The EU has found a clever way to charge US tech companies for market access without triggering a WTO violation.
They will just write it off against the tax they pay back in the US anyway (which is why the US doesnt like it).
The way people treat them breaking our laws as their god given right and then frame our fine as anything but their own fault is starting to really annoy me.
Respect our sovereignty, follow our laws. Or don't, but then don't be surprised that breaking the law is punished.
Maybe things are different in the US, maybe corporate capture has progressed to a point where laws are optional for megacorps. But we still have rule of law and we'd like to keep it that way.
For the Commission, our democratically elected national governments each send a representative, so those are as elected as any minister in government is.
For Parliament, the EU demos elects directly.
Not sure where the issue is? It all seems more democratic to me than, say, the Electoral College.
In practice, the average European has more agency in shaping EU law than the average American does in shaping US law; the US’s electoral system means that, realistically, on a federal level, most peoples’ votes simply do not matter (two party FPTP system, with most seats being safe). The EU parliament is at least multiparty proportional representation, and most member states’ governments are also elected via some sort of PR.
> for which you can’t vote for its leader
Most democracies don’t have a directly elected head of state; it’s _largely_ a thing in the Americas and Africa. In terms of big countries with a true presidential system, you’re really talking the US, Russia, Brazil, Nigeria and Indonesia. I’m, ah, not sure that we should be rushing to emulate those paragons of democracy :)
These are factual inaccuracies.
South Korea is a functioning democracy. They tend to jail their ex-presidents quite often, but then only those that do deserve it, which is more than we can say about a few western democracies which are very lenient about the criminality of politicians. Ah yes and the president is limited to serving one term.
What do they expect if they come to our countries and break the law there? Of course they're gonna get fined?!
Example here: Facebook changing their ToS to claim usage itself constitutes freely given, informed consent under GDPR. No it doesn't, you knew that was against the spirit, you did it anyways, you got fined.
This is fundamentally how the EU legal system works, you're expected to do what the law wants from you, not find some clever way to avoid what the law is for while ticking the right checkboxes.
I had a whole in-depth conversation on this not too long ago, check it out if you want more context: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48707697
"Since 2019, when the Donald Trump administration began blocking appointments to the body, the Appellate Body has been unable to enforce WTO rules and punish violators of WTO rules.[3][4][2] Subsequently, disregard for trade rules has increased, leading to more trade protectionist measures.[4][5] The Joe Biden administration maintained the freeze on new appointments."
What they're trying to do is colonize Europe with their lawlessness, they're trying to deny us our sovereign right of determining our own rules.
There's no right to come to our jurisdiction and then decide to ignore our rules. Either come and play by the rules or stay out.