That's wrong. For EU companies it makes a difference, since it allows them to be compliant. It may not be enough for you and me, but it is a huge legal (and also practical) difference. Generally I agree it is dumb to give these companies data (regardless where they are) and that includes already data from me as an end customer. They can't be trusted when it comes to data privacy or lawful use of my data.

Still there is a difference of data being used for company/business usage or for intelligence. Generally the trend to host data in the EU and having regulations on the EU level is a positive trend.

In case of the network fees, residential customers directly subsidize industrial customers: network fees cover the network operation costs, so it's a zero-sum game where one party's reduction is another party's increase.

It's still somewhat expensive to operate electricity heavy industry in Germany, but much less outrageous than the residential prices that are usually used in for comparisons in the news.

I just checked and you can get a new contract in Germany for 25-30c per kWh. If you compare it to France, the price there is 24c per kWh, but at the same time the government fought tooth and nail last year to be able to fund repairs of the nuclear plants. They want to spend 20-25 billion per year of taxpayer money in the coming years. So do the math on what it actually costs. If you run a real company for profit you fund the future repairs through the price of the things you sell.

There is no such thing in Germany, or at least there wasn't until recently. There is a renewables surcharge but it was always on the electricity bill. Last year it was removed because of high electricity costs so it wasn't needed, and the current plan now is to finance it through taxes once the fund gets depleted. Personally I hope it gets put back on the bill because I like to know how much things truly cost.