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At the same time, the EU has allowed regulation to track the most innovative part of services — digital — hindering the growth of European tech firms and preventing the economy from unlocking large productivity gains.
What a complete and utter fucking rubbish.
Unlike the USA where consumer rights are subjected to these of big tech, the EU at least tries to regulate the big tech - something Trumpler and his bunch very much dislike.
The author can shove this article into their arse.
Here’s the thing, the article might be completely right. It’s just the age old problem of capitalism. This dude just prioritizes growth of the economy over a happy population.
How so? IE what happiness generating regulations does he want to sacrifice for growth?
The GDPR… he literally lists it. The GDPR retains consumer privacy, thus making you much happier that 1. Your government cares about you 2. Your private data isn’t being shared around the world in order to psychologically manipulate you into buying things or track you every moment of your life.
I wonder how many people see it that way. The GDPR never claims to be a privacy regulation. It can be used for the purpose but only in a limited way. It has nothing to say about psychological manipulation.
In the fediverse, data is shared by instances around the world. Yes, that’s probably illegal. Knowing that doesn’t make me happy. It rather seems incredibly pointless.
I wonder how many people see it that way.
How it is viewed is not the point. The question is whether it helps people.
It has nothing to say about psychological manipulation.
The DSA regulates dark patterns: https://www.europarl.europa.eu/RegData/etudes/ATAG/2025/767191/EPRS_ATA(2025)767191_EN.pdf
How it is viewed is not the point. The question is whether it helps people.
The issue was whether the GDPR makes people happy. That depends on people’s perception of the GDPR, rather than it’s actual effects.
Whether it helps people is also a good question. It certainly costs a lot of money. I don’t think people find that helpful. It can help a little with privacy, but that could be had easier, better, and cheaper. I’m sure it helps with PR, but how many people actually benefit from that? I’m really skeptical.
The DSA regulates dark patterns
Thanks for backing me up on this. Not sure why you get upvoted for it and I downvoted.
That depends on people’s perception of the GDPR, rather than it’s actual effects.
That’s disingenuous. We have a lot of regulation that improves people’s lives but isn’t well-regarded due to politicial campaigns, or in the case of GDPR, malicious compliance [1].
At the same time: Even if a con man tells you that anti-con-men legislation is bad, and even if they’re successful at convincing you of that — that doesn’t change the reality that legislation against con men is probably a good thing and helps you.
Thanks for backing me up on this.
Ok, so I actually previously read too little of the discussion to participate competently. I missed was that you moved the goal posts: The poster above you mentioned that due to GDPR, people’s personal data couldn’t freely be shared around the world. That was the point and psychological manipulation was only mentioned to illustrate an end goal.
[1] I.e. it’s totally possible to run GDPR-compliant site without a cookie banner, except corporate interests don’t want that. Instead they’d rather harvest all the data they can and blame the inconvenience of the cookie banner on. GDPR
Turns out that protecting your citizens from corporations means that corporations do not suck up all the money from the economy.
Who would have guessed. And europeans live longer, happier and less stressful lives than US-americans.
I have no doubt that that’s true, that internal trade barriers are a larger issue than trade barriers between the US and EU, but they’re also kind of two different issues. The EU is not tightly politically-integrated; it has powerful member-state level political interests who are going to want to serve specific domestic interests rather than overall EU concerns. It’s not possible for the EU to wave a wand and make that go away, whereas it is very easy for the US administration to not impose restrictions vis-a-vis the EU.
EDIT: I mean, the article even mentions that, albeit not in specific terms, and only in a single sentence.
Up to now, Europe has focused on either single or national goals without counting their collective cost.
The problem is, that’s a pretty important sentence there.
Tap for article
Forget the US — Europe has successfully put tariffs on itself
High internal barriers and regulatory hurdles are far more damaging for growth than anything America might impose
The writer is a former president of the European Central Bank and was prime minister of Italy. He oversaw a report on the future of European competitiveness
Recent weeks have provided a stark reminder of Europe’s vulnerabilities. The eurozone barely grew at the end of last year, underlining the fragility of the domestic recovery. And the US began imposing tariffs on its major trading partners, with the EU next in its sights. This prospect casts further uncertainty over European growth given the economy’s dependence on foreign demand.
Two major factors have led Europe into this predicament — but they can also lead it out again if it is prepared to undergo radical change.
The first is the EU’s long-standing inability to tackle its supply constraints, especially its high internal barriers and regulatory hurdles. These are far more damaging for growth than any tariffs the US might impose — and their harmful effects are increasing over time.
The IMF estimates that Europe’s internal barriers are equivalent to a tariff of 45 per cent for manufacturing and 110 per cent for services. These effectively shrink the market in which European companies operate: trade across EU countries is less than half the level of trade across US states. And as activity shifts more towards services, their overall drag on growth becomes worse.
At the same time, the EU has allowed regulation to track the most innovative part of services — digital — hindering the growth of European tech firms and preventing the economy from unlocking large productivity gains. The costs of complying with GDPR, for example, are estimated to have reduced profits for small European tech firms by up to 12 per cent.
Taken together, Europe has been effectively raising tariffs within its borders and increasing regulation on a sector that makes up around 70 per cent of EU GDP.
This failure to lower internal barriers has also contributed to Europe’s unusually high trade openness. Since 1999, trade as a share of GDP has risen from 31 per cent to 55 per cent in the eurozone, whereas in China it rose from 34 per cent to 37 per cent and in the US from 23 per cent to just 25 per cent. This openness was an asset in a globalising world. But now it has become a vulnerability.
The paradox is that while internal barriers remained high, external barriers fell as globalisation accelerated. EU companies looked abroad to substitute for lack of domestic growth and imports became relatively more attractive.
For instance, since the mid-1990s, trade costs in services are estimated to have dropped by 11 per cent within the EU but by 16 per cent for non-EU imports. This helps explain why trade in services inside and outside the EU is about the same today as a share of GDP — unthinkable in a fully integrated large economy.
The second factor holding Europe back is its tolerance of persistently weak demand, at least since the global financial crisis of 2008. This has exacerbated all the issues caused by supply constraints. Until the crisis, domestic demand as a share of GDP in the eurozone was near the middle of the range of advanced economies. Afterwards, it fell to the bottom and stayed there. The US has remained at the top throughout.
This widening demand gap has helped turn high trade openness into high trade surpluses: the eurozone current account has shifted from broadly balanced until 2008 to persistent surpluses thereafter.
And weak demand has fed back into exceptionally weak total factor productivity growth after recessions, a pattern not seen in the US. This can partly be explained by the effect of demand on the innovation cycle. Research finds that policy-driven demand shocks have a significant effect on R&D investment, especially for disruptive technologies.
While the demand gap has different drivers, the most significant has been the relative stance of fiscal policies. From 2009 to 2024, measured in 2024 euros, the US government injected over five times more funds into the economy via primary deficits — €14tn versus €2.5tn in the eurozone.
Both these shortcomings — supply and demand — are largely of Europe’s own making. They are therefore within its power to change. An unyielding drive to remove supply constraints would help innovative sectors to grow and, by redirecting demand back into the domestic market, reduce trade openness without raising trade barriers. The European Commission’s new Competitiveness Compass provides a road map to achieve this.
At the same time, more proactive use of fiscal policy — in the form of higher productive investment — would help lower trade surpluses and send a strong signal to firms to invest more in R&D.
But this path calls for a fundamental change in mindset. Up to now, Europe has focused on either single or national goals without counting their collective cost. Conserving public money supported the goal of debt sustainability. The spread of regulation was designed to protect citizens from new technology risks. Internal barriers are a legacy of times when the nation state was the natural frame for action.
But it is now clear that acting in this way has delivered neither welfare for Europeans, nor healthy public finances, nor even national autonomy, which is threatened by pressure from abroad. That is why radical change is needed.
If they’ll strip me of my rights then I’ll vote for fascists too just to get it over with sooner.
The fascists will do the same but worse. Vote for the far left if you want to f*ck over the corporate stooges
This being worse is the point. This system might be beyond saving so you need hooliganism to tear it down before it can be rebuilt.
While I find it helpful that people hear the word “accelerationism”, because it’s a big part of what Trump presidency #2 is about, please don’t promote this nonsense.
I’m nearly 40, recently disabled but should be able to power through the pain and work for another 10-15 years despite my state denying me healthcare (no welfare, lowest healthcare expenditure around, current government continues to cut costs). If fascists come now I can live through it. If liberals delay fascists then they will rule while I am most vulnerable. My only hope is that the sooner capitalism destroys the world, the sooner we’ll have a more humane system, otherwise I’m toast. My survival is not nonsense to me.
History rhymes sometimes, sure. But consciously helping send humanity into a darker age even though the arrival of said darker age is absolutely not a predetermined thing seems like a terrible idea. “We need to do something bad now, because there are 80-year cycles for bad things and 80 years since WWII is over” is just a sorry, bullshit excuse.
This same society votes for people who deny me healthcare, why would I care about them when my life is at stake? This is pure survival. I hope you don’t have to make this kind of choices but that’s just real life.
