In the article, it says that Spotify filed the complained in 2019 and these big cases can take a long time. There's no big consipiracy theory, I'm sorry!
> BTW, the EU has been quasi irrelevant in realpolitik terms.
What?
> BTW, the EU has been quasi irrelevant in realpolitik terms.
What?
>What?
Please tell how it is relevant in macro politics.
People around the world are silently accepting slow law systems instead of speeding them up. We are in 2024.
BTW, I have experience working with lawyers and the legal system in significant cases. You will cry or laugh if you witness the processes and tools used.
But at least the EU has strong consumer protection, privacy, and anti-competitive laws and we all benefit from it (at least EU citizens).
People are accepting bureaucracies in a Kafkian way and in a time where there are no excuses.
Regarding EU, you said that forcing websites to put UI dialogs asking for accepting cookies is a good consumer protection?
You take one issue and try to nullify all consumer laws with it. First, cookie banners are not legal anymore. They should be a dialog where 'No' is the first and foremost option and 'Yes' (opt in to tracking) requires permission per type of tracking. IMO this is a large improvement over: don't even ask, just track users based on PII everywhere, which is the case pretty much everywhere outside the EU.
The fact that you see banners everywhere is data hungriness of those websites. They could simply not track you by default and no banner would be needed. Though I wouldn't be surprised if a future iteration of the GDPR will forbid such banners and require no tracking to be the default.
But leaving this specific points. There are many great consumer laws in the EU:
* Your data bundle is valid in all EU countries. Before the EU intervened, providers would charge you through the nose for data outside your country.
* A web shop in any EU country is required to deliver to any other EU country. You live in Germany, but see a phone at a Dutch web shop that is much cheaper? The Dutch web shop cannot refuse you service because you are in Germany.
* You can return any online purchase within 14 days without justification (14 days after receiving the product).
* There is a single Euro payment system (SEPA). How big this is, is hard to grasp if you are in a large country. But it was hard to transfer money between countries, let alone without incurring fees. Now you can transfer money to any account in the EU without fees using in a uniform way (IBAN account number).
* Strong warranty laws. E.g. if a company does not solve an issue within a reasonable time, they are required to give you a full refund.
I could go on and on, there are so many good examples where EU regulations improve day-to-day life.
I will illustrate my central point using the SEPA system you mentioned and forgetting the USA prehistoric finance platforms.
SEPA was introduced in iterations in 2008, 2009, 2014, etc. The EU has the resource means to achieve this in a way that other countries (e.g. development or underdevelopment ones) couldn't do.
Argentina, a super corrupt, infinite loop bureaucracy , and relatively weak country has implemented direct bank to bank transfer without fees (only taxes!) in 2001. This shows my point clearly. This was implemented in less than two years. Indeed around 1 year because they took one to work in the law.
Comparing Argentina to the EU (in political terms) is, in general, completely unfair. I don't know you but I would be concerned as a taxpayer if I were living in the EU zone.
I don't know how population size is relevant in this context. Instagram has 2.4b users.
Please think that I am comparing a country light years from EU resources. I know SEPA includes many countries but even so the comparison is relevant.
BTW, Argentina also had many local banks in different regions. The EU region is just ~1.5x larger than Argentina.
Argentina: 1 country. 1 currency. 1 law applicable to the entire country.
SEPA: EU + Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom: 31 countries. 12 currencies (7 currencies in the EU alone [1]). 31 different laws (while EU countries must adhere to the overall EU laws, they are free to implement their own laws as they see fit within the general framework).
wslh: yes, yes, they are entirely comparable, after all Argentina also has regions.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Currencies_of_the_European_Uni... Turkish Lyra is used in Northern Cyprus which, while de jure part of Cyprus, is not in the EU.
SEPA effectively got everyone to the level of some of the smaller EU countries that implemented similar systems by early 1990s. It wasn't easy, because some of those countries had population that still thought cheques are a good idea.
Got a reliable source for that? Because I actually need to have one to send out to a bunch of non-complying companies.
And then proceed on to the text of GDPR, Article 7 Conditions for consent: https://gdpr.eu/article-7-how-to-get-consent-to-collect-pers...
Emphasis mine:
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3. The data subject shall have the right to withdraw his or her consent at any time. The withdrawal of consent shall not affect the lawfulness of processing based on consent before its withdrawal. Prior to giving consent, the data subject shall be informed thereof. It shall be as easy to withdraw as to give consent.
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The EU did not require those cookie pop-ups. Websites could have used no cookie popups and let users go to the website settings (or an "allow cookies" checkbox in the top right corner of every normal page) to turn on cookies. Instead, websites added annoying cookie pop-ups to maliciously comply or added third-party cookie banners "on accident" because the not-lawyer website owners didn't realize that the GDPR didn't ask for cookie pop-ups.