This almost sounds too good to be true. What are the odds of this being watered down, or being delayed into eternity?
For how long, I wonder, given the megacorps have financial resources on par with entire nations, and the EU has been taking some pretty strong stances on topics of interest to them? Or will the megacorps at some point just decide Europe's no longer worth the trouble to operate in (probably not the worst outcome)?
Companies will put up with almost anything if there’s money to be made there.
[citation needed]
The reason this regulations went through easily is that they mostly target foreign operators.
It's not the same with all regulations, the EU is a lobbying battleground as much as everywhere else, you can see that in most things, big corps just go through governments when not going through MEPs.
Because 1) foreign operators do the fuck they want in unregulated markets such as the US and 2) there are no such operators in the EU because they have already been regulated
EU institutions tend to want to do the right thing but will easily cave to "lobbying" when it comes to regulation that hits too close to home. They will not hesitate to regulate to the benefit of the people when the regulation hits far from home, lobbying be damned.
In fewer words, they will accept to be corrupted by interests close to home and still put the well being of citizens at any other time.
The law doesn't even cover devices. It only covers online marketplaces and gatekeepers who control everything.
the tradeoff is now there's only one entity to bribe instead of 27
there's almost 50,000 registered EU lobbyists
https://www.europarl.europa.eu/news/en/headlines/eu-affairs/...
The high number of institutions taking part in governance is in part responsive for the reputation of EU to be "slow" to act but it also means that it's incredibly hard to bribe because you have to bribe different institutions that don't even share the same mindsets.
Not arguing there that EU is perfect (it's far from it), but it's really better that what most people think about it, which is because local governments always use the "it's the EU rules, we can't do anything". The thing is, they also omit to remind that ministers and head of states are part of two institutions and that they choose the council of the European Commission. So they are the ones making the rules and those rules have to be accepted by the democratically elected European Parliament.
So when a politician in europe blame the EU for anything, they blame rules that they wrote themselves and that have been approved by a democratically elected parliament.
the "7 institutions" is also not relevant: Putin wouldn't bother bribing Germany's federal constitutional court or government auditors to push his fossil fuels
he'd go after the executive and legislature: exactly the same as if he wanted to influence EU policy
What happens is you are promoted out of the corporate world and into EU council advisory positions (special advisors). So you end up a fill time EU advisory position with part time and contract work for your parent company. Or there's the full time corporate advisors (institutional special advisors)!
Some are academically sourced and the universities are usually bankrolled by corporations who are just buying advisory positions.
And initiatives like this, same with the Microsoft ballot box initiative, are generally brought to Euparl and led by left-wing MPs, especially communists. There is considerable awareness and following of Open Source in Eu political circles, including Euparl.
Incidentally, a Green-Left coalition dominates Euparl right at this moment as far as I know.
The GDPR wasn’t watered down but in the end it just wasn’t enforced (at least not enough) against the biggest offenders it was meant to regulate.
TLDR: the enforcement is nowhere near enough.
They’ve basically been allowed to willingly and maliciously breach the regulation for 4 years.
Facebook appears to still be getting away with breaching the regulation on so many levels.
And its way more than enough for large foreign tech companies like FAANG to have obliged with it waaaaay earlier.
Enforcement generally happens upon reporting. So your garden-variety startup or corp somewhere in the US or another corner of the world is unlikely to get reported unless they start to get sufficient userbase in the Eu.
I didn't take it to court because I didn't want my dating history to be dragged out in court.
If this law only reaches 20% of what it envisions, it'll do more for consumers than other laws before.
And I don't think any of the big companies is afraid of yet another fine.
Is it possible to sneakily get around the law? Maybe.
But it isn't possible to do that, with thousands of people working on it? No, one of them will talk.
Which is why after being found noncompliant a third time, the new law gives the power to the EU Commission to impose structural changes to the company. Or they can stop operating in the EU.