This is ludicrous. Food labelling long predates the EU, and appears to have started in the United States sometime around the 1930s on a voluntary basis. Food labels predate the EU even in Europe, by many years.
The idea of VAT dates back to the First World War, and while the EU assists European governments in coordinating its collection in Europe, it had no meaningful impact on the adoption of VAT-style taxes overseas. Neither Australia nor the United States levy VAT.
Consumer protections absolutely do not originate in the EU. It’s a claim so absurd I honestly don’t know what to say to it. English civil law has had case law and statute protecting consumers for centuries, which is in no way remarkable, seeing as even Roman law had consumer protections in cases of fraud, mistake, or duress.
The idea that the EU is some shining beacon on a hill that everyone looks up to is something one hears a lot around Europe, but I think the people who think this may have places like Moldova confused with the rest of the world. The EU is the fastest shrinking trade bloc, in relative terms, on the face of the planet. Europeans used to like saying that if they were a single country, they’d be the largest economy in the world. That ceased to be true in the last few years - the US has now overtaken the EU. Whereas the US has to manage runaway growth and speculative excess, the EU is forced to make provisions for its relative economic decline. If European countries were US states, living standards in large European economies like Germany and France would rank near the bottom. This is a huge problem. Less prosperity means less quality government services, including healthcare, social security, and education. Less growth over time means fewer nurses, fewer teachers in the future. If the EU single market is such a towering achievement, why is EU growth so sclerotic? It’s hard for Europeans to hear, but the EU is simply not a model people outside of Europe aspire to, even people who otherwise love Europe.
The European project has wonderful achievements, in my opinion, like the Schengen area, and deep scientific and educational cooperation, including Erasmus exchanges for young people. But instead of focusing on those, the EU prefers to claim credit for the sunrise. I’d rather see the EU reformed than abolished - it’s still a net good, I think - but far too many Europeans are far too myopic about the EU’s shortcomings, and far too ignorant about how the rest of the world functions to consider alternatives. (Or even just apply a reasonable degree of scepticism when the EU claims credit for things that predate it or that are already widespread elsewhere.)
> Sorry but we are on public internet. We dont have the time to sit and get to know people.
You seem to be defending bad faith assumptions as a time saving device. Seems to me like that would just set you up for a lot of unnecessarily adversarial discussions, and a generally less pleasant experience than you could be having.