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Comment by 1718627440 | Hacker News Reader

> Think of it as an investment. The rest of the EU also benefits from their hard work, and economic prosperity. Other countries in the EU have also enjoyed economic growth and support over the years.

It is for as long, as the EU exists in its current form. The rise of anti-EU parties in both Poland and Germany makes it a risky investment.

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There is pretty common trend of people complaining about X being bad coz EU but most of the time it turns into one of

* It was pretty sensible EU directive implemented badly by national govt * It was pretty sensible EU directive implemented okay but communicated badly * Outright lie about the problem and the scope of it.

One example: The people complained that "EU will force them to pay to scrap solar panels"

The truth: Some countries added price of recycling into price of the solar panels, some didn't. Those that did had free recycling, those that didn't needed owner to pay a fee when scrapping it. So, naturally, buying solar panel from country with no fee was cheaper and scrapping it in country with fee was free. EU noticed that loophole and forced countries into including the fee in panel cost:

The truth: Poland applied it by just applying fee to panels bought before the rule unification

The lie number 1: EU forced that implementation on Poland. Nothing was forced, that way of "fixing it" (vs eating the cost was what Polish govt chose

The lie number 2: (and I have no idea where it came from) "You will have to scrap your panels made before this date AND pay for it".

Sometimes I suspect most of that is just russian propaganda using anything to undermine EU

> Outright lie about the problem and the scope of it.

One of my favorites was “EU is banning juice”, when the definition of juice was being standardized and local producers of fruit-flavored sugar water couldn’t keep selling their beverages as “juice” anymore.

There's the classic "bendy banana law" which British tabloids pushed a lot to paint the EU as an inefficient bureaucracy.

In reality it was a way to harmonise banana grading, no one was forbidden to sell abnormally shaped bananas, it would just be classed lower than the "Extra" class.

I a sure it's Russian propaganda that the EU has basically tried for the last 3 years to ban encryption so that it can access all your personal messages without a warrant?

Or is it also Russia propaganda that it wants to force VPNs to collect data on their users or force everyone to use their real identities online so that it makes it easy to prosecute anyone for wrong speech?

https://www.techradar.com/vpn/vpn-privacy-security/the-eu-pr...

Nah, you are right the EU is good for us. No issues there at all.

Just because their is a a circulation of some misinformation, doesn't mean everything is. No institution is perfect. Also it are the member states, that are pushing for it, while the EU parliament is what stroked it down so far.

Thankfully most people have learned from the absolute shambles of Brexit and either of these countries leaving is extremely unlikely.

Have they? https://www.bbc.com/news/live/c1428pev1n0t

Be careful about reading too much into that. Our elections yesterday were for local and sometimes regional representatives - not our central national government. The result might still prompt a change in our unpopular Prime Minister but the high vote for Reform won't necessarily translate into voting for them at the next general election. We often see protest votes for alternative parties in local politics and everyone was expecting one this time.

Surveys here have been showing a trend towards greater public support for the EU. Its advocates have been pushing for closer integration and even talking of a referendum on rejoining. Although of course this also has to be viewed cautiously because the polls before the Brexit referendum had also pointed towards remaining and one of the biggest fans of the EU recently has been that unpopular PM who might not be in office for much longer.

I meant people still in the EU have learned, and laughed, and vowed not to make this mistake.

People in the UK, like the US, seem addicted to voting for morons then being surprised when they do the things morons do.

Also Hungarian change of government has cut off some of the "dark money".

Thinking about that risk increases said risk.

Also, for Germany, and I assume, other EU countries, cohesion and economic strength of the EU is the most important value that exists.

Not necessarily. The fact that investment pays of by cooperation is an argument for it.

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