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Five EU Countries Taken To Court For Failing To Implement Cookie Law
concertina226 writes "The European Commission announced on Thursday that it has asked the European Court of Justice to impose fines on Belgium, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal and Slovenia for not transposing binding telecoms rules into their national laws. The official deadline for doing so was 25 May last year. These telecoms rules are aimed at protecting users' privacy online. They also require companies to notify users about any data breach without undue delay and to allow customers to switch fixed or mobile phone operators without changing their phone number, within one working day. But the main sticking point in the telecoms package appears to be the requirement for Web companies to obtain 'explicit consent' from Internet users before storing cookies."
Greece borrows a fuckton of money, pisses it up the wall and then throws a massive sulk when asked to pay it back. Meanwhile Germany makes stuff that people want to buy.
Just who's being subjugated here?
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Greece borrows a fuckton of money, pisses it up the wall and then throws a massive sulk when asked to pay it back. Meanwhile Germany makes stuff that people want to buy.
The past Greek governments have done a terrible job and now the country suffers for it - this is undoubtedly true. It is also true that the German economy has been much better.
However, Germany has benefited enormously from sharing a currency with them. Being one of the world's largest exporters, they benefit from a relatively weak currency. If they had their own currency now they would be like Switzerland - a safe haven in the crisis, with a very strong currency and problems with exports.
But currently the problems in the other countries devalue the euro, meaning Germany gets to export at great prices. Meanwhile the crisis-hit euro countries have an over-valued currency, and they can't do anything about it. Basically, Germany gets a huge boost for free and pretends it's all due to working hard.
Germany is resisting money-printing and collective eurobonds which would give the crisis-hit countries an opportunity to grow again. They want the others to sort their own things out - but if the others run out of options and crash, Germany might end up wishing they had done something.
FWIW I'm in one of the rich and balanced euro countries. Doesn't matter, I still think we need something else than "tough love" to solve this.
What a load of bullcrap.
Do you know how easy it was for me to start up a company in Norway? Required only internet access and a couple of days, and that was 8 years ago.
In greece, you'd be lucky with 10 months and lots of bribes. E.g. check out this article. And there's plenty of renowned international studies into corruption, ease of business, etc, and the Northern European countries top all those.
There's no grand conspiracy, no effort at keeping the south down through infrastructure loans or anything. The countries that are doing excellent through this crisis, e.g. the Northern European countries, do so for entirely obvious reasons.
It might have been slightly naive of us to think that Greece would have taken the out-stretched hand and used it to reform into a prosperous European social-democratic country, not try to steal our watch and rings to waste on wine and dance.
The greeks didn't protest when all the money was loaned to them in the first place so they could go on a massive public sector spending binge and buy the fast cars and beachfront villas. Now its somehow the fault of the organisations who loaned it that the greedy tax dodging greeks are in this mess because they didn't understand Economics 101?? On yer bike pal.