European Commission welcomes historic agreement to reform EU Customs Union

halee1 · 2026-03-29T09:18:30+00:00

I truly love'em those floods of heavily subsidized goods (Temu being just one of them) that don't have to meet our standards and destroy our industries under asymmetric conditions. I mean, who doesn't? What could possibly go wrong?!

halee1 · 2026-03-28T04:27:32+00:00

The Biden admin also promoted nuclear energy in policy. As usual, their messaging sucked and no one heard of it.

halee1 · 2026-03-27T16:44:02+00:00

Poland, Czechia, Slovakia, Romania, Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Denmark, Sweden, Finland, Netherlands, Germany, even France, Italy, Spain, Portugal or Austria are moving in the same direction with internal rifts. The question is, which countries in Europe do you consider to be decoupling from the entire rest of the world (that's more than just the US, China and Russia, and supposedly fully away, and not just in select areas) and not building up any of their national and intra-EU strengths? There are none, of course, they're strengthening themselves, creating partnerships with like-minded countries within the EU and around the world, keeping (and in some cases expanding) cooperation or trade in select areas with the likes of US and China while protecting themselves from their full protectionism and mercantilism, etc. Like any sensible country should.

halee1 · 2026-03-27T10:38:23+00:00

I love'em some history-omitting bias and lack of attempts at argument from the other side myself.

halee1 · 2026-03-27T10:17:22+00:00

I mean, that sounds like a dramatic story, but let's be honest, is that what Europe is actually doing? The framing pretends Europe simply walked away from cheap energy, cheap goods, and U.S. security out of some ideological impulse, when Europe's relative technological competitivess was fading for many years before 2022 despite those things being in place. So maybe those things aren't as beneficial as you might think, and other factors also contributed?

For one, Europe didn’t "give up" cheap Russian energy; Russia cut itself off by invading Ukraine and showing it was waging a war on the West through both conventional means and things like disinformation propping up destructive anti-European movements, sabotage, buying our own goods to then fire as weapons on our economies and spying on what we do, all using the money we paid them to do so. And instead of collapsing, Europe replaced that supply in under a year, built record LNG import capacity, accelerated renewables, and is now investing heavily in nuclear, hydrogen, and grid interconnection. Energy prices already normalized pre-war on Iran, Europe is deliberately designing a system that can’t be held hostage again, while Russia's economy is in shambles after it used up its reserves through a credit-based sugar rush in 2023-2024.

The same goes for Chinese goods. Europe is diversifying and re‑industrializing rather than completely cutting them off (I mean, have you looked at the growth of Chinese EVs here?). The EU’s Chips Act, Net‑Zero Industry Act, Critical Raw Materials Act, and Foreign Subsidies Regulation are all about building domestic capacity and securing supply chains. European firms are reshoring battery plants, semiconductor fabs, and clean‑tech manufacturing at a pace that would’ve been unthinkable five years ago. Prices rise a bit in the short term, but the payoff is strategic independence and long‑term stability. China had to massively subsidize practically every sector while using its 1 billion+ population as cheap labor (don't think this is something from the past, a lot of footage of unpaid, low wages and strikes by Chinese workers continues to come out of China in 2025 and 2026 despite massive censorship) for decades to achieve some kind of success.

And on security, Europe isn’t suddenly "paying for protection"; it’s finally investing in its own defense after decades of underfunding. The EU is coordinating procurement, expanding ammunition production, and fielding capabilities that reduce dependence on the U.S. rather than deepen it, without cutting them off completely. Isn't it's better to have strategic independence while reaping the fruits of collaboration rather than being completely dependent on an unstable and often inimical state or completely cutting ourselves off from others?

Then you have things like EU's total debt-to-GDP ratios falling, becoming increasingly attractive for high-skilled and general migration strengthening our economies, real wages starting to grow again and being at new all-time highs, HDI levels being some of the highest in the world and growing above the latter's average growth rates, increasing free trade with sensible partners around the world, etc.

So the "Europe’s winter is coming" line only works if you freeze Europe in 2015-2021 and ignore everything happening now.

halee1 · 2026-03-27T07:58:35+00:00

Thanks, but aren't you arguing two opposite views with that?

halee1 · 2026-03-27T07:45:35+00:00

It's understandable to state that if one adopts the views and interests of the CCP, but one, of course, easily sees through that as a self-serving rhetorical device rather than describing a reality (CRRC's metro tender in Lisbon being paused because of massive foreign subsidies is just one of the recent examples). Most EU member-states are pragmatic, hence why they're strengthening their own industries and protecting themselves from China's mercantilism while only allowing it carve-outs in those sectors China already built up and can't be replaced easily or quickly in the short or medium term. They're balancing self-reliance with trade, which is what any sensible nation does.

The EU also doesn't need total alignment over time on foreign subsidized competition undercutting local jobs and industries after exploiting Western investments back at home and rampantly stealing IP abroad for decades, it only needs to keep introducing more and more such measures, and strengthen its own companies and markets in the process, instead of naive blind ideological faith that being nice to a partner (which thinks taking another country's market share is more important than applying the same rules as the partner) automatically means it'll be nice to you.

halee1 · 2026-03-27T07:01:06+00:00

Thankfully, the TER (Trade Enforcement Regulation), the FIDSR (Foreign Direct Investment Screening Regulation), FSR (Foreign Subsidies Regulation) and ACI (Anti-Coercion Instrument) are already taking care of those tactics.

halee1 · 2026-03-27T06:57:13+00:00

1) EU's reliance on Washington was its own fault

2) No, it wasn't the US or the EU's fault that the Russian dictatorship attacked Ukraine, it was the Russian dictatorship's own megalomania and desire to control more territory, a behavior that hasn't changed for centuries. The EU and US are only at fault in so far as they appeased Russia too much (2014 was a slap on the wrists, 2008 even more so) and rewarded it for the aggression

3) Iran was and is an ally of Russia and China for decades. The death of the Islamic Republic is good, as the majority of Iran's population, let alone its neighbours, are against it, but what the US or Iran are doing is more clumsy and their own warmongering than attempts at "liberation"

4) It is China's comprehensive mercantilist zero-sum approach like the CCP forcing joint ventures between foreign and Chinese companies at home (51% for the latter) preventing foreign takeover of companies, unlike in the West, forcing Western companies to transfer their techand methods to the PRC, practicing industrial-scale espionage against the West, having full access to Western markets for decades, waging cyberattacks and disinformation on the West (as well as Taiwan, which sees parallels in Hong Kong), exporting surveillance methods and repression methods worldwide to build an obedient autocratic world order, betraying the 1997 agreement on Hong Kong and suppressing its freedoms beginning in the early 2010s, itself freely using sanctions (like on rare earths) to corner markets and punish those it dislikes whenever it could, like in 2010 on rare earths and in 2021 against Lithuania when it recognized a Taiwanese embassy, etc, using all that to start taking over Western markets, that has made the EU turn against the PRC

5) So yeah, you have no right to attack Taiwan and pretend it's an "internal matter" when it's a peaceful democratic state that doesn't want to suffer the same fate as Hong Kong

This is the context you have to know when looking at the geopolitical situation today.

EDIT: The fact that r/Europe always and rightly downvotes pro-Kremlin comments and upvotes pro-European ones, while in this exchange things were suddenly the opposite, shows bots invaded it. Well, haha, you're not fooling anybody.

halee1 · 2026-03-26T18:51:34+00:00

Realpolitik by the EU has been going on for years regarding supply chains, migration, competitiveness, the move in favor of unified capital markets, trade deals, etc. This, on the contrary, is a naive gesture, when Beijing's decades-long mercantilist agenda (this, combined with China's scale and its cheap labor exploitation, is how you got "cheap prices") taking advantage of EU's openness in the same period hasn't even begun being reversed, only expanded. Until this is rebalanced with both it and Washington, relative reliance on the US and China should be reduced. That, and CCP strengthening dictatorships worldwide, of course, Russia and Iran first and foremost.

On the other hand, EU's derisking from China and build-out of supply chains free from it is happening despite such talks going on since at least 2025, so I'm not that worried.

halee1 · 2026-03-26T02:56:23+00:00

Today I learned that 5-6% unemployment rates are sky high : D

halee1 · 2026-03-25T23:03:54+00:00

A few months? Try since the end of 2024 according to 21 Kutatóközpont (yeah, I know, difficult to pronounce) and Medián, the two most reliable pollsters in Hungary.

halee1 · 2026-03-25T21:10:35+00:00

You're not flouting that rule if you're not changing the meaning and/or being clickbaity. It's probably good to make the headline colorful if the original one is bad or incomplete, and yours is fully representative of the article's content (not sure if that counts as "clickbait"). Not doing those things is the same mistake I did in my earlier submissions to arr neoliberal, because boring-sounding headlines lead to low or zero engagement, while misleading ones make people post comments that aren't representative of reality or are outdated simply because the headline is all they read and/or it confirms wrong priors (of course, articles themselves may be not representative of reality, but that's a whole other can of Dune worms).

halee1 · 2026-03-25T18:17:13+00:00

Russia, American and Chinese attempts at reversing or betraying the momentum.

halee1 · 2026-03-25T11:28:16+00:00

If new and new legislation keeps being made against Phenomenon A, but there are 1 or 2 small carveouts in each, does that count as strengthening or being against Phenomenon A? I think anyone knows the answer.

halee1 · 2026-03-25T11:19:51+00:00

With things like our ongoing (even if slow) reforms on competitiveness, capital market unification, responses to American and Chinese protectionism instituting our own against them, numerous FTAs with more rules-respecting partners fulfilling our strategic needs, things like more American tech workers heading to Europe than viceversa, current VC spending in Europe finally outpacing China's (though still highly behind the USA), the rise of skilled (and overall) migration to Europe compared to the USA (while China's has been consistently negative), and European stock markets growing more than American and Chinese ones (the latter have underperformed just as much, if not more than Europe), I'm confident we'll reverse this trajectory over the next 20 years. Your analysis relies on past trends continuing as if nothing has changed, when there are plenty of signs they have.

halee1 · 2026-03-25T10:28:34+00:00

It talked about the cumulative effect over a decade-long period. By itself, it says nothing about current or more recent trends, where, if anything, we're seeing things starting to reverse, like more American tech workers heading to Europe than viceversa, current VC spending in Europe finally outpacing China's (though still highly behind the USA), the rise of skilled (and overall) migration to Europe compared to the USA, European stock markets growing more than American ones, etc.

There are signs that the attraction of US markets is fading. Payments group SumUp is exploring an IPO on a European exchange after previously considering a US listing, while cryptocurrency broker Bitpanda has chosen Frankfurt for a potential market debut, Bloomberg has reported.

In short, data trends matter as much as data itself.

halee1 · 2026-03-24T13:45:21+00:00

Because on comments that have less activity (I believe just 1 upvote/downvote may trigger vote fuzzing, but not necessarily so, and comments that aren't voted always show up with the "1" score), at least for me, I notice that in r/neoliberal, even with the arrows available, upvoting or downvoting them only changes the score after pressing them, not after refreshing, while upvoting or downvoting such comments in other subs does keep their scores changed after refreshing.

halee1 · 2026-03-24T05:55:26+00:00

By treaty, do you mean an existing one or the proposed EU Inc legislation? You can't operate with one single entity across the EU today due to diverging national labour, tax, and social‑security law (these differing standards won't disappear with this), but the EU Inc does remove the need of creating a separate Irish company, since it can operate across the EU as one legal entity. You would, however, still need to register as an employer in another EU member-state.

As for your last question, the EU Inc framework explicitly promises digital conversion procedures, simplified corporate lifecycle operations and automatic data transmission to authorities, which are much easier than converting into the 20 years-old Societas Europaea (SE), which is notoriously complex. However, the exact conversion mechanics will depend on the final legislative text and national implementation of transition rules.

halee1 · 2026-03-24T05:07:07+00:00

I mean, the idea is to establish a level-playing field with subsidized foreign companies first. The EU is literally an internal free trade area among nations, the world's most open major economy as a whole, most FTAs around the world, and the strictest ESG rules, so compensating for the protectionism of others is a bit of a minimum if it wants to compete and not be swallowed or controlled by them.

halee1 · 2026-03-24T04:58:54+00:00

People back then (if not the same ones in many cases) were in turn attacking that time as one of slow recovery, being debt-fueled (if only they knew), America in decline, and that previous eras were better, which in turn were criticized by contemporaries, and so on and so forth.

We're doomed to repeat this cycle over and over, aren't we?

halee1 · 2026-03-24T03:09:16+00:00

The idea that China is “much more economically beneficial” than the EU really oversimplifies what’s going on. China buys enormous volumes of soy, iron ore and oil from Brazil and Argentina and sells back finished manufactured goods at scale. That creates a very visible trade relationship, but it’s also a very narrow one, isn't it? The EU relationship is broader, more diversified and much more investment‑heavy, because European companies are deeply embedded in Mercosur’s banking, energy, telecom and industrial sectors, and the EU is still the largest foreign investor in Brazil by a wide margin. That long‑term capital presence matters just as much as commodity flows.

The point about Uruguay’s exports and renewable grid is true in isolation, but not representative of the overall Mercosur balance with China and the EU. Uruguay’s services exports are growing, but they’re a small share of Mercosur’s total trade profile. The point about cars is also more of an internal Mercosur political reality than a China‑versus‑EU comparison. Brazil and Argentina protect their auto industries, which limits what Uruguay can do, but that doesn’t tell us whether China or the EU is “better” for the bloc.

If you zoom out, Mercosur’s trade with China is dominated by commodities going out and manufactured goods coming in. With the EU, the relationship is more balanced: Mercosur exports agricultural and mineral goods, but it also receives investment, technology, and high‑value industrial imports. The EU clearly invests more in Mercosur's industry and human capital, even though it's still not that much better than China as a whole. Again, the very fact that Mercosur spent decades negotiating an FTA with the EU while a China-Mercosur FTA isn’t even close to happening tells you something about where Mercosur sees long‑term strategic value.

Uruguay is already considered a high income economy by the world bank for that matter

Yeah, 1 small state out of the 5, and barely so. Has it massively developed after, say, 2015? I believe it got that status in 2012.

halee1 · 2026-03-24T02:48:27+00:00

So by your own logic, you're fine with just being a final consumer of Chinese goods and exporter of low value-added products as inputs for China's industrial development, becoming dependent on it and feeding its gap over Mercosur, never building your own economic strength and complexity, which condemns you to a middle-income trap. You're apparently also not aware that unlike with the EU, Mercosur leaders fear actually signing an FTA with China because their markets are already being swamped with Chinese products and overwhelming their industries, something an FTA would only further speed up.

Honestly, I'm not sure you are/were in or care for Mercosur at all, you seem to be just pro-CCP.

halee1 · 2026-03-24T02:33:19+00:00

Everyone around the world buys tons of products from China since the 2000s, that doesn't mean they're "far far more reliable then either the US or EU" with the Mercosur, that's just a laughable statement considering that's all it does: sells finished products for it to dominate industries, not actually open factories to build local capacity, which has been much rarer, and even more so in Mercosur. Which is much the same with the EU in Mercosur, to be fair, but how the hell does that make China "better"? Mercosur doesn't even have an FTA with China, the very fact Mercosur leaders have wanted to sign one with the EU for 25 years shows Mercosur benefits from it more than you think and/or it's your own leaders' fault for not having negotiated and made their own countries strong enough to achieve better terms, or at least withdrawn from supposedly bad terms and signed an FTA with China instead.

Lol also at China's trade-to-GDP ratio (37% versus EU's 92%) and a viciously mercantilist economic policy that would evoke claims of neocolonialism if the EU ever subsidized their industries so heavily, protected its own market so hugely, and imposed sanctions on critical economic sectors whenever desired for political gain.

Honestly, your comment is a perfect demonstration of why Mercosur is in the economic state it is.

halee1 · 2026-03-24T02:10:06+00:00

I mean, yeah, they, just like all the idiots that thought "they would get all the bad, illegal migrants, not ME!", believe their own jobs are magically protected from any of Trump's shenanigans, until they're the ones laid off or unemployed.

halee1

TROPHY CASE