[Silhouette]

Creating an ambiguous business environment is unfortunately a recurring pattern with the EU.

A few years ago we had some fierce debates on HN about EU measures like the GDPR. Some claimed the regulations were excellent and compliance was easy if you weren't doing anything wrong. Some were more cautious and thought the length and frequent ambiguity of the regulations meant it couldn't be that simple. The strident defenders of the GDPR as lightweight regulation that should cause no significant costs or problems for honest businesses might like to read Mario Draghi's assessment of it from his report this week.

[noirbot]

And much the same with Apple and the DMA most recently. Do I think Apple is being a bad actor re: the DMA? Yes. But it does also seem like the EU is doing a lot of "Well, just release your product and we'll tell you after you ship it if we're going to fine you for billions of dollars". You see this with things like the upcoming iPhone Display Mirroring features that aren't coming to the EU where Apple has said they're not shipping them in the EU because they think it would violate the DMA, and the regulators have just blasted Apple for withholding features but explicitly not said whether the feature is compliant.

Having companies afraid of massive penalties if they mess up is fine and good, but only works if the conduct you're trying to disincentivize is one you're ok with them not doing at all.

[Silhouette]

See also certain popular and state of the art models in AI, which are not available in the EU because of similar fears. Sometimes it's like the EU and its defenders think the EU is too big for businesses to walk away no matter how hostile the environment becomes. This is unrealistic.