Hacker News Reader

The main obstacle is that the EU became deeply neoliberal in its thinking, judging state subsidies as worse than slave labour.

For example, when the US rolled out the cornucopia of state protectionism that is the IRA the EU has mainly responded by saying "actually, that's not very free marked of you USA".

View on HN

The EU has its own subsidy programmes as well but it is a lot more complex. You need 27 governments to agree to make something happen, from 400.000 people Malta to 80.000.000 million people Germany. The small countries are terrified to be squashed by German and French power to give subsidies to their own national company, ruining the single market.

In fact you have the same issue in the US but the states have no direct say, and statistics are not done the same way - so you don't see the impact the same way and don't have discussions the same way.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com