarded most of it with non-compete laws and the lure of subsidies in favor of the nothern-western parts of WEU.

No need to get conspiratorial. Industry jobs nosedived since the 80s all over Western Europe (and beyond) for well known reasons.

What is UA?

Edit: Ukraine.

Adding to that: one of the fundamental EU rules was freedom to do bussiness anywhere in EU. That worked in favor of Western countries which had their corporations opening offices in Poland, and making huge profits here.

After some time Poland found some niches for itself, e.g. Polish transportation companies dominate EU market in truck freight. What was the EU response to that? They recently passed change in labor laws, that would make this business unprofitable.

So: common EU market is fine as long as Western countries benefit from it, but Poland or other Eastern countries making money from business in the West is against the rules :)

>They recently passed change in labor laws, that would make this business unprofitable.

Are you talking about those labor laws, which require truckers driving in Germany to be paid German minimum wage? Totally unprofitable.

What evidence do you have that the labor laws are a response to polish domination of freight, or that those laws would would somehow only cause polish carriers to become unprofitable?

It was explicitly stated by French president Macron, that the goal is to end Polish dominance in truck freight :)

Basically the law change is this:

Now, if you are Polish truck driver employed in Poland, you are subject to Polish tax and labor codes, including things like tax rate, minimum wage, etc. What France wants (and what was passed, but is not in effect yet) is that if said truck driver crosses the border of another country (say, France) he should be subject to that country tax and labor code. Which is riddiculous, because the driver does not change his tax residence, he just enters France for a few days it takes to make a delivery, and then comes back to Poland.

Would it also be ridiculous if a factory worker would be employed in one country and just cross the border to do a bit of factory work? All kinds of other local laws apply just by entering a country. How is minimum wage different?

Would it also be ridiculous if a factory worker would be employed in one country and just cross the border to do a bit of factory work?

It would be ridiculous, because the factory worker would be working at a company domiciled in the other country. That is because, a company in one country can not just open a factory in another country without having an entity in the latter country.

Consider an alternative situation: Franz is employed in Hungary as a writer of fiction, but crosses into Austria many days and uses wifi to work there. Should Franz be paid Austrian minimum wage?

All kinds of other local laws apply just by entering a country.

Local laws do apply, but generally one can not just enter another country and work there. Very often one is specifically prohibited from working in another country without a visa.

Except the stated goal of European Union is free movement of workers. You can literaly go and work in any EU country, no visa or work permission needed.

But that's not really the situation here: it's a business providing services for customers in another country. You send a driver abroad for a few days, that should not make him subject for local tax and labor laws. If you can prove that said worker spent significant period of time there (most tax treaties use 183 days as a rule of thumb) then that's a different matter.

Main frothing at the mouth was because of requirement to pay local minimum wage for the time employee worked in that country.

Russia killed whatever plan the EU had for Ukraine. There is no way EU let's in a state where russian troops operate.

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