The Guardian phrases its description of what the EU is doing more sympathetically – “EU introduces €3 customs charge on small parcels to curb cheap Chinese imports” – but the end result is the same.
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June 29th, 2026 | 15 comments
 Samizdata quote of the day – The EU produces rules, the US produces companies, China produces scale.Europe has spent decades believing that you can regulate prosperity, tax innovation, and distrust entrepreneurship, while Silicon Valley and Shenzhen built the future. Now, European Commissioner Virkkunen “Spuit11” warns that Europe is dependent on American and Chinese AI for digital security. As if that were a natural disaster. It’s not a natural disaster. It’s policy. The EU produces rules. The US produces companies. China produces scale. Europe produces commissions that explain why we’re falling behind. June 19th, 2026 | 8 comments
“Half of Belgium sees the US as a bigger adversary than China”, reports EuroNews.
Like it or not, the opinion of an increasing proportion of Belgians as revealed in this survey is shared by other European countries. Like it or not, the corresponding opinion of an increasing proportion of Americans is “Okay, bye”. Quite possibly, this is all just a spat that brought on by the fact that, to use Scott Alexander’s formulation, Xi’s China is the “fargroup” you hardly ever think about, whereas Trump’s America is the “outgroup” whose antics irritate you every day. But if these attitudes are real, the Belgians and other Europeans need to get equally real about the cost of the changes they say they want. “More than 80% said Europe should become militarily self-sufficient”. Europe being militarily self-sufficient would make Belgium safer, but also poorer. It would require more Belgians to be ready to fight and die for their country at a moment’s notice. I am not sure they even realise that that is what Trump has been asking them to do for years. June 5th, 2026 | 24 comments
J.D. Vance, who is the Vice President of the USA, goes to Hungary, an EU member state, and delivers a campaign speech for Victor Orban, the president of Hungary, in which Vance accuses the EU of… interference in Hungary’s elections. Am I the only one who finds that absolutely hilarious? April 9th, 2026 | 47 comments - (Comments are closed)
“Sovereignty is not merely the technical possibility of making a one‑off decision. It is the continuing ability to govern yourself: to set and revise your own rules in the light of your own needs. When you adopt the regulatory framework of a foreign power, when commercial realities make reversal prohibitively costly and when you have no seat at the table where the rules are made, you may have exercised a choice at the outset but you have chosen powerless subordination thereafter.” – Steve Baker, former Conservative MP and campaigner for the UK’s withdrawal from the European Union. He’s unhappy at the machinations of the current Labour government, and I share his annoyance. March 29th, 2026 | 15 comments - (Comments are closed)
This is a real tweet from the European Commission:
This is an excerpt from a scholarly article about the history of Islam:
– Joseph Schacht, quoted by Wael B. Hallaq in Was the Gate of Ijtihad Closed? If you think that the ability of the European Commission to recognise when something has reached a point where no improvement is possible is good enough to allow it to safely close the door of ijtihad on charger cable design, consider the evident fact that none of the multiple people in the Berlaymont building over whose desks the draft of that tweet must have passed knew enough history to veto that title. December 26th, 2025 | 18 comments - (Comments are closed)
I left this comment on another place and thought I’d share it here. I was responding to an American pal – whom I normally agree with – who said the the UK’s vote for independence outside the EU was a disaster. I have jazzed it up a bit and added links. Well, it is Christmas! The EU has become an increasingly regulated, bureaucratic entity, and while the UK tried to pull it in a different direction, the sclerosis of the continent got worse. The Single Market and “freedom of movement” aspect had their positives – up to a point. The Customs Union (external tariff wall, in other words) was a clear negative, however. The structure of the EU is hostile to classical liberal economics in the medium term, not a plus. The bureaucratic mission creep of the European Commission, unhampered by a largely toothless E. Parliament (it cannot initiate or repeal directives), meant the EU economy decelerated, imperceptibly at first. Its share of global GDP has shrunk and not just because other, non-European countries such as China and India have grown over the past few decades. While some of the reasons for Brexit were grounded in nationalism, which I dislike, some reasons were more classically liberal. Those reasons should not be discounted. Another point: for far too many, the ideas of free enterprise and freedom of trade became entwined, in a poisonous way, with the creation of transnational, bureaucratic structures distant from ordinary people. To that extent, the EU is part of the problem for those making the case for capitalism and open markets. When you say those words, far too many think of men and women in suits in Brussels regulating this and that, not entrepreneurship, trade and human interaction. That’s a problem. For Americans reading this, remember that when the original 13 colonies broke free from the UK in the 1770s, they did so in part for reasons around representative government and the powers to tax with legitimate power. The EU increasingly came to the point where member states were reduced to regions of a centralising state. Ross Clark’s Far From EUtopia is a marvellous read about Brexit, what went wrong, and more. December 15th, 2025 | 14 comments - (Comments are closed)
The EU is anti-populist to its core. Despite all the posturing of EU leaders as the valiant defenders of Ukraine, it’s clear they are opposed to national sovereignty. Instead of viewing patriotism as the sign of a healthy and cohesive society, the EU sees it as a threat to be snuffed out. The consequences of the EU’s war on the nation state are plain for all to see. According to a recent poll, two-thirds of Germans ‘would probably not defend their country from invaders’. In Italy, a recent survey indicated that only 16 per cent of those of fighting age would take up arms if their country was under attack. Recently, the head of France’s armed forces, Fabien Mandon, said his country needs ‘the spirit that accepts that we will have to suffer to protect what we are’. But French public opinion is not having any of it. December 11th, 2025 | 41 comments - (Comments are closed)
In a series of reports, I have shown that the European Union already operates a vast propaganda and censorship apparatus that spans every level of civil society — NGOs, think tanks, the media and even academia. The cornerstone of this system is a network of EU-funded programmes — notably CERV (Citizens, Equality, Rights and Values), Creative Europe and the Jean Monnet initiative — that collectively funnel billions of euros into organisations that are, in theory, “independent” but are in fact deeply enmeshed in the Brussels machine. November 15th, 2025 | 8 comments - (Comments are closed)
You can be a “partner”, a “reliable supplier” or perhaps even an “ally” of Brussels. You can even stand next to Ursula von der Leyen in London and proclaim the end of the Brexit wars. But unless you are an EU member state, you will always be a competitor and ultimately expendable. October 13th, 2025 | 22 comments - (Comments are closed)
DR, Denmark’s equivalent of the BBC, reports that:
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September 15th, 2025 | 21 comments - (Comments are closed)
Imagine facing your nation’s Supreme Court for the “crime” of sharing a Bible verse. On October 30, that’s the reality for Päivi Räsänen, a Finnish grandmother, medical doctor, and parliamentarian. Her soon-to-be seven-year ordeal began in 2019, when she questioned her church’s support for Helsinki Pride and posted a Bible verse on X. That single tweet triggered 13 hours of police interrogation, two full trials, and now a third prosecution under Finland’s “hate speech” law. Räsänen’s case might sound like an exclusively European story — but it also serves as a warning about the growing threat of censorship coming from the EU. While someone living outside of Europe might assume they are exempt from the troubling wave of censorship spreading across the continent, that assumption is dangerously mistaken. September 13th, 2025 | 12 comments - (Comments are closed)
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