EDIT: please look at the other poll about lobbying the EU | Hacker News Reader

EDIT: please look at the other poll about lobbying the EU

3 pointsdanmaz742 comments

EDIT I just discovered how to create a real poll, you can find it here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3303323

In the latest poll [1] we saw that there are a lot of Europeans on HN, and I guess many of them from the EU. I also noticed a comment [2] from davedx from the Netherlands that said "not being based in the US comes with lots of disadvantages, such as terrible payment gateways, unfriendly tax and small business legislation, and smaller networks of entrepreneurs", and started wondering if in the EU we could, and should, start lobbying the EU Parliament and Commission to get a better environment for (especially web, but not only) startups: eg for payment gateways, only a more harmonized system could make them easier to create. To do so, we would also (need to) build bigger networks of entrepreneurs.

[1] http://news.ycombinator.org/item?id=3298905 [2] http://news.ycombinator.org/item?id=3300204

So, the question is: Should we start lobbying the EU Parliament and Commission to create a better business environment for startups?

Tax legislation is the domain of national parliaments, not the EU (except for aspects of VAT, anything else?). Tax harmonisation requires a treaty change and agreement from all 27 member states.

On unfriendly legislation --- is this national legislation or EU-wide legislation?

On terrible payment gateways --- why do you think that is? Imperfect implementation of the common market (e.g. unharmonised regulations)? Insufficient competition generally? Something else?

EDIT: please repost your question here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3303323 I'll do the same with my answer :)

Terrible payment gateways: AFAIK, based on many comments by the newest providers in the US, the biggest problem is exactly that of different regulations for different EU countries. Creating better options requires different solutions for each country, so it is very expensive. With a harmonized system, you would be able to create a solution for 500 million potential users - it would be worth the effort.

Unfriendly legislation: The EU parliament can force national legislations to become friendlier, and especially to make it easier for a startup to operate in the whole EU.

Tax legislation: I'm not thinking about revenues taxation, but registration fees and mechanism and controls and the likes. There could be interventions from the EU Parliament to harmonize them, I think, and if that's impossible now - we could at least start to lobby to make it possible.

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