> IMO if it's open to abuse then it wasn't properly designed

Its not open to abuse. Its just that the US corporations are violating its articles.

> Clearly it wasn't well thought

It was well thought out. It mandates easy Accept / Reject for tracking. Just one click. Tell the users what you will track. And allow them to choose if they want to.

The route that the US corps. took is no different from how they go around and violate laws in their home turf. They think that they can do the same with civil law. But it doesn't work that way. Eventually one will get busted for not obliging with the articles of the law.

You've over skimmed the part where I wrote if its unenforceable then its also a poorly conceived rule.

Its pretty enforceable. It is enforced for large corporations promptly, and you would be surprised, but if someone reports a small website from an individual or small corporation, they also get the law applied to them. Eu's enforcement website has a lot of local businesses and individuals who had collected people's emails without their permission (buying them from warez sites etc), sending out spam emails then got fined for violating GDPR for collecting data without the knowledge and consent of those people.

> Bad execution can ruin good ideas.

There’s no good idea that the EU won’t find some way to execute poorly, alas.

There are zillions of good ideas that the Eu mandated - ideas which you dont even notice because they became parts of your daily life. They range from the obligation that food producers must have all the ingredients clearly listed in their products to the expiration dates. From no-spam laws to right to repair.

What you say just sounds like Daily Mirror grade smear.

I grew up in Australia. We somehow mysteriously managed to have expiration dates on food too, despite our distance from Brussels. What developed country doesn’t have expiration dates?

The EU is great at taking credit for things it had very little to do with. Sometimes it’s obvious things that happen elsewhere without the EU (expiration dates on food), sometimes it’s the work of other organisations (like NATO). “Oh, there’s peace in Europe? Yeah, the EU did that. Oh, there’s war in Europe? Hmm, more EU should fix that.”

> What you say just sounds like Daily Mirror grade smear.

I’m a euro-federalist, so I doubt the Daily Mirror would be interested. The EU is a mixed bag and I want it to do better. Reflexively attacking people whose views you know very little about seems unconstructive.

> We somehow mysteriously managed to have expiration dates on food too, despite our distance from Brussels

A large part of the world adopted such rules after the Eu implemented them. The Eu is seen as the leader and standard in these things. Eu implemented consumer protections, everyone else in OECD also did. Eu implemented EUVAT, OECD countries are also doing it. Also various US states. Eu implemented GDPR, and suddenly from Brazil to US every other country or state has their own GDPR.

Now the Eu has its digital gatekeepers law. Watch how long will it take for other OECD countries to adopt similar laws.

> Reflexively attacking people whose views you know very little

Sorry but we are on public internet. We dont have the time to sit and get to know people. If you are talking like the people from a certain group, then its normal that people respond to you as if you were from that group.

Moreover, the culture that people grow up in affects their perspective greatly. Not surprisingly, having grown in an Anglosaxon country seems to have shaped your perspective too.

Brazilian here. GDPR is the only example in your list that is factual and that's because Europe requirements for market agreements. It was passed mainly to be able to establish trade with the EU.

We had most of these other things before EU even existed. Brazilian's Código de Defesa do Consumidor dates from 1990. Expiration dates are such a common thing worldwide its not even worth searching on there internet. A quality assurance institution named INMETRO exists since the 70s testing everything from condoms reliability to reporting small parts in children's toys. Brazil also pioneered net neutrality one year before the EU.

Talking about culture perspective you seem to admire the EU regulatory frame and that's fine but as I said before nothing is perfect and its totally ok to criticize something that is poorly conceived even if intentions were good.

I think they mean EU countries. EU laws are mostly laws from specific countries that bubbles up to the union. Regulations along these lines has existed in Europe for over a century.

> EU laws are mostly laws from specific countries that bubbles up to the union

Nope. Euparl does most of these regulations. The GDPR, digital gatekeepers and various other internet related laws originated from the left wing parties in Euparl - those parties grew from pirate party roots. The pirate parties that were founded in many Eu countries in mid 2000s during the copyright/filesharing battles.

> GDPR is the only example in your list that is factual and that's because Europe requirements for market agreements

That is a big factor in proliferation of such agreements, however thats not the normal mechanic. Japan has no need for copying EUVAT to trade with the Eu for example. But they are doing it. Also, various US states implemented similar schemes without any such need.

> Talking about culture perspective you seem to admire the EU regulatory frame

I explicitly do. What you are seeing with the emergence of recent regulations like GDPR, digital gatekeepers is due to the ascent of pro-people, pro open web parties that grew from pirate party roots coming to power in the Eu parliament.

> A quality assurance institution named INMETRO exists since the 70s

Eu started as a coal cooperation organization in mid 1950s and by 70s most of its institutions and practices were in place - especially in the direction of consumer, product and manufacturing regulations. It was the example even by then.

This is ludicrous. Food labelling long predates the EU, and appears to have started in the United States sometime around the 1930s on a voluntary basis. Food labels predate the EU even in Europe, by many years.

The idea of VAT dates back to the First World War, and while the EU assists European governments in coordinating its collection in Europe, it had no meaningful impact on the adoption of VAT-style taxes overseas. Neither Australia nor the United States levy VAT.

Consumer protections absolutely do not originate in the EU. It’s a claim so absurd I honestly don’t know what to say to it. English civil law has had case law and statute protecting consumers for centuries, which is in no way remarkable, seeing as even Roman law had consumer protections in cases of fraud, mistake, or duress.

The idea that the EU is some shining beacon on a hill that everyone looks up to is something one hears a lot around Europe, but I think the people who think this may have places like Moldova confused with the rest of the world. The EU is the fastest shrinking trade bloc, in relative terms, on the face of the planet. Europeans used to like saying that if they were a single country, they’d be the largest economy in the world. That ceased to be true in the last few years - the US has now overtaken the EU. Whereas the US has to manage runaway growth and speculative excess, the EU is forced to make provisions for its relative economic decline. If European countries were US states, living standards in large European economies like Germany and France would rank near the bottom. This is a huge problem. Less prosperity means less quality government services, including healthcare, social security, and education. Less growth over time means fewer nurses, fewer teachers in the future. If the EU single market is such a towering achievement, why is EU growth so sclerotic? It’s hard for Europeans to hear, but the EU is simply not a model people outside of Europe aspire to, even people who otherwise love Europe.

The European project has wonderful achievements, in my opinion, like the Schengen area, and deep scientific and educational cooperation, including Erasmus exchanges for young people. But instead of focusing on those, the EU prefers to claim credit for the sunrise. I’d rather see the EU reformed than abolished - it’s still a net good, I think - but far too many Europeans are far too myopic about the EU’s shortcomings, and far too ignorant about how the rest of the world functions to consider alternatives. (Or even just apply a reasonable degree of scepticism when the EU claims credit for things that predate it or that are already widespread elsewhere.)

> Sorry but we are on public internet. We dont have the time to sit and get to know people.

You seem to be defending bad faith assumptions as a time saving device. Seems to me like that would just set you up for a lot of unnecessarily adversarial discussions, and a generally less pleasant experience than you could be having.