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Comment by rsynnott | Hacker News Reader

This has long been a kind of systematic public relations problem for the EU; generally, the fruits of EU regulation become, in the minds of the consumer, an example of corporate benevolence, with the EU's role being solely as a thing to blame when things go wrong.

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The problem with EU regulation is basically that it regulates foreign companies and products without creating domestic products.

Schrodingers EU. Can't make any products or services but is rich enough to attract foreign companies to massively invest in to gain access and compete in said markets. Where do you think the EU gets the wealth if not making and selling products and services?

EU regulation primarily governs European companies and the European subsidiaries of foreign companies; at most, you generally only see leakage outside Europe (eg RoHS has kind of spread; rather than produce separate non-toxic products for Europe and toxic for RoW, a lot of companies have gone non-toxic everywhere; Apple was a leader there). If your only window into EU regulation is Hackernews, I can _kind_ of see how you'd come to this conclusion, but regulation of tech multinationals is very much a drop in the bucket.

But also I mean I think you're confused about the purpose of these rules. While certain EU rules are protectionist, these ones aren't; the purpose of forcing manufacturers to make things repairable isn't to promote European manufacturers over foreign ones, it's to protect the consumer.

I think for many Europeans, we 100% know that these changes are thanks to the EU: GDPR, right to be forgotten, right to repair, etc.

I think it's some people from the outside (i.e. the US) who are absolutely anti-government but pro corporations-as-a-government which can't see that a for-profit company is like a wheel: it needs a stick for it to go straight.

For some Europeans, certainly, but, well, see Brexit. For instance, remember the outrage about the reintroduction of roaming charges within the EU by British mobile providers? Or the current scandal in the UK over the pesticide residue limits on imported fruit and vegetables being, in some cases, _hundreds_ of times higher than they were under Europe.

A lot of people seem to have been genuinely surprised that these things didn't just happen by magic, they happened due to EU regulation.

Brexit by now should be seen far what it was: a farce of misinformation and lies which should have been halted as the playing field had been contaminated.

Also a great example of why you can't have a single and very important choice being put to the public without said public being used to participate to the government's choices.

I believe Brexit as a question, if ever, should have been asked after at least 3/4 other new referendums on different topics and seeing how the public responded.

(to note: the UK had, so far, only 3 nationwide referendums with Brexit being one of the.)

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