EU discussion / and other European countries

The Boy said:
You probably know more about this than me, so feel free to correct.

But it does make sense splitting the parliamentary elections from the presidential. Maybe he feels there is a chance he could squeeze this result, or if the far right does win, then he is still president and can moderate their worst excesses especially in foreign policy etc and give them a couple of years to prove that they can not deliver, rather than limp on for two years and face a Tory style annihilation with a far right president and parliament.

EDIT: either way it's a big gamble
Click to expand...

It's difficult to read. In the past , the parliament elections were held at a different time to the presidential so an incoming president could inherit a parliament made of the opposition being in the majority. The other significant parties like the left or the far-left or the greens or even the Tories as well as the centre parties are against the far-right.

Two other factors after this EU vote, turnout was low and there were so many candidates and parties (a lot who had changed their name) it must have been difficult for the average voter to follow. If they were protesting against Macron the well known name was Bardella. Who knows.
 
KirkDuyt said:
Wilders is still big in Europe, but his voters don't really turn out for European elections. Think only half of his voters showed up compared to the general election.

FvD is even worse than Wilders though, but they (and mostly their frontman Thierry Baudet) went off the deep end into conspiracy maga style crap that they lost their entire voter base. We might also be making an alarming turn to the right, but we're not yet susceptible to that level of idiocy.
Click to expand...

Yeah, there is a bit of that here, where people vote differently in local, national, and European elections.
 
Very good results for democracy in Sweden. Social democrats increase a little, amd keep first place, The far right party SD went back for the first time in its history. They were expected to be second biggest party and ended up fourth behind a surprisingly strong Greens who got third.
 
Good results in Portugal also. The Far Right leader said that he wanted to win the elections but they came third, only elected two when they wanted five and missed all the objectives. They only got 9% when they had 18% in the previous election. Hopefully they go back to being an irrelevancy.
 
Interesting thread on the far right







edit - and a funny comment on the far right

 
Last edited:
berbatrick said:
Interesting thread on the far right







edit - and a funny comment on the far right

Click to expand...

The far-right in Europe isn't underperforming. Not by a long shot, and its results in Germany and France are truly terrifying.

Anyone trying to downplay the significance of the far-right results in these elections is frankly a deluded moron.
 
Last edited:
That_Bloke said:
The far-right in Europe isn't underperforming. Not by a long shot, and its results in Germany and France are truly terrifying.

Anyone trying to downplay the significance of the far-right results in these elections is frankly a deluded moron.
Click to expand...

Think he's referring to their performance w.r.t. their polling numbers. And he makes it clear that these are good results for them. But they aren't inevitable yet.
 
berbatrick said:
Think he's referring to their performance w.r.t. their polling numbers. And he makes it clear that these are good results for them. But they aren't inevitable yet.
Click to expand...
They already are. Just have a quick look at who's on the opposing side.
 
Are Europeans abandoned to populism?

Interesting set of polling that covers a huge breadth of topics ranging from support of core EU institutions, support of staying in the EU, a unified EU army, globalisation, perceptions of international threats and even how they would feel about the UK rejoining the EU.

Long read but interesting. And perhaps some reassuring data too.
 
Meloni has played a perfect hand since she was elected, you almost forget what her party's actually all about. She's really wooed Europe. I think she's been helped immensely by the fact that Berlusconi died, quite honestly.
 
Explosion outside synagogue in southern France leaves police officer injured
French police have been ordered to step up security around Jewish places of worship, schools and centres across the country after a police officer was injured in an explosion outside a synagogue.

The incident in La Grande-Motte, a Mediterranean resort east of Montpellier, is being investigated by France’s specialist antiterrorism prosecutor.
Click to expand...
https://www.theguardian.com/world/a...de-motte-france-leaves-police-officer-injured
 
Well, there was Wirecard booming for a while until it...collapsed under fraud and one of its executives is now a Russian agent. :lol:
 
VorZakone said:
Well, there was Wirecard booming for a while until it...collapsed under fraud and one of its executives is now a Russian agent. :lol:
Click to expand...
Yeah but it's not like Canada, Japan, Australia or any other western nation has brought along one of those juggernauts either. The only exception being Taiwan.
 
Abizzz said:
Yeah but it's not like Canada, Japan, Australia or any other western nation has brought along one of those juggernauts either. The only exception being Taiwan.
Click to expand...
That is true, though Japan has Sony as a big dog. Well, Sweden has Spotify as a big dog.
 
VorZakone said:
That is true, though Japan has Sony as a big dog. Well, Sweden has Spotify as a big dog.
Click to expand...
Spotify doesn't even have 1/4 market cap of SAP. Now you're trolling. (Sony is at 1/3 of LVMH, given they are now both centered around premium consumer goods).
 
Abizzz said:
Spotify doesn't even have 1/4 market cap of SAP. Now you're trolling. (Sony is at 1/3 of LVMH, given they are now both centered around premium consumer goods).
Click to expand...

ASML and ARM are pretty important in what they do, and market leaders. Part of the issue is the selling of leading businesses to foreign investors and listing in the US as happened to ARM - that's pretty rare for the big US businesses.
 
Buster15 said:
Now that is a very good question. Is it down to lack of innovation by European tech companies or is it down to the US being that much better.
Click to expand...
European companies have stopped caring about innovation. The salaries in top European companies (when it comes to tech) are nowhere competitive compared to US (or even Chinese) companies. Those being unionized for most part means that salaries are not negotiable (or just a bit negotiable) because of levels, and the inability to fire underperforming workers means that the companies are not willing to take risks in hiring. These accumulates over a time with the best experts opting for companies which pay 2x-3x in turn leaving those companies devoid of talent. When you also add conservative management, and you have a recipe for lagging behind.

Forgot to mention the almost non-existent startup culture (essentially the only European tech startups who are worth anything are Synthesia, Helsing and Mistral), at least compared to US. Series A funding in Europe is big if it reaches 10-20m in Europe
 
Balljy said:
ASML and ARM are pretty important in what they do, and market leaders. Part of the issue is the selling of leading businesses to foreign investors and listing in the US as happened to ARM - that's pretty rare for the big US businesses.
Click to expand...
Yes, but outside of them and Spotify, (and the 3 startups I mentioned), there is basically nothing. You have outdated dinosaurs like Siemens, SAP or Nokia as the best of the rest, companies that no one cares about and pay uncompetitively.
 
Abizzz said:
I don't get it. Why did everyone start 0 in 2010?


On a serious note, that is down to 4 (well maybe 6 on second thought) companies, and those are well known.
Click to expand...
I assume you mean Apple, Microsoft, Nvidia, Google, Amazon and Meta?

But then, what are the equivalents of Broadcom (ASLM), Intel (ARM), AMD, Micron, SNAP (Spotify), Netflix, Roku, Autodesk, Oracle (SAP), Salesforce, Adobe, Cisco, Qualcomm, Texas Instruments, IBM, Uber, Booking, Shopify, Dell, HM, Airbnb, PayPal, Palantir etc. I’ve put a few European equivalents (but for most part quite a bit smaller), but for most part there is feck all.

Europe has willingly missed the technology train. When the US was busy innovating, and China replicating, Europe decided to regulate.
 
Revan said:
I assume you mean Apple, Microsoft, Nvidia, Google, Amazon and Meta?

But then, what are the equivalents of Broadcom (ASLM), Intel (ARM), AMD, Micron, SNAP (Spotify), Netflix, Roku, Autodesk, Oracle (SAP), Salesforce, Adobe, Cisco, Qualcomm, Texas Instruments, IBM, Uber, Booking, Shopify, Dell, HM, Airbnb, PayPal, Palantir etc. I’ve put a few European equivalents (but for most part quite a bit smaller), but for most part there is feck all.

Europe has willingly missed the technology train. When the US was busy innovating, and China replicating, Europe decided to regulate.
Click to expand...
I do know the saying "Innovate, fabricate, regulate" concerning US/CHINA/EU and there is some truth to it. I'm not really sure what your list is about other than listing a wide array of companies? I know UBER and Airbnb call themselves "tech companies" but to me their business model has nothing to do with actual tech companies like cisco or AMD. Paypal is something like -90% in the past 3 years (in that region anyway). What do these companies have in common?

Silicon Valley is ahead of the entire rest of the world in it's field. But other than that I really don't think you will find many Europeans complaining that there aren't enough local juggernauts with a monopoly in a certain market segment.
 
Abizzz said:
I do know the saying "Innovate, fabricate, regulate" concerning US/CHINA/EU and there is some truth to it. I'm not really sure what your list is about other than listing a wide array of companies? I know UBER and Airbnb call themselves "tech companies" but to me their business model has nothing to do with actual tech companies like cisco or AMD. Paypal is something like -90% in the past 3 years (in that region anyway). What do these companies have in common?

Silicon Valley is ahead of the entire rest of the world in it's field. But other than that I really don't think you will find many Europeans complaining that there aren't enough local juggernauts with a monopoly in a certain market segment.
Click to expand...
I think the issue is that tech is becoming (it has already become) the main industry. Countries that will build tech will be the rich ones, those that won’t, will not develop as quickly. Europe was always lagging behind the US, but it was close and in many sectors, it was leading. Now with tech, they are not close, they are not even a factor. ASML is the only really important European tech company, Arm to some degree but that’s it.

I mention those companies to show that it isn’t only the big 6 US companies. There are another few dozen US tech companies who do not have European equivalents. That’s extremely concerning and will feck up Europe in long term. And it is not only the US, China has now surpassed EU too. There are no European equivalents of Tencent, Huawei, Oppo, Alibaba etc.

So the open museum allegory is very true. Europe has completely missed in the most important industry. It will basically become a place whose main industries are gonna be rich Americans and Chinese coming for visit and buying expensive bags and eating in Michelin restaurants.

And with AI it is going to become worse. Basically, the biggest AI European companies are Synthesia, Mistral and Helsing, whose combined value is 1/10th of Palantir (or smaller than UiPath) companies most people have not even heard.
 
Revan said:
European companies have stopped caring about innovation. The salaries in top European companies (when it comes to tech) are nowhere competitive compared to US (or even Chinese) companies. Those being unionized for most part means that salaries are not negotiable (or just a bit negotiable) because of levels, and the inability to fire underperforming workers means that the companies are not willing to take risks in hiring. These accumulates over a time with the best experts opting for companies which pay 2x-3x in turn leaving those companies devoid of talent. When you also add conservative management, and you have a recipe for lagging behind.

Forgot to mention the almost non-existent startup culture (essentially the only European tech startups who are worth anything are Synthesia, Helsing and Mistral), at least compared to US. Series A funding in Europe is big if it reaches 10-20m in Europe
Click to expand...

That is a very interesting assessment. Thank you for this.
 
All of these major US companies pay some tax and employ thousands of people in Europe, so I don't get the notion that Europe will only be good for Americans shopping in a few years? Does the origin of a company really matter if they are paying taxes and hiring staff in other places? All of these feckers dodge whatever tax they can anyway.
 
Revan said:
I think the issue is that tech is becoming (it has already become) the main industry. Countries that will build tech will be the rich ones, those that won’t, will not develop as quickly. Europe was always lagging behind the US, but it was close and in many sectors, it was leading. Now with tech, they are not close, they are not even a factor. ASML is the only really important European tech company, Arm to some degree but that’s it.

I mention those companies to show that it isn’t only the big 6 US companies. There are another few dozen US tech companies who do not have European equivalents. That’s extremely concerning and will feck up Europe in long term. And it is not only the US, China has now surpassed EU too. There are no European equivalents of Tencent, Huawei, Oppo, Alibaba etc.

So the open museum allegory is very true. Europe has completely missed in the most important industry. It will basically become a place whose main industries are gonna be rich Americans and Chinese coming for visit and buying expensive bags and eating in Michelin restaurants.

And with AI it is going to become worse. Basically, the biggest AI European companies are Synthesia, Mistral and Helsing, whose combined value is 1/10th of Palantir (or smaller than UiPath) companies most people have not even heard.
Click to expand...
I don't know, I'm not as negative, even if I might be a bit biased by the region I'm in. I live in a European town with round about 300k inhabitants and we have plenty of companies that are near the top or lead the markets they are active in. Be it robots that dive through pipelines(pipetronics), timetaking(race result) at large events, largest market place for luxury watches (chrono24) and plenty more in other niches. I've also seen eastern europe almost reach western standards of living within my lifetime, plenty of industry has developed there (and yes at the cost of some of the companies here too, but plenty have benefited too). We also have way less living space in my city/region than demand and rents are a problem as those companies are hiring from all over... Maybe not the top 1% of Harvard or Cambridge, those might really just go to Silicon Valley, but there is plenty of talent beyond that. And there are lot of cities like mine across Europe, really more or less every large city around me is similar.

And ASML isn't really the only important company in Europe, it's the only one that completely owns it's market.

Also Spain has developed a high speed train industry (in the past 2 decades) while the US hasn't managed to build a single proper line (well now Florida finally has one of all places) and it's not necessary to go into the developments of the respective civil aviation sectors... There's a world of high-tech beyond AI.

I wish Europe was more active in some fields but it's hardly a museum yet ;)
 
RedC said:
All of these major US companies pay some tax and employ thousands of people in Europe, so I don't get the notion that Europe will only be good for Americans shopping in a few years? Does the origin of a company really matter if they are paying taxes and hiring staff in other places? All of these feckers dodge whatever tax they can anyway.
Click to expand...
It's complicated, here's the UK perspective. Sales are generally recognised in the tax jurisdiction of the sales operation. Historically that has meant that big US corps would have paid CT in the UK on the sale of their products because people would have often physically gone to a shop/ordered it on a phone and the sales operation was in the UK. But now with online sales the game has changed and it's meant that these giants like Amazon can base their sales operations in tax jurisdictions that have lower CT rates whilst still essentially operating in the UK. They need a EU base to operate within the EU so they will generally choose Ireland because it's got a low tax rate and has a decent legal system. The UK has tried to combat this by introducing a complicated tax called Diverted Profits Tax (Google tax) for large corporates with the aim of clawing back a proportion of the lost revenue with limited success.

Essentially you have big giants undercutting and destroying smaller businesses (who actually pay UK tax) because they pay less tax.
 
Last edited:
Abizzz said:
I don't know, I'm not as negative, even if I might be a bit biased by the region I'm in. I live in a European town with round about 300k inhabitants and we have plenty of companies that are near the top or lead the markets they are active in. Be it robots that dive through pipelines(pipetronics), timetaking(race result) at large events, largest market place for luxury watches (chrono24) and plenty more in other niches. I've also seen eastern europe almost reach western standards of living within my lifetime, plenty of industry has developed there (and yes at the cost of some of the companies here too, but plenty have benefited too). We also have way less living space in my city/region than demand and rents are a problem as those companies are hiring from all over... Maybe not the top 1% of Harvard or Cambridge, those might really just go to Silicon Valley, but there is plenty of talent beyond that. And there are lot of cities like mine across Europe, really more or less every large city around me is similar.

And ASML isn't really the only important company in Europe, it's the only one that completely owns it's market.

Also Spain has developed a high speed train industry (in the past 2 decades) while the US hasn't managed to build a single proper line (well now Florida finally has one of all places) and it's not necessary to go into the developments of the respective civil aviation sectors... There's a world of high-tech beyond AI.

I wish Europe was more active in some fields but it's hardly a museum yet ;)
Click to expand...
Maybe museum is a bit of exaggeration, but I guess Europe is going to get Japanified. Where there is still strong traditional industries, but completely missing the recent technologies. The traditional technology (machines, cars, airplanes) will likely continue strong. Airbus for example is the leader when it comes to airplanes.

But considering how much wealth the new technologies are going to generate, it is likely that Europe countries, similar to Japan, would be second world countries. Still decent enough, and in some ways better, but nowhere as wealthy as the US and China who are gonna get the entire tech and AI markets.

Japan is very much the same as Europe. Outside Sony, they have nothing in computer tech, while having a very strong traditional tech industry. Same for South Korea (basically just Samsung).

NB: The other issue is that it is not that the best engineers/scientists go to Silicon Valley. I mean, many do, but still the remaining who choose to stay in Europe work for the US (or is some cases Chinese) companies. As many know I work in AI, and basically if you’re an ok engineer/scientist you are likely not working for any European company except Mistral, Synthesia and Helsing (all three are quite small). Simply, even in Europe you are getting 1.5-2x in salaries working for Chinese companies, and probably around 3x for US companies. So there is a high incentive to not work for European companies even if staying in Europe.

NB2: Forgot Wayve. Hurrah, there are 4, not 3, European AI startups that are actually good.
 
Last edited:
You must log in or register to reply here.