> However, stopping working with Microsoft and other US tech companies is not an option in the short term, he told the magazine.
> 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.
They all talk about the importance of European digital sovereignty and then continue to do the exact opposite behind the scenes.
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.
It's not only Dutch. Instead of building sovereignity, the EU thought they could regulate their way and force everyone to bend the knee because of their share as a trading partner. This started 20 years ago. However what has happened is that the EU's soft power is crumbling, but the politicians have hard to grasp with the reality they could somehow dictate things globally. AI will only further accelerate this.
Only way to have control is to have domestic actors you can push around.
Europeans (and not just the EU) think they still have the influence on the world they had in the 1980s when their economies were a much larger proportion of the global economy. Europeans have no idea what the world looks like from Asia which contains most of the world's population and generates a third of global GDP.
Americans (and not just the US) think they still have the influence on the world they had in the 1980s when their economies were a much larger proportion of the global economy. Americans have no idea what the world looks like from Asia which contains most of the world's population and generates a third of global GDP.
It is a general western problem to some extent, but the US has a a faster growing economy than any of the big European economies. It is still a super-power.
If both of these views are true (and they appear to be becoming more true every day): what happens?
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.
They also came to realize building, operating and maintaining a military force is extremely expensive. Free healthcare, 7 weeks of vacation, 36 hr work weeks, unemployment benefits, subsidized housing, etc etc is all great when you don’t have the financial burden of protecting your home.
USA has said they will not support Europe in a military conflict so now you can slash your military and fire all those soldiers and have free health care etc. No? Sounds like ”protecting” Europe wasn’t what stood in the way of free healthcare, vacation, etc.
Total EU defense spending is around $450M USD. The US defense budget, prior to 2027, is about $950M USD. Are you saying the US could have all those social policies for $500M USD?
> However what has happened is that the EU's soft power is crumbling
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.
The US alone spends 1.5x as much on consumer goods (yes, adjusted for PPP) and nearly 2x as much on R&D as the entire EU. It’s very sweet that the EU is trying to decouple itself from the US economy, but I highly doubt its ability to become “leader of the free trade world” when it has so little money to throw around.
Yeah, we'll just up our EU debt to about 40 trillion USD, make up some money and continue. Sounds a lot like US right? Living in perpetual debt as a nation.
"the EU is out there building the new free [trade] world, with itself as the biggest lynchpin"
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.
It is difficult to think of an economic region that is more opposed to free trade than Europe (that isn't a comedy country). Possibly some countries in South America?
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.
There are still some protectionist issues on the single market itself.
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
The only people that think global free trade is a good thing are the top .001% net worth individuals which use it to wield power.
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?
> whilst the EU is out there building the new free [trade] world, with itself as the biggest lynchpin
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.
What? In this case the problem isn't that EU wants to dictate things globally, but US laws that do just that. EU laws just apply to Europe. As time goes on and European agencies get their shit together and actually start to follow their own rules, it will mean a shitton of business will leave US companies.
> always postpone solving issues to the latest possible moment
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
Isn't this simply a "human thing", keeping the status quo for as long as possible? I see the same European country I'm from, where I'm living currently, the South American country my wife is from and every single country I visit.
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.
It's a manager thing, something you learn in business school and from airport-lounge management lit. "Decide at the last responsible moment" has its place but managerial types often undeservedly elevate it to a general principle.
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.
People talk like "status quo" was inherently a bad thing, and that any change to it is good by default. On the contrary, "status quo" is usually a hard-won place, a foothold against strong tides, a position that you try to preserve while carefully considering your next step, because a careless step will just send you falling back down to whatever hellhole reality your predecessors dragged themselves up from.
Status quo is not a stable state, it's a state you defend.
The problem is defending a status quo adapted to a past reality that doesn’t make sense anymore. You need change to adapt to an evolving world, with new challenges, new alliances, new industries, etc
Some countries with different politics like China do not seem to suffer the same issues, or at least not yet. Or maybe the country is defending a different status quo (the mono-party)? But they seem to be eager to develop the infrastructure and country as a whole.
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
I don’t think it’s different politics directly in China. The people believe that change means change for the better. In the west people have lost all hope for progress.
Not to mention being overrun by Dodge Rams that do not meet EU safety roles but come in under a loophole. I like living here mostly but a lot of what makes it nice is threatened by the US.
Which might be impossible given that sacrifices will have to be made in the interim, and people already riot if you even hint at moving retirement age up a year.
The problem is the government treating people like the enemy drowning them in paperwork. Western governments believe they can create the perfect citizen if they just surveill them and regulate them enough.
Another way to look at it is that things just move slowly in government land. The tax office moving towards Microsoft has probably been in preparation for half a decade... And do you really believe the government is technically capable of switching DigiD to a different provider on a (relative) moments notice without causing large scale outages?
We'll start seeing government bodies moving away from US IT suppliers in a couple of years.
The actual question is if (capable) SWEs will choose working for (or be a founder of) Dutch/Euro tech companies over US ones, or even leave the US to live there.
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.
I left the US in my 20's to live in Europe and I like raising kids here (I'm now in my 40's) but honestly... it was a stupid thing to do. Meanwhile, my in-laws, who stayed in the US, are now retiring to France in their 40's with a few million dollars.
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...
Rather like pre 2022 Russia, governments get warnings that something bad is going to happen that it would be expensive to prepare for, and put off preparing because you don't get political rewards for that.
The reason Germany didn't prepare for it was because multiple leading politicians were bought and paid for by Russia. Be totally clear about that. Former German president was working for Gazprom on the project whose stated aim was to facilitate an invasion of Ukraine at some point (which Trump pointed out, and EU politicians literally laughed at him).
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.
> The reason Germany didn't prepare for it was because multiple leading politicians were bought and paid for by Russia. Be totally clear about that. Former German president was working for Gazprom on the project whose stated aim was to facilitate an invasion of Ukraine at some point (which Trump pointed out, and EU politicians literally laughed at him).
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.
As the other answer says, surely this would always be the case. People do not deal with government regularly and there is a strong disincentive to report upon this.
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.
And pray tell, what does the American or the Chinese worker in this case get out of their higher productivity and competitiveness? Because it really seems that it's not quality of life, that's for certain.
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.
It takes time. Hence whey Microsoft has a stranglehold on big gov. customers in other countries.
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.
Indian tax departments use EXCEL VBA and force users to.use licensed microsoft excel to run the utilities so tax returns can be filed.
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
Bert Hubert makes an argument based on Palantir: it's not simply the software. It's like a million dollar a day marine crane which comes with a crew. To put it another way, Microsoft, Oracle, Salesforce licenses are a tax compared to what is spent on consultants and integrators. That army knows a particular tech stack and also the relevant players.
This is by the way how the defense was treated for decades as well. US resisted the EU from building a formidable army, instead they preferred a vassal state defense, enough to deter others from messing with Europe, not enough for Europe to be independent, and buying almost exclusively from US defense companies propping up US military R&D and financing factories during peacetime.
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.
If you think about it in terms of game theory that is actually a fair approach - you have an ally, you propose a best-case path forward for the alliance where both members are strong. If the ally don't want to take that path then you exploit the ally instead since a technically incompetent ally is a liability who needs to be kept under tight control.
Because there is no punishment for lying in politics.
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
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.
There are many different tracks underway in government in different branches. Completely vetoing everything to use Microsoft is a difficult decision as it also stops a lot of features that depend on it, or were made to depend on it, such as updating tax codes. Therefore it is a risk/benefit assessment rather than outright lying. (The latter also happens obviously but just wanted to state that reality is more gray than black and white.)
I don't know what the US thinks it will gain by targeting civil servants. They are not the ones with the power to decide what happens, and retaliation would mean more anti-US people selecting themselves into these projects.
> retaliation would mean more anti-US people selecting themselves into these projects.
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.
The curve of willingness to oppose aggressive action rises significantly before it drops off at some safety threshold. I believe US-Europe relations are still well below that threshold and the rise in level of aggression is only stirring up more resistance, not less.
I think you highlighted something without meaning to. The core problem is that short of literally nuking Brussels I don't think the EU will ever think the threshold was crossed. Even then I'm not sure. The US has threatened to invade sovereign EU territory multiple times this week alone and we're still having this chat here. The US will keep pushing because the EU does basically nothing when it's literally threatened with invasion.
>They are not the ones with the power to decide what happens
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.
These civil servants are effectively trying to bypass the US court. These civil servants yield considerable power what comes to the censorship, and the Whitehouse really really hates the idea that the EU can decide, not them, what is allowed. This will send a message that the US stands behind its companies and is not push around. If you want to push non-domestic enforcement, you need to be willing to stand behind the principles and be publicly ready to defend the censorship rulings you set forward.
I would read the links in the article. The problem is that social media companies worked with civil servants in European countries to remove posts being made people outside Europe. This also happened in the UK where there were parts of the government that were able to make requests directly to social media companies to remove posts on their platform, regardless of where the poster was from.
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.
Posts being distributed to people in the Netherlands that is.
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.
Honestly, rather a "unelected EU bureaucrat" (What does this even mean? Are we going to individually elect the entire civil service, or require elected officials to delegate nothing and personally review every decision?) than an American tech-bro governing my internet usage.
> Companies such as Microsoft and Meta have shared the names of civil servants and academics working on European tech regulation with a senate committee investigating “tech censorship” or “jawboning”, news magazine Vrij Nederland reported on Friday.
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.
> "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 is thin on details about the sharing of names. If US companies responded to US government inquiries about speech regulation by forwarding the emails they received from Dutch regulators, those would unsurprisingly include regulators' names.
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.
> Under the US Cloud Act, American companies are required to hand over all information they store to the government if requested to do so, even if it is stored abroad.
Hrm. It's my understanding that a US company is required to give almost no data to any government without a warrant.
True, but a US warrant. So if data is stored on a system in another country owned by an American company, they can be compelled to hand the information to the US government even if it is illegal to do so according to the law of the country where in the information is stored.
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.
As always is some countries and especially in European ones.
When citizens have to face the consequence of harmful data mining and sharing behaviors, it is ok because the officials are profiting of it.
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.
They are afraid more of their own citizens thn of Americans. That's the reason for secrecy. At the same time, Danish officials push for chat control - a fascist Stasi-like initiative of mass spying on citizens, with a deliberate exception of government officials.
USA has always seemed it's companies. Will they do the same they did with International Criminal Court? They were investigating Israel genocide and now they judges can't use a credit card or travel.
Dutchnews.nl is an established media outlet and what a lot of English/non-Dutch speakers use to keep up with Dutch news (which is perhaps surprisingly to Americans, usually written in Dutch)
My bad, I was not aware that expats read this. I had never heard of it before. But still, as far as I can tell, they just translate the news from platforms like nos.nl and perhaps newspapers rather than doing the journalism themselves.
Follow the money. So far, there has been lots of posturing, but little budget behind those 'sovereignty' initiatives in the EU. Unless this changes, I am going to assume the puppets are just riding out time until their US masters are back in control.
> 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.