This is the baffling side of the EU to all outsiders/newcomers. When I first moved here, that was my first thought as well. There is just so much in common, why repeat everything everywhere instead of single effort with branches everywhere?! (police force, consular services, Identity services, and pretty much any Government paperwork one can think of, transportation services etc). However, the population is very localised and divided. The French do it their way, Italians another way, the Germans on their own way etc. It is hard to find gain common ground beyond what EU already represents(which is very good IMO). I do wish doing things at EU level becomes the norm, and individualities slowly disappear.
Imagine a single European rail service (not Euro rail where you can buy a single ticket that will make you take Dutch train, and then connect on a German train, and then on an Austrian train, and if you miss a connection, good luck figuring out your replacement..)
My partner and I just moved to the Netherlands and I mildly disagree. For one, we really like the diversity and appreciate the different cultures and histories. But I also think there's something to different member states getting to experiment on their own. Like, the Finns are onto something with their school system for sure, but the Dutch have a lot of Montessori schools--what are the pros and cons of each approach?
But, yeah not that we're wild about international train travel--that's a sore spot for sure. But generally we view the differences as a kind of richness and less of an inconvenience.
> I do wish doing things at EU level becomes the norm, and individualities slowly disappear.
Unless you reach an economic moment where you can pay the same to a policeman in Sweden and a policeman in Greece there is never going to be a socioeconomic identity that would allow you to aggregate all these people in some sort of federation police force. Same for rail, same for most anything where there is a cost or expense or transaction.
The diversity of systems reflects a diversity of arbitrage. Brute forcing that into a single entity or federal body is ivory tower thinking.
Unless you reach an economic moment where you can pay the same to a policeman in Sweden and a policeman in Greece there is never going to be a socioeconomic identity that would allow you to aggregate all these people in some sort of federation police force.
Why?
Localized pay has been a thing for literally centuries, across a wide swath of fields.
This is not about standardized pay, but about resource sharing.
Imagine a study about an uptick in a certain type of crime. Easier on one big force, than 20 little ones.
> There is just so much in common, why repeat everything everywhere instead of single effort with branches everywhere?!
I think you misunderstand the history of the EU project: its goal is what you describe, but it must be balanced with respecting the autonomy of each individual nation inside the union. It can only work if all involved governments agree to do it. Which is an incredibly difficult thing to achieve.
What we have now is the progress we have managed to make so far. If it does not appear like much, well, you should have seen what things were like before the EU, especially regarding red tape.
Such a collaboration has the potential to save time, money, effort, and increase quality. But in reality it either ends up being "design by committee", or a few of the countries are the drivers and the rest are the followers who try all kinds of maneuvers to retain some control.
Even if this is done under the umbrella of an EU institution, the politics work the same way except now every other country is trying all kinds of maneuvers in an attempts to retain as much of the control as possible.
You're saying how things should be. I told you how they are, from experience with both worlds. I have the impression you are vastly underestimating the "power games" happening at country/union level compared to the ones in a company.
In the usual company there is a reasonably clear hierarchy, if someone doesn't fall in line some superior dons the big boots and drop kicks them all the way past the company parking lot without some democratic process behind it. Each level is accountable to the higher one.
At country level there's no such thing. It more like a lot of different companies sometimes reluctantly agreeing to work together, while not owing each other anything, and being subjected to the whims of the people back home (managers and citizens). There is no true hierarchy, no supreme authority, the accountability isn't towards the committee but towards superiors "back home" to get specific interests pushed. And if they don't make the cut you can always pack up your toys and go, maybe even turn it into a win back home ("we retain full control"). You want to look good for the managers and the citizens at home, not the ones in the committee. National pride, ego, politics on the world stage are very strong factors at play. If there is some obligation to contribute it also had to come democratically in a process to which your country participated.
These aren't power plays inside a company, they are the power plays between big companies. Except with a lot of nationalistic aspects and actual politics sprinkled in. And you can't even buy cooperation like in a commercial case.
So calling them "power games" is correct in principle but not at all useful to gauge the difference in scale in the 2 cases.
EU is a collaboration between countries where anyone can veto anything, yet they still manage to pass laws. Open source is much easier in comparison: no need for full consensus and no way to retract code that has already been published.
This is not for co-develop. This is mainly report, of what government done. For some extent it could be used to check safety of software/infrastructure.
For example, in Ukraine used closed source software, and only war (because censorship), slightly slowed stream of scandal publications about bugs and vulnerabilities.
The tax systems are national responsibility, and building a bespoke app for a given tax system is cheaper than supporting 27 widely different tax systems in a single app.
Wow, looks pretty nice from the screenshots. Do you have experience using it? Does it work well/do what it claims? I recently moved to Spain, who has a digital identity system, but is a pretty disjointed attempt.
Yes, the project started in February 2017, so it's been a while and the app is very mature and frequently used by many citizens (full disclaimer, I was leading the development of the app and the backend from the beginning until almost two years ago).
Do you know why no other, more open, two factors are being introduced in DigiD auth? I'd rather use my U2F fobs, like I can almost everywhere else. Some people like TOTP.
It's a great app, doesn't do "much" except sending some government news from time to time. It was used a lot during Covid because it showed your negative QR code.
Well, apart from sending highly targeted updates to citizens, it is also used for:
1. receiving payment request for car tickets that you can pay right away with the credit card you saved in the app
2. receiving pending tax payments for local and national taxes that, again you can pay right away in the app
3. it was used for the national cashback program as a mean to enroll citizens, register the payment cards that could be used to accumulate points, setup banking details to get the prizes, etc...
4. distribute several government incentives (e.g. holiday bonus, bonus for young citizens, etc...)
After I left the project, the team was working on implementing a full digital signature solution that could be used to sign official requests to the public administration and they were also working on supporting legally valid communications from the government (vs just informational).
Yeah it works pretty well. Italy also has a digital identity system called SPID which can be used to log in for all governmental services which also works pretty well.
This is the official government app (you can get benefits, pay taxes, etc...), downloaded by 30+ million citizens, stack is React Native + Typescript