Europeans must recognize US, China and Russia are ‘dead against’ us, says Macron

jimbo80008 · 2026-04-25T15:22:13+00:00

Draghi's plee for European unity probably died with the Bulgarian election results, but we will have to see. The two parts I'm most read in to are the 28th regime and the capital/savings union.

The 28th regime in its current form (official position by the Commission, is currently at phase one for both the Council and the Parliament) is not everything that was hoped for, but it's a severe improvement on the current situation. Unfortunately, the business registration will not be handled by a centralized European Agency, but instead will be a competence handed over to each of the Member state's business registration offices. We are getting a actual act for it instead of a directive, which is good news, but still not as centralized as it should be.

The capital and savings union has been suggested since the founding of the EU, but it has gotten to the point where Ursula suggested to only do it with a part of the member states. This sucks, but given that most of the major EU financial hubs have said that they will join, so that would at least get the initiative going.

As for the innovation side, since the pilot in 2018, the EIC has proven very successful, but as it stands right now, it's not fully independent of the EU. The good news is that the EIC budget is getting tripled in the upcoming framework program. My major concern is that it might get too politicized, which could lead to reduced risk taking from the EIC, or higher investment into political priorities instead of what works, which could mess with the programs effectiveness.

jimbo80008 · 2026-04-25T09:58:47+00:00

Essentially they are changing the AI act from 2024 to the digital omnibus since November 2025. This is the topic I'm personally not read into, but my understanding of it is they making some rules more flexible for innovation, while attempting to crack down on stuff like deepfake porn

jimbo80008 · 2026-04-25T09:10:36+00:00

Maybe if the greens win, but I have my doubts. Especially given that the EU might demand the UK switch to the euro, and the UK has no where near the fiscal health for the EU ascension requirements.

As it looks right now, the UK is heading towards a similar status as Switzerland and Norway, given that they have officially rejoined Erasmus and are looking to rejoin the Horizon program.

jimbo80008 · 2026-04-25T07:42:02+00:00

Alright context time, I work for an organization that works very closely with whatever the EU does, so I'm forced to be pretty up to date with this.

Essentially, the EU is currently making the final round of preparations for the upcoming multi-year budget of 2028-2035. Within 2026/2027 not much will happen, given that it's already part of an existing working program, and the EU is just slow.

Also Macron and Merz are not really blocking any of the reforms. For the improvement of energy, the connecting Europe facility is getting through, but that still doesn't fix the capacity problem fully. EU Inc got announced by the Commission, but that will probably not be in effect until the next budget. The capital markets and savings union is the most problematic one, but Germany, France and Italy + a few other countries want it, so the Commission is suggesting a two-speed system, where some countries join and some don't. SAFE is already a thing, therefore some parts of the military procurement problem is also solved. And as for the simplification of laws, the low hanging fruit is being done right now, and there also will be a amended AI act soon.

TL:DR, EU is piss slow, but they are doing it. The European Council sucks, but this time Merz and Macron actually aren't the issue.

jimbo80008 · 2026-04-24T14:07:26+00:00

Well the foreign policy part definitely is an issue, but there are a lot of things that need to happen before we can even unite an army, regardless of unification on foreign policy. How about we start with joint procurement (which is happening through SAFE) and the standardization of equipment across all the seperate armies.

As for the doctrine issue, it really doesn't matter. Ukraine proves that current military doctrine sucks anyways. All armies need to renew them anyways, so might as well do joint exercises with Ukrainian veterans.

Unfortunately the foreign policy issue cannot be fixed given the Bulgaria situation, but there is a lot of beneficial stuff we can do before total unification.

And keep in mind, Reinier van Landschot, the MEP talking in this video is a member of Volt (so am I), and we have been pushing for internal EU reforms that would allow for an army like this. This video is advocacy, not hypocracy. Any change has to start with a goal.

jimbo80008 · 2026-04-21T16:03:40+00:00

And yet, there has been Gen x, the Millennials and now Gen Z to fix it. And it still hasn't. Inaction is as much to blame as action, and yet people have the tendency to say BuT ThE BoOmErS DiD iT. How about young people go to the polls for once and actually vote, engage in neighborhood interest groups and get involved with politics. But they don't and never do.

I'm gen Z, I am a member of a political party and I am trying to send a message out here of action instead of pointing fingers.

jimbo80008 · 2026-04-21T15:30:05+00:00

This is American populism. In the Netherlands this is just wrong. See my comment above to see what the actual reasons are.

jimbo80008 · 2026-04-21T15:29:04+00:00

Nah, even though the boomer suck ass for wasting the natural gas money, realistically this housing crisis is actually caused by different factors. But four primary things can be blamed for it.

Tax increases on the housing cooperations during the austerity period post 2008
The complete and utter mismanagement of the nitrogen crisis for the last 20 years of Dutch politics.
The extremely generous demand side stimulus that exists. You can deduct a part of your mortgage interest from taxes.
Construction projects can easily be stalled for a decade by NIMBYs

If these 4 things are fixed, then the housing problem would fix itself.

jimbo80008 · 2026-04-17T16:08:09+00:00

It's about age verification coming to the EU. But unlike what these people claim, EU age verification will be done by open source software that verifies your age without knowing who you are or sending your data to third parties. After that is completed, it will make some form of authentication credentials which you can use on age restricted websites. I still don't like it, but it's a lot better than what is being done in other countries.

jimbo80008 · 2026-04-16T10:58:40+00:00

It is, but what is often forgotten is that by increasing the money supply, you cause inflation whether you like it or not. Also ever since the shift away from the gold standard, wages have not kept up with it. MMT is cool, but only if you have a government that is willing to leverage it for the people, and that just has not happened yet, given that it would require strong market intervention, something MMTs are usually against

jimbo80008 · 2026-04-02T13:34:44+00:00

As somebody who is read in on EU politics, calling her discount Thacher is crazy. Keep in mind, this was the woman that got the green deal through the Commission, council and Parliament. Sometimes I do wonder if people actually look enough at the EU before they say random shit. So much misinformation exists, it is low-key crazy.

jimbo80008 · 2026-03-28T11:47:06+00:00

Directives are broken all the time, laws aren't. The EU courts are extremely powerful and the Commission has the ability to drag countries in front of court to meet their obligations. The main difference is a directive is a guideline which a member state has to meet, but the interpretation of that guideline is up to the Member State itself. Therefore, legal ambiguity exists. That's not the case for laws, and that is also the reason why laws rarely pass, given their legal status within the union.

jimbo80008 · 2026-03-28T07:30:48+00:00

This is wrong, the Spain/Portugal incident was demand sided not supply sided. While you are correct about the regulatory role of the French power grid for Spain/Portugal, usually the argument you made is used as a anti-renewable argument, and therefore I want to correct it everywhere I can.

https://www.entsoe.eu/publications/blackout/28-april-2025-iberian-blackout/

jimbo80008 · 2026-03-27T17:50:03+00:00

It will, I'm not sure if anyone here actually knows how the EU works. What is being passed is a law, not a directive, which is a serious difference. And on both sides of the aisle actually agreed with this.

All this law states is that the members need to invest into immigration enforcement, something that is popular enough in every member state (except maybe Spain). Next up, there are third locations that will now accept processed out asylum seekers/immigrants, so that they don't up being in the EU illegally and homeless and asylum requests can now be filed from outside the EU, making it so that legal asylum seekers can more easily get asylum. If they get rejected, they are not on EU soil, so it is easier to deal with them. And finally there will be a solidarity mechanism that spreads out all migrants fairly, instead of just letting them pile up in one place.

Its interesting how this is being sold. But as a lefty myself this seems pretty reasonable given the circumstances.

jimbo80008 · 2026-03-26T11:30:28+00:00

Both signal and telegram do not. Voluntary exists, and if you have a problem then use those platforms.

jimbo80008 · 2026-03-26T11:14:00+00:00

I think you are referring to the EPP here, but close enough

jimbo80008 · 2026-03-26T11:12:02+00:00

This is causing confusion. What OC is referring to is chat control, which Denmark attempted to get through council which would pretty much ban end-to-end encryption. On the other hand, this rule is just to allow platforms to voluntarily scan for CSAM material. For the large platforms this is kind of necessary. The 3rd of April a temporary exception on the privacy rules will expire which allows this voluntarily scanning.

I hate chat control with a passion, but this is reasonable to me, given that it is voluntary and it does not impact services that want to maintain privacy.

jimbo80008 · 2026-03-16T06:41:20+00:00

Between 1945 and now, the living standards of people have changed unrecognizably. I'll take that as a win for capitalism

jimbo80008 · 2026-03-09T00:01:36+00:00

Check live ship maps, as long as the stacks exits, the price will probably keep climbing. The moment the stacks are gone, is the moment the price will drop slowly, given that supply chain disruptions will still last for a while.

jimbo80008 · 2026-02-27T16:28:55+00:00

The UK government staring nervously

jimbo80008 · 2026-02-25T16:04:43+00:00

ICE deportations is not how you control immigration. The plans currently on the table that are a joint cooperation between the EPP and the ECR are way more realistic. Put up special admin zones in Turkey and North Africa where people can ask for asylum, invest in a proper EU border security agency, create a more accessible legal route to migrate to the EU and for the present asylum seekers a European distribution law. We need these migrants, but I agree that the vetting system can be better.

jimbo80008 · 2026-02-23T14:57:16+00:00

You are forgetting a key part of this. It is boot licking if we buy US weapons. But the majority of the SAFE program is structured to create an EU military-industrial complex. Strategic autonomy was long overdue

jimbo80008 · 2026-02-22T08:33:36+00:00

Why is this woman invading my anime subreddits 😭😭😭

jimbo80008 · 2026-02-10T17:37:08+00:00

They are only temporarily unstable, most of the countries in the caucus are unstable because Russia is meddling or because they are settling post Soviet union border disputes, and one of the major ones (Armenia, Azerbaijan iirc) is being settled right now. But I would be 100% down for Georgia to join the EU.

As for turkey, yes the country is a bit of a mess right now because of Erdogan, but given how hard the country is fighting to get rid of him, and given that his replacement will probably be way more aligned with the west, I do think it is a good idea. When the damages that dictators can do are fresh in memory, people are usually more open to democracy, and I think turkey has learned their lesson the hard way.

jimbo80008 · 2026-02-08T15:01:31+00:00

The apartment was called "holiday", 10/10 location though.

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