Politically, stopping data transfers to the US is not viable, because it would impact the deal between the EU and the USA (US covers EU defence for access to the EU common market).
For this reason, I don't think we'll ever see a Chinese-style expulsion of US tech companies from the EU.
Therefore, we've seen over a decade of a dance between the judiciary banning data transfers to the US (Safe Harbor ruling, etc) and then politicians overturning these rulings before it actually impacts anything.
I mean, I would agree. The EU courts have ruled pretty much every cross-border data sharing agreement with the US as illegal (e.g. Safe Harbour ruling eight years ago). The EU Commission considered that data transfers to US were not compliant back in 2000, which led to the Safe Harbour in the first place.
Despite all of this, we haven't seen any creation of an EU internet, and even in this latest ruling, they've suspended the ruling until they hope the new system comes into place that will allow cross-border data transfers to the US.
The point being that politically, there is no desire in the EU to cut themselves off from the US internet as you see in China, Russia, etc.
Essentially all of these insurances are subsidized by the government and would not function without taxpayer money. Also because the insurance part is in many cases compulsory, not having these programs run on the government budget is mostly an accounting trick. The effect is essentially the same as leveling a tax it is just called differently.
In the case of health insurance, AFAIK the subsidies are the government paying on behalf of people who are insured but don't pay in (children, spouses out of the labour market, unemployed - "versicherungsfremde Leistungen") and amounts to about 14 billion out of the 280 billion paid in via employees.
My point is that we don't have "free healthcare" over here in Germany, as Americans often think. We pay in 15% of our income up to the limit into health insurance and we get ok, no-frills healthcare (shared rooms in hospitals, waiting times in big cities to see specialists) relatively equally distributed to the population.
German education systems scores slightly worse than US's system on the 2018 PISA score for what it is worth.
Nor is it universal: I can count at least one extended family member who is not insured and is one accident away from bankruptcy - not unlike some people in the US - except that personal bankruptcy is exceedingly difficult process in their EU country, and it would be quite doable (if not straightforward) to go to prison for the debt.
Not good. Basically bankruptcy insurance, you pay for all your typical health expenses outside disaster. I don't know what Germany offers for that price, but given the overall lower cost of healthcare, presumably it actually covers your healthcare.
It's fairly good coverage without frills (i.e. you get a shared room in the hospital). Doctors tend to de-prioritize public insurance when giving appointments, because they earn less from them, particularly for elective or non-urgent issues, so you usually have to wait a bit longer than privately insured patients.
On the other hand, the insurance costs ~15% of income with a cap, so it has an element of solidarity to it - if you earn less, you pay less, and children and non-working spouse get covered without extra cost.
It's not public insurance though. It's private insurance companies on a given state's exchange which may be pretty similar to what you have through an employer. The big thing with Obamacare is that you can now get private insurance even with pre-conditions. I'm not going to especially defend health insurance in the US but the idea that you can only get it through an employer is just not true.
If you pay $2000 per month combined (which btw includes all children up to the age of 18 and all children not in full employment up to the age of 25) you're paying the maximum rate.
Your public health insurance rate in Germany is based on your annual income up to €59,850 (i.e. you pay the same whether you make €59,850 per year or €200,000 per year). At the maximum rate, you usually pay €807.99 per month for health insurance (including the average extra fee of 1.6%, which varies slightly by insurer) if you're a salaried employee.
In addition to the public health insurance you also pay for public nursing care insurance, the rate of which depends on whether you have children or not and are older than 23. Assuming both of you are self-employed, have no children, are older than 23 and have not opted out of public sick pay (which for employed people giving birth includes a combined 14 weeks of pre and post-natal leave known as "maternity protection", or a combined 18 weeks for early births or twins) and assuming the same average of 1.6% for the extra fee, you indeed pay €977.50 or just above $1000 per month each.
For the record, if you're self-employed, the absolute minimum you have to pay for public health insurance is €158.43 (without sick pay) plus public nursing care insurance plus the variable extra fee. This basically assumes your income is at least €1131.67 in any given month even if you make less than that: you can't pay less than that as long as you're self-employed unless you switch to a private insurer instead.
Another issue for self-employed people is that because your insurance rate is paid by you in full (unlike salaried employees where 50% of it is paid by your employer and your rate is adjusted automatically if your salary changes in either direction) your rate is much less dynamic and will often have to be adjusted retroactively. Public health insurers are legally only allowed to adjust your insurance rate based on your tax returns which means even if you magically manage to file your taxes in January of the following year and the tax agency immediately processes it, you may end up having to backpay (or be refunded) the difference for an entire year if your rate changes. If you are self-employed and not incorporated, you can file quarterly tax advances and the insurers are allowed to use these to temporarily adjust your rate until the final tax return is available but once you incorporate you're stuck in the worst of both worlds.
As this hopefully illustrates, there are many problems with how the public health insurance system works, especially for self-employed people and founders (and especially people who can get pregnant as it's not common knowledge that "sick pay" includes "maternity protection" and self-employed people often opt out of sick pay because it's an easy way to cut costs), but pretending our public health insurance is "not cheap" is a bit dishonest.
To reiterate for emphasis: if you pay a combined 2000 USD together per month that means the two of you each make at least 60k USD per year and you will not pay a single cent more for health insurance no matter how much more money you make. Arguably this ceiling is the main problem and if it were abolished, the rates could be considerably lowered for everyone else. The insurance rate is very painful if you're self-employed and make less than 60k EUR per year. It becomes increasingly less painful the more you make beyond that and that doesn't seem very fair.
My point is that the German system is not a magical system of free healthcare. Rather, it's financially backed by charging a considerable chunk of earnings.
As a side note, the idea that the employer pays 50% of the contribution is a political slight of hand - an employee's labor covers 100% of the health insurance payment.
Nuclear was 30% of the electricity generation back in 2000.
The Nordstream projects were conceived to allow Russia to exert force on Eastern European countries without endangering supply of gas to Germany.
Our energy policy has been incredibly short-sighted, focused on maximizing certain sector's economic interests at the expense of national security and EU security.
I think mercantile is the more appropriate adjective.
It was cynical politicians and industrialists who sold the population on a clean energy revolution, all while banking on cheap Russian gas to actually deliver the energy required.
The clean energy revolution was promoted by the Green party in 1998-2005 (including turning off the first nuclear power plants).
It was the string of conservative governments that followed it that neglected (and, at times, actively sabotaged) the build out of renewable power sources.
SPD (center-left leaning party) has been junior partners in every one but one of those conservative governments.
German politics are also very collaborative/compromise driven, so it's a mistake to think the outcome would have been drastically different, had we had a SPD/Green coalition rather than a CDU/SPD coalition the last 16 years.
This is especially the case, given that parts of the SPD were and continue to be on Russian payroll.
Ultimately, renewables are very challenging from a technical perspective for a densely populated country with energy intensive industries and limited offshore wind options.
I would say it is a long term game to become clean energy wise. There was no secret here in Germany about that we used coal, oil and gas for many more years. Renewables are still ramping up.
You can choose both the law and forum in many types of commercial agreements. Typically international contracts will choose English law as the governing law.
I think a broader question for the EU is whether ever greater integration is possible without some standardization around a common "admin" language.
Having lived in several EU countries, I love learning new languages, but it does make day-to-day life much harder, not to mention more complex topics such as starting companies.
It's conceivable that Germany could introduce English an official second language (having multiple official languages is common in the EU), even if just for certain sections of legal life.
At the end of the day, EU citizens have fairly robust rights to live and work in other EU countries, so it's not a privilege. Providing ways for those people to integrate better into the legal systems would be beneficial to creating a more unified Europe.
There are a couple of official government languages in thr Ru. And for doing business within a certain country, local official languages apply. For international contracts, parties can simple agree on a different jurisdiction, in which case those jurisdictions languaged apply. But maybe all non-English speaking should just feel sorry for bothering the English speaking world with foreign languages.
For the EU so, the only English speaking country left is Ireland.
Even after 6 months, typical compensation for being fired is 2 weeks of salary for every year worked. For most startup employees, this won't be a huge amount, given they have often only worked a few years.
>Germany still requires that you register your residence, name, age and religion within two weeks of moving to a new place.
>Often, you even have to provide proof from a landlord that you do live there.
You left out the part where persons wishing to access those government records need to provide justification, a fee, and the access gets logged. Unfortunately, government employees accessing those records aren't as tightly regulated (although it's gotten better, iirc).
So no, it has nothing to do with some intention of 'making life difficult for tech companies'.
Some clarification: Having to register your religion mostly has to do with tax reasons, as the German state collects taxes for both Christian main branches. Outside of that context, it has literally zero relevance and you might as well just claim "No religion".
"The German obsession with privacy has a LOT to do with making life difficult for tech companies"
Some people actually care about their information and who has it more than convenience. Maybe they don't trust corporations and assume their interests don't align. It wouldn't be bad assumption at this point. It's pretty obvious most tech companies value profit over anything else.
For this reason, I don't think we'll ever see a Chinese-style expulsion of US tech companies from the EU.
Therefore, we've seen over a decade of a dance between the judiciary banning data transfers to the US (Safe Harbor ruling, etc) and then politicians overturning these rulings before it actually impacts anything.