Of course, according to propaganda, it's all "efficiency" and "saving" and definitely not US effectively killing EU industry.
https://notesfrompoland.com/2023/04/06/poland-overtakes-us-t...
Industry changes over time depending on the the conditions. Europeans are not fond with an aggressive gas station on their footstep, cut back on buying stuff from it and obviously see the negative impact from buying from a gas station further away. They also live less comfortably but it's far from doom and gloom, which many suspect might follow if that gas station expand its power.
Everybody knows its not ideal to spend more and everyone knows its not fun to consume less. Sometimes, you have no choice unless you are nihilistic.
The US really isn't the country to beat for manufacturing, we're a fair way in to the 21st century by now.
China: 75% of the same.
Now I know China is well known for their green credentials and the EU have been underinvesting in Green technology by policy... of wait, no it is the opposite of both those things. That is what failed EU industry looks like. The EU has been trying to set themselves up with batteries for a decade now and China is 5x-ing them by just knuckling down and producing stuff without worrying about political correctness.
The fact that the first market you thought of was one where the EU has been drubbed so badly should be a concern to everyone. Except maybe China.
Who knows, maybe we'll even get to see it growing through a nuclear winter at the rate the EU is going.
You couldnt buy artificially carbonated water for some time. Naturally carbonated water and cola (different suppliers?) was available.
I think the reason is the same as for the lower then expected impact of the sanctions on Russia. People are quite resourceful when facing an acute crisis. When millions of people have an actual motivation to find better ways of doing things, they tend to find solutions they would have never considered under normal circumstances.
The real question is whether there was a statistically significant difference compared to previous years ceteris paribus (same location, same time of year, etc.).
Also the influx of various refugees over the years should be taken into account.
Anecdotal evidence that there is homelessness does not automatically mean doom and gloom for a country.
I visited Frankfurt just 1 month ago and was shocked to see the situation being even worse.
I believe a lot of it is a post-effect of covid where some people fell through the craks and now are just lost to drugs or other addictions.
You might easily find that a "recession" is less damaging to people than a period of drastically cut energy consumption. People unable to heat themselves in winter undermines the idea of a growing economy - the metrics aren't supposed to be a shell game of excuses where some drops are papered over because it is politically inconvenient.
I mean, how are people supposed to be better off if we're seeing these types of sharp drops in energy use? It strains credulity that someone in the Netherlands can cut their gas use by 24% in a year and claim that their material living standard didn't decline. There'd have to be something mighty positive happening - what is it? They haven't had time to build up capital to keep themselves comfortable.
Stage-1) Politicians should be the first and their energy expenditures should be cut by law to half of the median with some painful consequences for breaking it.
Stage-2) After a couple of years same goes for top 1% and government offices.
Stage-3) After another couple of years do this for top 10%
Stage-4) The rest of us.
20 years later we had cars using up half the gasoline and with 2x the horsepower.
Humans need a solid kick in the behind sometimes.
Some energy intensive industries (e.g. steel) are down, but the industry overall is up, meaning many found ways to optimize.
Edit: a source, in italian https://twitter.com/emmevilla/status/1640628147845492736?t=Z...
Another manufacturer of food-related products closed, too: https://www.europe1.fr/economie/le-groupe-cofigeo-william-sa...
A quick search brings up others, but in French.
Fair point about moving to the US, though.
---
Edit regarding the US specifically (unfortunately, French only):
Here's Safran suspending a factory project near Lyon and increasing production in the US and Malaysia: https://www.lesechos.fr/industrie-services/air-defense/safra...
Also, BASF announcing a "cost-cutting" plan in Europe and increasing production in the US: https://www.europe1.fr/economie/prix-de-lenergie-delocalisat...
I think the reason is twofold:
1. Industries can probably not afford to cut production immediately
2. At least in France, there were worries about gas availability for the winter. The government tried to have industries lower their consumption to not run out of the reserves during the winter.
https://www.grtgaz.com/en/en/our-actions/continuity-of-gas-t...
I haven't found a similar source for electricity, though articles I've seen talk of reductions, too.
The part of the claim you have taken upon yourself to substantiate is that the reduction is mainly (or even mostly) due to industry getting closed down completely or relocated specifically to the US.
Because all i can think of is exploiting Africa or cosying up to middle eastern despots.
Done is done, but what I really can't forgive is that while pushing for this asinine conflict, there was literally no plan on how to deal with the consequences. Instead of diversifying our energy supply, we are now dependent on the US, which given its trajectory, will bite us in the arse 5 years down the line. Outside of France, there is literally 0 foreign policy competence left in the EU, and it is really showing with how helpless every crisis since 2008 has been handled.
Our ministry of interior has even official guides how to promote this blaming of Putin in media.
https://www.mvcr.cz/soubor/krit-memo-putin-a-hlad-20221214-p...
What?
The fact that so many in the EU don’t realise this just points out how amazing American propaganda is
Asking as a fellow European (HU)
Basically Germany's entire foreign policy is economic suicide and very much driven by a US stooge (Baerbock). The total penetration of the German Green Party (formerly pacifist) is an excellent example of American influence.
Sanctions on Russian energy are a response to invasion. Apart from moral reasons, they also are meant to cripple russia so we don't have to fight them later in the baltics, in poland or romania.
So it's pretty much EU self interest here.
I might get downvoted for this, but the duty of every head of state is to ensure its country's economic and citizens well being is above anything else.
And what the EU as a whole did was exactly the opposite with the sanctions.
And no, no one would have had to fight anywhere else in Europe.
They are doing that by ensuring future conflict is much more unlikely.
If these measures were done earlier perhaps russia would not have started current invasion and we'd be much better off.
So perhaps politicians failed by being compliant up to now.
Try telling the baltics, poland, romania that they should not fear russia and continue trading... Same countries russia constantly threatens and are part of EU and NATO.
Imagine germany's position if Poland is conquered by russia.
> And no, no one would have had to fight anywhere else in Europe.
That's a bold statement considering russia's posturing, threats, history and leaked initial plans.
I’m very proud of that and I think cutting dependency on Russian gas – while we might not have necessarily wished for it to go this fast – is just plain good policy, making Germany more resilient in the future. Obviously there have been some short term bad consequences, that‘s pretty much unavoidable with any such drastic shift. But consequences have been far from catastrophic or existential for us. Germans and Europeans are going through some times that are a bit tougher – the people suffering, however, are in Ukraine.
I see Germany and Europe coming out of this more resilient and safer, especially if we make sure Putin cannot win this war.
https://www.reddit.com/r/latvia/comments/tdct34/russian_mili...
This article says the speaker is "Colonel Igor Korotchenko, formerly of the Russian General Staff and air force and currently a reserve officer".
https://www.thesun.ie/news/8513264/russian-state-tv-discusse...
This time we're tripping over ourselves to to make life harder for the Russians no matter the cost, seemingly lacking any self awareness.
Europe desperately needs its own army.
Ha! Do you not remember the Time making Putin a person of the year? They encouraged it back in 2009
And the worst part is they even fail at providing a good single market. You still can't work for a Spanish company from Germany (without being a freelancer), or pay your taxes in Spain with a French bank account. If you start a company, hiring across Europe means having local payroll offices to handle local taxes and labour laws in local languages in every single country (and possibly more internal autonomous regions). Trade unions differ in every country so there's no central negotiations.
Residence registration and ID is done independently in every single country, so you might be delayed by months when moving for work.
This is what we have in the EU at the moment - VDL as a "compromise" between Center-Right, Center-Left, Center, "South-bloc" and "North-bloc", coming from the party that won the election.
None of the other major party candidates would have been able to form a commission (maybe Margarethe Vestager, but then the party arriving third would have won, which would have been weird and undemocratic to some.)
I know some people would rather have the head of the commission elected directly - but, seing the crazyness of French system, completely centered on the election of a single person, I'm starting to reconsider...
As for being a "puppet state", well... I guess we come back at the US by forcing people to implement GDPR popups ;) ?
Right now VdL has just failed upwards, being a terrible politician in Germany who was moved to the EU to get her out of domestic politics, and it seems she'll be NATO leader soon (again unelected).
The ePrivacy Directive is different from the GDPR btw. The GDPR is actually not so bad tbh - although a bit too over-reaching, but at least it's a step towards making some things like I mentioned in the previous comment a bit more uniform.
The Parliament is also very weak and can't propose laws, etc.
I guess Californians and Texans can both vote for local politicians under the same party, but nothing force the politicians to vote together once in Congress ?
Also, I think as a bloc, the EU is not entirely ready yet for, say, French people to directly vote for non French people. But who knows.
As for the balance of powers in the EU, it's far from perfect. But coming from France, who am I to judge ?
I'm not sure I get your point. The European Parlement Election _is_ held accross all EU contries "almost" at the same time. It's spread accross a few days to respect the voting tradition of each member state, but the campaign very much happen at the same time for everyone.
There were debates between the "heads", but there you hit the language barrier - we're not going to see a Spanish candidate arguing with a German one in English on French Television any time soon.
> Like have French, Spanish, Greek, Swedes, Germans, etc. all debating and voting - and people would actually know the background of who the President of the EU commission is!
To be honest, the 2019 elections were the first time it _did_ felt like the voting was occuring across the bloc. Each cross-european party had a few clear faces for candidates for the Commission, beforehand.
Had the PPE received a clear majority, we would be talking about the Webber Commission - except, no-one really won, and they had to pick a compromise candidate.
> Right now VdL has just failed upwards
She is the grand tradition of the parlementary leaders chosen because they were "the least worse alternative", and "bad enough to be acceptable by everyone."
Again, I don't know if it is structural, or just the result of an election without a clear majority.
I understand this is an issue because she was only known in Germany. Would it have been better to at least choose a "compromise candidate" that had previous EU-level experience ?
Ironically, you have to notice that the British People did not vote for Sunak either ;)
I don't know what's the structural way to avoid "an elected body not agreeing on a name chosen before the election". Do you stick to the name, until you reach gridlock ? Do you setup your elections to ensure a clear majority, artifically reducing the diversity of your electorate until you have a duopoly ?
But VdL is the head of the Commission not Parliament (which is also far too weak IMO). The equivalent would be the King in Britain, which is obviously even worse, same for the House of Lords, etc. but two wrongs don't make a right.
I think really the Parliament should be more powerful with PR voting for the European blocs directly rather than local parties with the lists, etc. and the President should also be directly elected.
Basically give the EU parliament more power in return for greater democracy.