Posted by l-one-lone 17 hours ago
EU member states want all the benefits of integration without giving anything up, especially things that they consider aspects of national sovereignty.
* * *
I'll give you an example.
I'm from Romania. In Romania in 1990 there were no private enterprises, so everything was state owned. There was a HUGE demand for commerce/retail, so small local businesses popped up. They were very basic because everything was brand new and expertise was extremely scarce. No one knew anything about modern supermarkets, supermarket chains, banks, loans, credit lines, basically everything related to modern market economies.
As Romanian headed for EU integration, foreign invested started... investing. In retail that meant that because Romania is fairly populous by EU standards, everyone was tempted by a potentially big and growing pie that was almost void of serious competition.
So we ended up with Lidl (German), Kaufland (German), Metro (German), Carrefour (French), Mega Image (Romanian, bought by Delhaize: Belgian), DM (German), Cora (French), Auchan (French), Profi (Romanian, bought by Delhaize: Belgian), Selgros (Swiss), Penny (bought by REWE: German), etc.
I moved abroad somewhere close to both France and Germany. At a company I worked for, I had both French and German coworkers.
At some point the Germans were talking about Kaufland and I started chatting with them about it. Some French people mentioned Auchan and I replied to that too. After a few more replies about German and French supermarket chains, one of them said: how do you know so much about both French and German supermarket chains?
And I told them:
We're right next to Germany and German supermarkets stop at the border. There is no Aldi in France. Most French people in the neighboring French towns haven't even been in an Aldi.
We're also next to France and French supermarkets stop at the border. There is no Carrefour in Germany. Most German people in the neighboring German towns haven't even been in a Carrefour.
In Romania your big companies bought everything local (or displaced it), there are hardly any locally owned stores so I guess the upside is that I know all your supermarket chains.
* * *
Repeat this for banking, IT, whatever. Europe is super economically segregated even with the EU operating. Each country has all sort of hidden protections for its local businesses. I can't really tell you what they are exactly, but in practice you can feel them. Each country has its own version of X, Y, Z businesses. Small versions of everything, instead of few really big and competitive businesses at a global level.
This even impacts US companies. You can't get a European Netflix subscription. You fly from Romania to France and when you land and connect your tablet to the internet, your Romanian Netflix account switches over to France and they delete Mad Men from your downloaded episodes because Netflix France hasn't licensed Mad Men (old example).
I am from Brazil and it is not unusual for companies to operate only within certain states because of this. Even though Brazil is a single country with a single language and mostly federal rules about things, there is still enough variance of laws from one state to another to cause problems.
Then you hear about Canada which has tariffs between its own provinces, but not to the US. Meaning some products are cheaper across the US border than across a province border. Figuring out how much to pay in taxes alone can be a blocker...
This is not an EU-only problem, any large single market will have friction in its internal divisions. It tends to be worse in the EU because the countries have a lot more sovereignty though (enforcement agencies tend to be local, not federal for example).
Canada doesn't have, and should not have, the level of ambitions the EU should have. We're talking about EU 450 million people (500+ million if the UK rejoins at some point) vs Canada 35 million.
The EU should go toe to toe with the US and China. The EU is utterly dominated by US software companies and by Chinese green tech companies (batteries, solar panels, EVs).
No, that is actually one of the points, I'm glad someone noticed it.
I, too, want to have my cake and eat it, too. This is a contradiction that can't easily be resolved.
I'd want Romanian sovereignty AND the convenience of big companies with lots of economic power. I guess, to your direct comment, yeah, I'd be happy enough with a few European "champions" out of hundreds being Romanian.
Personally, I lean more towards EU federalism so this cognitive dissonance is probably 30-70 towards big companies, because I think otherwise the EU will be crushed by outsiders.
Anyway, your name sounds Dutch. Please bring Albert Heijn to Germany. I'm not even sure why, but it's my favorite supermarket I've been to so far.
So yes, there are more recent developments for supermarkets, but repeat the exercise for banks or other fields. How often do French people get services from German companies, for example online retail? Do they go to otto.fr, kaufland.fr, etc?
And Auchan has stores in Spain (Alcampo).
I'm not saying that the boundary is a 20km high wall of fire nothing can go through.
I'm saying that:
1. the direction is mostly big countries -> smaller countries, and very rarely big countries -> other big countries or even rarer, smaller countries -> big countries.
2. 20+ years after the EU has started, the level of high level integration is still pitiful.
If I go into the Carrefour in Sallanches (FR) then I will buy a completely different set of products to those that I would buy in the Carrefour in Aosta (IT), the two are 80km apart, I have shopped in both multiple times.
I don't think the supermarket example really maps across to the subject of the linked article.
=> short term gain, free profits for eg FR or DE companies being allowed to devour other smaller countrie's markets
=> big country corpos get used to "almost free lunch"
=> big EU corpos fail to innovated and become uncompetitive globally
=> US ans CN corpos try instead to come with their increased efficiency and innovation at the EU market
=> EU freaks out and throws random restrictions and fines and regulations
=> only the most aggressive and ruthless CN (Temu etc) and US companies get through
=> they mostly rape the s out of EU markets
=> EU tries to protect its markets but its institutions have been regulatorly captured
=> [dark spiral goes on and on...]
If european innovative companies and small businesses flourish in 10 years - I'll be the first to apologize and admit the mistake.
But there are just no signs of it today. While plenty of signs and data supporting my point.
So what if businesses "had time to prepare"? Its not the governments / especially the EUs job to waste the time of small businesses.
ARTHUR DENT: Yes! I went round to find them yesterday afternoon. You’d hadn’t exactly gone out of your way to pull much attention to them have you? I mean, like actually telling anybody or anything.
MISTER PROSSER: The plans were on display.
ARTHUR DENT: Ah! And how many members of the public are in the habit of casually dropping around the local planning office of an evening?
MISTER PROSSER: Er – ah!
ARTHUR DENT: It’s not exactly a noted social venue is it? And even if you had popped in on the off chance that some raving bureaucrat wanted to knock your house down, the plans weren’t immediately obvious to the eye were they?
MISTER PROSSER: That depends where you were looking.
ARTHUR DENT: I eventually had to go down to the cellar!
MISTER PROSSER: That’s the display department.
ARTHUR DENT: With a torch!
MISTER PROSSER: The lights, had… probably gone.
ARTHUR DENT: So had the stairs!
MISTER PROSSER: Well you found the notice didn’t you?
ARTHUR DENT: Yes. It was on display in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet, stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying “Beware of the Leopard”.
As far as I'm concerned the only way you could say this is "killing" any business is if the business in question has, as you said, spent the last decade just assuming they could sell things wherever with no oversight.
They need proportionality and size/qty exemptions
that's why it only makes sense so think in broader terms, and a broader level regulatory capture absolutely exists.
the problem is that to solve regulatory capture in the EU parts of governments would have so go to war against corporations on the part of SMBs. but... governments in Europe de facto don't even recognize the right to exist of SMBs, basically _nothin_ of the large swath of government contracts fall to misc small businesses that would be perfectly capable to deliver on them at even 4x the quality standard corrupto-corpos do... probably there's some positive counteexamples in the weapons industry recently since we've realized we really do need quality weaponry at great value "by yesterday morning", but besides that... govs _HATE_ both SMBs and startups-from-unkowns (god forbit bootstrapped...).
Exempting small business could easily be viewed as hostile / corrupt regulation disfavouring large entities.
These kinds of regulations are usually not even welcome by larger companies, but there is less pushback.
'packaging' isn't the place to use the c-word.