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Comment by dtech | Hacker News Reader

> I heard the reason was that NL doesn't know if SUSE will be sold off again and might end up in the hands of some US PE, but here's the thing, you're the government, you can just block the sale of companies

The Dutch government can famously prevent sales of German and Luxembourgish companies yes.

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I meant the EU, at EU level, not the Dutch government. Also it's not like the Dutch government can't cooperate with the other EU members like Germany and Luxembourg on such vital topics. Unless of course trust inside the EU is so lackluster that the Dutch government can't be sure where Germany and Luxembourg will stand, in which case it's already over for the EU.

The EU level doesn't have enforcement mechanisms, EU law is applied through member states changing their laws.

Does the EU have the power to block sales of companies on national security grounds? Or to get member states to standardise on software?

Its probably a good thing they do not have a standard, or at this point it would be Windows and pushing change through at the EU level would not be fast.

They better learn. the Chinese, Japanese, and Koreans do not sell anything close and dear and probably never will.

>Does the EU have the power to block sales of companies on national security grounds?

Not on defense and national security, that's up to individual EU member states, but the EU does veto corporate mergers and acquisitions on Competition Law (Antitrust). So just find a loophole in that and use it to prevent SUSE be taken over by non-EU nations.

The governments "just" doing this or that, are typically the tyrannical or unhinged variety you don't want to live under. If your law is written decently and you have a functioning judiciary, chances of a loopholes surviving scrutiny will be very low.

The European Commission could definitely ask governments (the European Council) to agree a new treaty or protocol that grants them veto powers on "federal security grounds", for sure. The European Parliament would likely rubber-stamp it too. Considering the current (and increasing) right-wing majorities across the continent, though, I find such scenario very unlikely.

>The governments "just" doing this or that, are typically the tyrannical or unhinged variety you don't want to live under.

You can always "just do things" whenever you want by interpreting or changing the laws first to fit your desired goal. And so there, now it's legal, because I just changed the rules to make it so.

Same how the "we'll now have to accept all those migrants illegally crossing our border without asking our voters if its what they want" was done, they decided overnight that its legal. Or how they can just block the right wing from winning elections in order to "just protect democracy".

We're already under tyrannical rule, except the system abuse just acts on the wrong topics.

As an American, EU politics is such a fascinating bizarro world. Imagine the right wingers being a bulwark against unhinged expansion of executive authority on grounds of national security! It would be like statehouse Republicans blocking the Patriot Act. Unthinkable.

Well, the same in the other direction: imagine the free marketeers by definition, installing an autocrat big on isolationist policies, the dismantling of judiciary separation, and on picking winners in the market... Absurd! And still, here we are. Humans are funny and inconsistent like that.

>Well, the same in the other direction

Right back at you: Imagine being a European getting fined/arrested for memes(UK), or that you called a politician a dick on facebook(Germany).

How are those rape gangs in the UK this time of year? Did the UK government ever get in trouble for covering that up that scandal and calling the whistleblowers pointing it out "racist white supremacists"?

No rape gangs in sight here, thank you very much. Not that it had anything to do with what was being discussed.

Politics really makes people rabid.

>No rape gangs in sight here, thank you very much.

What do you call this then? https://news.sky.com/story/grooming-gangs-scandal-timeline-w...

>Not that it had anything to do with what was being

What did your comment have to do with "what was being discussed"?

>Politics really makes people rabid.

"Shit, I'm losing the argument to my political opposition, better call them rabbid, *fobes, nazis, etc. "

Those are all historical offences, dude. For all the disproportionate attention it gets, it's not really been a problem for some time.

And anyway, this has nothing to do with the item being discussed, which was about the mismatch between declared party orthodoxies and actual everyday practice.

But sure, stay angry.

I think it demonstrates the extent to which left and right are artificial groupings that owe more to tribalism than anything rational.

In the UK it was the right wing Conservative party which introduced same sex marriage. I am pretty sure the Republicans are unlikely to do that.

Of course some things are clear. Privatisation is right wing, nationalisation is left wing, but you never really had the latter in the US!

>but you never really had the latter in the US!

US postal service

Amtrak

State Lotteries

Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation (PBGC)

Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA)

By the way liberals in EU are center right to right :)

Yes, they are neoliberals, which are hardly left by international standards. European social-democratic parties, which are the traditional Euro center-left, are generally on the back foot right now.

Oh, I just looked the naming up. Apparently the US is still in the 18xx calling left wing liberals?

TBH this whole left-right thing is pretty new in the US. The political science term is "ideological alignment" (we didn't really have it for a long time due to our weird party system) if you want to read about it. This is changing now to an extent, but there was also a taboo for a long time against identifying as being a leftist, what with McCarthyism, COINTELPRO, etc.

For context, the US once prevented that a German company AIXTRON was sold to a Chinese investor in 2016 (perhaps for good reasons). To me it would sound like a good deal for the Netherlands and Luxembourg/Germany if Netherlands would uses SUSE and the Luxembourg/Germany would step in to keep in in the EU.

https://eu.usatoday.com/story/money/2016/12/02/us-blocks-chi...

Isn't it odd how Germany needed the US to stop them from committing a(nother) suicidal mistake regarding their industry sovereignty?

I wonder, is anyone left in the German government now (that isn't a paid lobbyist) that is even remotely interested on covering their industry sovereignty?

Every so often I hear about new footguns Germany used on itself.

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