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Comment by pjerem | Hacker News Reader

Technically it's in the European Economic Area (EEA) but the title was too long.

That's strange, I wonder why not EU but rather EEA. Probably the smallest target amount compared to EU and aimed at resolving some conflict with a regulation that only affects EEA rather than EU?

The EEA contains EU countries plus Iceland, Liechtenstein, and Norway.

+ Switzerland and Turkey

No Switzerland and no Turkey https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Economic_Area

EEA is larger than the EU. The EEA concerns the single market, the reason Microsoft is doing this (to avoid breaching antitrust/competition law).

Countries in the EEA but not EU (e.g. Switzerland) tend to have bilateral agreements with the EU which cover most EU laws, so I think legally it's often easier to group EEA together

E.g. EU enforces free data roaming for cellphone providers, but many providers allow free roaming to Switzerland and the Nordic countries too - not sure if it's just practically easier than trying to geofence those areas into a different tariff or if it's legally too complicated, but I'm fairly certain they don't do it out of the goodness of their hearts.

Switzerland is not in the EEA. The EEA is EU + Iceland, Liechtenstein, and Norway.

Switzerland is _not_ in the EEA, it has a sui generis bilateral agreement with the EU that implements some but not all of the EU law that applies to the EEA countries automatically. It's very contentious in EU-Swiss diplomacy, because the EU doesn't like that the agreement with Switzerland keeps needing to be renegotiated to incorporate new EU law, whereas Switzerland sees this as a necessary element of maintaining its sovereignty.

Definitely they don't do it or if the goodness of their hearts, because despite "pssshh, Project Fear, don't be silly, even a Hard Brexit won't reintroduce roaming charges".... Many of them did or will soon reintroduce them.

EEA is UE + few other countries.

>I wonder why not EU but rather EEA

No big mystery: because EEA countries agreed to the ruling to make that a requirement and not just EU countries?

There is tons of stuff applicable at the EEA level, it's quite common. After all the purpose of EEA is to have common regulatory framework.

EEA = EU + EFTA. The EEA forms the “European single market”. The EFTA states adopt most of the relevant legislation from the EU. So it’s normal that product policies apply to the whole of the EEA instead of just to the EU.

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