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Comment by rsynnott | Hacker News Reader

The Register know very well what the EU is. However, in practice, the EU is colloquially referred to as "Europe" in many contexts in the UK.

The rules the EU establishes will also apply to the EEA, and in practice will almost certainly also be adopted by the UK, which has tended to take its lead from the EU on such matters since Brexit. So, while pedantically these are not rules for Europe, _for practical purposes_ they likely will be.

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Also, most people are aware that "Europe" the continent is unlikely to make such decisions, so it's pretty obvious what's meant by context.

It's not obvious at all actually, since there are many European things that also affect Island, Norway and Switzerland for being part of EFTA, but an equally high number of things that don't.

And even the EU itself is pretty fragmented with various overlapping areas with different rules.

As someone who's studied European relations, I can tell you that it's a real mess, and the fact that journalists don't accurately reporting the facts definitely isn't helpful.

There are others ways to coordinates european countries than EU institutions

>the EU is colloquially referred to as "Europe" in many contexts in the UK.

It really should have been EUR for Europe, and EU as in European Union.

What continent does UK consider itself part of then?

Context matters; you can generally tell whether someone's talking politics or geography.

But in politics the distinction between EU and Europe matters, there's the political EU region, but countries like Switzerland and Norway are politically still in Europe despite not being in EU just due to all the neighboring countries, in theory same should apply to UK

It likes to believe it is somewhere in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean.

Whenever I go to the UK, people there seem to consistently refer to EU or the rest/continental europe in general as "europe", esp in political/economic context. My impression is that the UK is just too important to be grouped together with other countries.

Ask two different people and get three different answers.

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