US tech firms share Dutch regulator officials' names with Senate
dutchnews.nl
dutchnews.nl
> Van der Burg is currently grappling with the issue of Solvinity, a Dutch cloud service provider which is widely used by government departments including the Digid identity system, and which is on the verge of being sold to a US company.
> The Dutch tax office is also currently switching to Microsoft systems, despite MPs’ concerns.
They all talk about the importance of European digital sovereignty and then continue to do the exact opposite behind the scenes.
The issue with the EU is that they lack the capacity for any kind of strategic thought. There are multiple reasons why but the underlying cause is that it is possible to move into local minimum where there is a very strong disincentive for any kind of change. Countries in the EU have generally been in that place since before the EU...that is why the EU was created, to limit change. It is isn't political incentives, it is a fundamental aspect of the political culture. If you also look at the stuff that has changed, this only becomes more strange (i.e. government intervention, immigration, regulations). Change is limited to preserve control.
To add to your point, despite this the German population seems to strongly believe there is no corruption in their government. Local minima, everything is fine, there is no fire, I'm going to make some tea while the tables turns to ash under the pot.
I think you see the same thing in every Western democracy where people believe there is no corruption or believe in rather comical forms of corruption, but the corruption is actually systemic and a function of some political configuration that can't really stand change. This is certainly the case in Germany where you have this odd alliance between unions and billionaires that has basically led to, despite the amazing talent of their people, amazingly poor policy delivery.
You might be comfortable in that life, but you won't be competitive.
More money and material comforts? Well perhaps, but then again, I do wonder just how many would willingly take that rather than for example a proper work-life balance or clean environment. And we'll probably have to rethink the relationship of our societies with material consumption etc. in the coming decades anyway due to the climate emergency, and so maybe it'd actually be better for the US or China to adopt our "less competitive" stance rather than for us to try to agonise on trying to get ourselves competitive with them.
No one has yet figured out just what one's material possessions will do for them after they're dead. At best you can pass them to your next of kin, but that doesn't need the kind of hyper competitive, hyper capitalistic mindset espoused by the US or China.
Look at the Trump, connected to p*dos, instead of stopping wars, started a war, betrayed MAGA, but still no action taken against him, because there is no legal action for lying to become a politican
To be honest and I say this as a Dutch person, this is typical Dutch (government). Basically two rules in Dutch politics: (1) always choose the option that pleases the US the most; (2) always postpone solving issues to the latest possible moment (US dependence, nitrogen deposition, childcare benefits scandal, gas-induced earthquakes).
France, Germany, etc. are much better examples when it comes to sovereignty.
As an aside the parliament wants to stop the Solvinity acquisition or stop renewing the contract with Solvinity. But the VVD (one of the parties in government) is always going to choose what is best for big business (the party is one big revolving door) or the US.
Only way to have control is to have domestic actors you can push around.
Uh, no. The US soft power is turning to dust whilst the EU is out there building the new free [trade] world, with itself as the biggest lynchpin.
What has happened the past ±30 years is that most EU countries cut spending on their militaries to the bone, because big brother USA would take care of it anyway. Now that we are returning to a multi-polar world, suddenly the EU is left scrambling for hard power that it doesn't have. That's why they can't play hardball when the US does a new ridiculous thing, because they simply lack the hard power to back up Ukraine.
The US is sorely going to regret their antics though. Long term, the EU is going to switch to their own stacks, both for military but also things like cloud and other tech. It's trillions of $ the US economy will be missing out on. And voting in a Democratic president, senate and house is not gonna change a thing about it, because the US has proven itself to be a fundamentally unreliable, if not outright hostile partner.
Trade within Europe has massive restrictions. I have no idea why, given the stated aims of Europe...we are posting this on a post about the Netherlands trying to protect office software ffs, people think this isn't the case. One of the reasons why the EU created a trade bloc, and the same reasons why you see the same attempts in areas of the world like South America, was to limit the impact of free trade. This should be completely obvious given that the EU is not competitive in areas where they lack the ability to limit competition.
Also, I will point out: US policy is for the EU to do exactly the thing that you are suggesting. This has been the consistent position of Trump since 2016. The main blockers for this have been politicians in the EU. I am not sure how you equate being unreliable with subsidising EU defence spending to the tune of multiple trillions so that EU countries can spend on welfare either.
The EU self-image is totally bizarre, it is so out of touch with reality. Hostile to all forms of change and innovation: actually one of the greatest free traders there has ever been. Xenophobic and hostile to certain countries: possibly one of the greatest allies to these countries ever. Never gets any support on Ukraine, would be a leader if the US weren't such bastards: spent multiple decades fuelling Putin's state.
For example, Poland defends its rail operator, PKP Intercity, against foreign competition by a series of dirty tricks, including "just never registering a sale of a depot to a competing corporation in the land registry".
I don’t understand how you can believe that about the EU. The union has been evolving so much since its creation. It is itself one of the greatest innovation in governance ever created. GDPR is an innovative framework making the EU leader in privacy protection. European open banking initiatives/frameworks are unique and have been leading the way forward for the past 20 years, and we are now reaping all the benefits with the latest payment system developments (PSD2 and others were already awesome but the payment standard is what makes the day to day citizens actually see the results). The 28th regime[0] in development is innovative. Schengen/TFEU Art. 45 is such an innovative policy. Where else can you move freely between so many countries?
That’s only from the top of my head and the few examples I’m familiar with
I assume you don't live in the EU either...yes, there is an absolutely huge industry behind it, that is why it passed. Companies have to employ data protection officers, effectively a no-show job, and there is a whole industry of people connected to governments that facilitates this. And that also protects existing companies from competing because it is so expensive to handle customer data...as you need to employ an EU bureaucrat who is the equivalent of a CCP party official...that you have to pay for.
The weirdest thing is that the EU is maximally corrupt, and people are unable to see it because they are so enured to the corruption. It is all corruption. GDPR does not increase productivity, it is tax on consumers to produce something that is required by government with the surplus being passed to insiders (civil servants, unions, and billionaires).
Also, the per capita rate of billionaires in countries like Germany is higher than the US...this is whilst they have a population that has the same net financial wealth as Greece. In Sweden, 60% of total GDP was produced by companies controlled by one family until the 70s. The whole system is based upon large government in concert with large businesses and large unions. If you are in the club, you get a lifetime of free money. If you are out of the club...well, good luck competing with the migrants they are flooding into the country.
Of course it doesn't, because the whole point of having GDPR is preventing companies from doing some productive stuff that would involve collection of personal data.
Just couldn't have a rant without bringing up immigrants. Classic.
No… an employee of the company can be designed as the data protection officer. Do you have literally no experience working in the EU? If yes you have really strong positions for someone that misinformed. Where are you getting your information from?
I can tell you that if you work in a large company with sensitive data it’s definitely not a no-show job, that can for sure be a full time position
> .as you need to employ an EU bureaucrat who is the equivalent of a CCP party official
Either complete lie or you are delusional. Wtf are you talking about
> GDPR does not increase productivity, it is tax on consumers to produce something that is required by government with the surplus being passed to insiders (civil servants, unions, and billionaires)
Ok, I think you’re completely out of your mind. The thought process makes absolutely no sense. Now I feel bad I have wasted my time engaging.
Trading blocks (like the European single market) are specifically designed to protect their members from shit that global corporations or other nations attempt to get away with.
I'm not sure what "Trade within Europe has massive restrictions." means without context. Compared to some Randian capitalist utopia where there are no rules and no governments? Or compared to before the creation of the European single market?
We actually do have a good amount of issues regarding internal trades, according to https://www.europarl.europa.eu/RegData/etudes/BRIE/2025/7792....
“The International Monetary Fund estimates that the persistent barriers to the EU single market still represented the equivalent of a 110 % tariff on services.”
There is a good amount of work to be done to complete the single market, what we currently have is way too fragmented
The limitations on trade within Europe are intentional design. The attempts to stop the economy from collapsing with these massive government spending packages are the death throes.
The EU was a certainty in a region that is hostile to change, wants big government, wants centralization, is suspicious of democracy, etc. Free trade would be a massive change, that is why it hasn't happened. The EU is basically the logical conclusion of European forms of governing.
I don’t understand how you can say that with a straight face, it’s such a contradictory statement
But the EU started out as an industry group, the ECSC, to limit competition in coal and steel (with the helpful side effect of making German industrialists who did very well under Hitler even more rich).
If there is any founding principle of the EU, it is that competition should be limited because the view of people who founded the EU was that economic competition caused WW1/2 (a very generous interpretation of Germany's role in events but one that was used because there were a lot of wealthy Germans who wanted to use the EU to limit trade...btw, the situation today is beyond their wildest dreams, it is has made a small handful of German billionaires very wealthy for no effort).
Somehow whenever European powers collaborate together it is framed as anti democratic, anti innovation, anti trad. Complete nonsense
My hope is that eventually the "fast ring, slow ring, adjacent ring" system of the EU becomes a thing. I then imagine BeNeLux, Sweden, Denmark, Finland, maybe Czechia entering that fast ring. And as they synchronize their business and tax laws and capital markets, it'll show such an acceleration of growth that almost immediately more EU countries will want to go in on it. The nice thing is that because the "fast ring" would be more of a gentleman's agreement than a true EU institution, it wouldn't be bogged down.
The only hair in the soup I see for the start is that Denmark and Sweden would have to join the Euro, but their currencies are already effectively pegged to it anyway.
The idea of Europe as a nation goes back to the early to mid 20th century, at least. One example i can find a citation for (but it was far from the first): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Europe_a_Nation
How can you take them seriously?
I don't know if there is the social inertia yet on the ground for "screw the benefits, I want to save the ship".
Most of those global corporations are in favour of these trading blocks - they are the best placed to take advantage of them.
The EU is far more than just a trading block. The trading block is the countries they have free trade agreements with - the EEA,, plus the UK, plus Turkey. The EU is a political union.
Global corporation can lobby far more effectively than anyone else at the EU level.
Given that by PPP the EU and the US are about the same, that necessarily means the EU spends more on other things.
At its usual pace ... do you know when the negotiations with Mercosur started? Year 2000. Only now we have an agreement. Still, better than not doing anything at all. But I wonder how many of the original negotiators are still alive.
It also yet remains to be seen what happens if China puts a real pressure on us. Our list of allies is now somewhat thin and we have to cozy up to India, which indirectly funds the Russian war against Ukraine by importing Russian weapons and Russian oil/gas, the latter in huge quantities. Still, better than cozying up to China, because the possibility that Beijing teaches Brussels some cool tricks to keep the population under perfect surveillance scares me.
How is Mercosur better for the EU citizens?
But the EU makers likes of VW are fucked since they sell Chinese quality cars at premium prices and German union workers expect six figure salaries for a hard 35h week of bolting bumpers to cars.
To quote when harry met sally - I'll have what she's having.
Actually EU is getting fucked on every possible turn. We are the ones that pay trough the nose for all his follies. We are weaker than ever and we have delusional commission in charge.
Compared to Ursula Trump is the reincarnation of Richelieu and Bismarck with a pinch of Disraeli
Who is self harming more more aggressively, the US or the EU?
That’s the way I see it.
In the same way America is stuck in its military heyday past, the EU is stuck pretending its brand of multilateralism is still a thing outside its own borders.
The US has very little influence today compared to a decade or more ago. To the extent that the world at large cares about the US it's because they are committing genocide and destroying global trade logistics. All of their former allies are trying to substitute them out, or at least hedge with other international relations.
As far as I can tell, outside certain parts of the Occident, no one cares about new US movies or television series anymore. The Oscars gather some interest because some people want to know if any entertainment industry people will go against the regime and say something negative about mass murder of children, but that's about it. Future generations will be shaped more by chinese and indian movies than usian ones.
When apartheid South Africa was about to crumble it also initiated nasty military campaigns and faked political and military supremacy for a while, as did Idi Amin's Uganda. I'd bet something similar is going on in the US.
Some people are still stuck in the late Cold War, notably EU politicians like von der Leyen and Kaja Kallas, as well as most swedish top politicians. They cannot imagine a world where the US is not calling the shots and will drag Europe further into global irrelevancy by idiotically paying tribute and kneeling for the US. Pretty much the rest of the world is disgusted and horrified by the bumbling nastiness of contemporary US empire.
And instead of delegating or relaxing or honing a talent, they still have this need to pretend they are a craftmen and waste everyone's time, instead of playing Factorio or Stardew Valley or X Simulator like the rest of us plebs do to scratch that itch. What a waste.
Getting to design a kind of fun home-automation project, actually, since he decided not to just go with a more-expensive all in one system and keeps piecemealing it, and now he can't figure it out, so I'm doing it all.
I don't believe it when I see it. I call it poppycocks. Because if you do want to argue such, you need to define the path to get there. Without that, it sounds like a pipe dream. Akin to say Leninism.
China's security establishment has gone public with the view that their purpose is no longer to find answers to the question 'how do we survive the US?', but instead to something like 'how do we manage the US?'.
In the coming years US power projection is not going to look anything like the stuff we grew up with, that social and military influence just does not exist anymore. Right now, things are pretty good, compared to what they'll be in a year or two. It's likely we'll get a brutal el Niño, fertilizer and lubricant shortages, gnarly energy prices and more, all at the same time. The US is closing down food production at a rate that would keep me up at night if I lived there.
True, however, the US does more export manufacturing than the EU and at higher profit margins to boot. So even without the AI industry, the US is still in a far stronger place economically than EU.
The EU's massiv offshoring efforts, lack of innovation investments, red tape, environmentalism and high energy prices have left its domestic industry weaker and more vulnerable to foreign competitors and malicious foreign dependencies it can't control since it doesn't have any hard power to use as leverage to protect its industry.
Sure, the EU started to remilitarize and move away from fossil fuels to renewables, but this titanic effort is gonna pay back and maybe restore balance in 5-15 years time, and it remains to be seen if by then its economy will have just fallen further behind, since investors and the world aren't standing still waiting for the EU to catch up with them, but are instead exploiting the EU's current weakness to pull further ahead.
Like Germany's exports are now back to 2006 levels, and its domestic giants like BASF is further downsizing operations in Germany and building a massive 10 billion $ factory in China which is totally not gonna make Germany's policies tied to the whims of the CCP the same way they were tied to Russia's gas. BOSCH just announced 20k more job cuts in Germany and moving abroad till 2030. etc
Remains to be seen if this damage can be undone in the future, as things are currently patched up by massive government spending to cover up the private industry lack of spending, which isn't sustainable and eventually the cracks will get bigger.
https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.MKTP.CD?end=2024...
https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.CD?end=2024...
> if that gamble pays of the US is still in trouble (as is the rest of the world)
Which will probably strengthen the relative position of the US.
The EU has some issues, the economy isn’t the most dynamic, but the quality of life is great and has been improving. It is a large global market and has cultural influence. Our democratic institutions have survived ok so far. I think we are doing quite ok. We will see if we can deal well with issues caused by our aging population, that’s pretty challenging but I think we are in a reasonable position (and actually a more than great position if we compare worldwide)
However, the comments I replied to above were about digital sovereignty and soft power.
I am not convinced the future of the EU (or Europe in general) is as assured as you think it, but that is another discussion.
Americans do have a high standard of living in general and a very high median income: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_income_in_the_United_...
They have two big flaws in their system, both failures to provide security for the poor and for people who suffer misfortunes: wealth distribution and the lack of universal healthcare.
That’s without taking in consideration all the political instability caused by Trump administrations: the destruction of US soft power worldwide, anti-science stances, rise in theocratic and fascistic ideologies, imperialistic tendencies, institutionalized racism making a come back, human right violations, war crimes, the normalization of blatant corruption by the country leadership, etc.
To put it politely, America is just not, at this moment in time, with a predictable actor with rational self interest.
If things continue to fail, then its simple to assume we return to the spheres of interest stage of things, at which point the EU still functions as a bloc which everyone trades with.
Plus, American GDP figures are matched with a K shaped economy, and a population with a deep sense of unease and unhappiness.
I find it a little hard to believe that Russia or China or whoever in the East or South is quietly puppeting all the bullshittery happening now. Maybe a little less hard to believe that the West has just collectively decided to huff lead gas fumes and lose our collective minds for a generation.
Maybe this is just how corrupt capitalistic societies die and the East is happy to sit back and watch us burn ourselves to the ground.
It would devalue the dollar a bit but you can print new price tags.
Just create a new similar shit coin
Single payer would be drastically cheaper than the current system.
The other benefits are just policies that slightly reduce GDP per capita based on a first order analysis.
We are able to afford so many other subsidies, so unclear why housing would be different.
Of course, that is mostly paid for via massive amounts of debt, not from savings of military spending. But government spending on healthcare is more than twice (2.5 to 3 times) that of military spending. So slashing military spending to zero would just mean the amount of government-provided healthcare spending could go from 47% to 56% or so. (Not taking into account that a lot of "military spending" is actually healthcare spending!)
https://www.politico.eu/article/eu-big-tech-law-meant-to-mov...
Germany has the exact same issue. Always looking to keep the status quo for as long as possible. It’s really a structural problem, it’s the result of the political system, elected leadership, demographics (mostly the voting population aging rapidly). I expect the same issue is shared by most Western European countries
Maybe another framing, is there any countries where this isn't true? Where truly the default is to go against the status quo and continuously improve no matter what? I know there are a few countries people think are like that, but when you start reading about it, turns out to be kind of "hyped" and not matching reality.
Not that I would want to live under their political system, to be clear. I wish we could have a democratic system AND also be eager to develop our regions instead of being so protective of everything
In europe we’ve been generally pretty bad over the past decades at presenting positive arguments for liberalism, which is a shame. Similarly the EU is notoriously bad at communicating how it benefits the people, most of the communication assumes people already accepted it was a positive thing and already bought into European values, isn’t of arguing why they matter. The fact EU members blame EU institutions for their own local issues whenever something goes wrong doesn’t help…
Status quo is not a stable state, it's a state you defend.
Technical people are usually not like that. If anything they fall into the opposite trap: Always chasing the latest and greatest and wasting all their energy on novelty churn.
France maybe, Germany most definitely not.
We'll start seeing government bodies moving away from US IT suppliers in a couple of years.
Europe is an excellent value prop if you want to be a bartender or baker. Its decidedly less so if you want to be a white collar/gold collar worker.
If you want to earn big money, you're better of in the US, for sure. Quality of life though, as a white collar worker?
That does probably have its effect on economic growth..
Yes it does, it has kept the US economy growing and relevant. Europe has been economically stagnant and resting on its laurels for 30 years.
Also QoL in the US is high, you just need something like an SWE job to access it.
The opportunity cost of living in Europe is absolutely enormous. You're basically lighting $1-2 million (or more, perhaps) on fire for every decade you're here instead of the US.
Though I don't find myself wanting to move back to California any time soon...
Now that the US has pivoted to Asia since Obama, they expect the EU to fill the gap they leave behind. But that’s new, the US wanted it exactly like it was pre 2014 or so.
Meanwhile you live in the same society and eat healthy without issue or expense.
From my own experience, big changes can take place in smaller gov. organizations, and pretty fast too. I've worked at a place where we swapped out all Microsoft and commercial products to open source alternatives in just a couple of weeks. But it was a smaller and specialized part of an organization, with 30 users.
Trying to do the same change, where there are millions of users involved? It will almost certainly take a decade or more.
The only thing that would accelerate such a process, would be Microsoft shutting down services at the command of, say, the US president. But that would only be the case if said country ended up being sanctioned by the US.
> The Dutch tax office is also currently switching to Microsoft systems
They're not even trying though. They're not even starting the clock. They are actively going in the opposite direction.
It will never happen.
It is a central theme covered in too many sources to list, but it is always a deal with the figurative devil, treason, betrayal of not just oneself, but everyone else who trusted you, lifted you, and relied on you.
It is why treason is such a pernicious and evil act even when one is ignorant of perpetrating it, because you may personally advance your own position for a moment by making a deal with the devil, but the real price is always immeasurably greater.
It is also why no one hates the traitor more than the devil himself, because he knows best what a vile and untrustworthy traitor the person is that would betray his own people. Even the devil cannot even respect that, hence why the only thing one can be sure of when making a deal with the devil is that the devil and his children will always stab you in the back.
It is the existential question all of “the west” is wrestling with right now. Whether they can stop the traitors among them who have long ago made many deals with many devils and his many children…or will they personally “profit” in the short term all the way to figurative hell.
The reason given "for your own safety"
At the same time, the public tendering process makes no mention of the tools. The L1 uses excel and that inturn FORCES thousands and thousands into using paid excel.
I use masgrave but thats irrelevant. I also use libreoffice which works most of the time but yeah
This is a very naive interpretation. Bureaucrats have MASSIVE amount of power and control, and in actuality decide many things and how the law is written.
.. in the Netherlands. Where the EU and the Dutch government get to decide what happens. That's what national sovereignty means.
For obvious reasons, the linked article does not explain that fully.
It is kind of weird to see the turnaround on here from people who complain about the US government being too powerful but, for some reason, are quite okay with an unelected EU bureaucrat being able to govern their internet usage. There are no principles at play here.
Magic mushroom truffles are decriminalized here in NL, you can sell them openly in shops. Doesn't mean you won't get in trouble if you send them to the US.
Very few people are martyrs or want to become martyrs. Even fewer in places where life is generally fine and for a cause that isn't dire to their loved ones.
Similarly UK OfCom is a non governmental organisation, so not civil servants either.
IIRC this was part of subpoena from Congress?
> The cabinet has described the news as “extremely worrying”, given that the named officials could now face travel bans or even sanctions, Vrij Nederland said.
This is possible.
> “If you want to discuss policy, then you do it with us, not over the backs of civil servants,” digital economy minister Willemijn Aerdts told the magazine. “That has happened and we will now talk to our contacts, including those in the US.”
I don't know why they expect to be able to discuss policy constraints without the government of the company's place of business knowing.
My interpretation of this quote would be that it is not liked that individual names are shared of people working in e.g. the competition authority. They are saying if you want to discuss things, come through the front door, i.e. contact the competition authority which maybe has an official government liaison and don't go after a person who is only responsible for writing some regulation.
The article title seems like click bait, even though the article content goes on to have interesting details about EU attempts to reduce dependence on US technology companies.
Hrm. It's my understanding that a US company is required to give almost no data to any government without a warrant.
So, for example, a lot of medical information stored on AWS by the NHS could be obtained by the US government. So could a lot of financial and government data around the world. Zoom calls, Teams meetings, emails sent to GMail. Google Drive and one Drive document. Lots and lots more.
When it is the officials that have to bear the consequences, then it is scandalous and something needs to be done about it. But just for them to be protected. They don't care for the general population.
It's good that bureaucrats can't hide behind bureaucracy.
This article is not a censorship polemic.
Reference: https://www.icc-cpi.int/news/icc-strongly-rejects-new-us-san...