Mistral Medium 3.5 isn’t that far behind comparable current open weight models.

Who knows? That is either just an excuse to protect that illegal facility of an oligarch or they are really using that facility to target girl schools in Iran.

“Materially speaking is more expensive to send a letter next town than a packet from something like aliexpress.”

That is wrong, in many cases quite obviously. Microdeliveries are commonly sent as letters within Europe. So they are literally a letter(coming commonly from another European country) + a consolidated flight freight from the other side of the globe. The last leg alone creates more costs than the entire product plus shipment is purchased for.

Sorry, but if you think this can be done for 0-1 EUR (the latter if we assume the 1 EUR product is worth exactly 0 EUR) I can’t help you.

Of course this change will incentivise larger but fewer orders. If the platforms would care about that, 1 EUR products with free shipping wouldn’t even exist. They aren’t stupid or incompetent. If there is economic incentive for that, they’ll do it. Removing the advantage of <150 EUR orders, removes the incentives for smaller more frequent orders. This will do a lot to remove a lot of stress from logistic infrastructure, even if total amount of stuff bought in China remains the same. That’s the point. That and systematic mislabeling of shipments that lose their incentive to some extend as well.

No.

Are also calling for the complete abolishing of the government of your country and thereby call for the destruction of the political system, when you don’t like the government in office, or is it just something you do with the EU

It is madness to ship a 1 EUR order on its own across the globe, at zero extra costs. Are you seriously saying that this is not only a viable business model but also one that people should be entitled to? For this money you can’t even send an empty letter to the next village in a cost covering way. Every such mini order shipping is heavily cross subsidised by shipments of goods with the EU.

You just strengthen the point that we need an end to tariff exemption under 150 EUR. Contrary to your claim this will not end direct sales from China, it will merely make it less costly and inefficient to our society by incentivising more aggregated orders.

Magical drones aren’t a solution either (to the contrary mass deployment of drones is a nightmare)

It seems your beef is with democracy itself rather than the EU. Which party publishes an exhaustive detailed list of all coming laws with specific outlines for the coming legislative period, and of course predicting future coalition negotiations. You don’t see that your requirements are completely unworkable in reality, not just in the EU, anywhere, are you?

Party programs are simplifications out of necessity and they focus on specific topics, depending on the party. That focus itself is a strong reason why to vote for them. Those few Euros of tariffs on orders from China was indeed not a big topic. Immigration, Russia, defense and Integration were big topics, understandably.

3 EUR is not cutting off anyone from anything, especially as that is barely compensating the dumping prices on shipping. Or do you believe that 0 EUR shipping on a 2 EUR order is covering the actual shipping costs? Like I said, that shipping dumping is possible because of anachronistic international agreements that were never intended for what they are used now.

I know some don’t care at all about the environment or costs to society. That avalanche of tiny packages is a huge strain on our infrastructure and driven by unsustainably low shipping rates. That legislation will have a positive effect by incentivicing more consolidated ordering and shipping at prices closer to real costs.

Like I said, I am ordering myself in China and I support that. Chinese platforms will adopt fast when it is about money. So the positive effects will be seen soon. Maybe you don’t think as far but that shipping dumping is paid largely by us. At least everyone who is still ordering stuff also within the EU or paying taxes here for infrastructure.

It is generally thought that official token price is breaking even, at best. Maybe it is not even doing that. The worth of the AI usage has nothing to do with those costs and is likely much lower. So far there is very little done on understanding actual value of AI use though.

I am not saying you are wrong, just that the above statement can be correct at the same time.

Yes, but what good is that if 100 USD more is still losing tons of money.

Yes national parties always campaign on the introduction of new fees and taxes and every new law is in every party program, naturally also when coalitions govern.

That said, yes the tariffs on small orders are in line with the program of the party I voted for. They are also reasonable. Disposable fashion platforms (and also other Chinese companies) were systemmatically mislabeling shipments to avoid existing tariffs. Thanks to international agreements they can also ship at dumping prices (for less than the cost of a letter to the neighbour village within a country). Adding that tariff merely raises the shipping price to a level that is closer to domestic shipping. It also creates an incentive to not split up everything into countless part shipments, reducing the load on insfrustructure. Last but not least, it reduces the incentive for mislabelling.

PS: I am shopping myself occasionally in China, so I know the practices and I understand the need for stricter rules.

I thonk this is false on many levels. Party groups are acting largely within their programs. Topics like Russia, Ukraine, EU integration (pro/contra), environment, regulation vs fighting red tape, Immigration etc. were present in the debate.

It is not complete, after all coalitions need to compromise and also the other legislative chamber gas a say for good reasons but generally I don’t see more divergence than on national level.

What I do see however, when comparing to Austria is that MEPs are more approachable than MPs and there is a higher chance that they might be influenced by public pressure. They are also much more engaged in actual legislative work in committees and not just in rubber stamping in the plenum.

Your example of chat control is actually confirming that. A majority conservative EP voted how on it again? MEPs were drowning in messages, I am not sure what you expected. The point was not for you to get back an assay but the drowning in messages was already the point and it worked.

Turns out, if you don’t sacrifice cities on the car altar and plan for quality of life instead, children can in fact play on the streets. The Netherlands show it.

The Commission is accountable to the directly elected European Parliament, by the fact that the latter can vote the former out of office anytime.

In that case, if you choose to include the Commission, there would be three bodies. There is a reason the “trilogue” is called that way. The third body is the Council of the European Union which has basically equal standing to the European Parliament but represents the member states, while the EP represents the voters directly. Both can bring in amendments and veto or agree on a piece of legislation (while the Commission can’t, its influence is with initiation and the initial draft).

The Commission President is literally “elected” by the European Parliament, the word in the treaties. The Commission as a whole is facing a vote of consent. If the European Parliament rejects candidates, also besides the Commission President, they have to go or the Commission won’t be getting into power. This is not merely theoretical, there is precedence for that. There are also interviews of each Commission candidate in the European Parliament and those are usually way harder than anything, any minister candidate in Austria, for example, would ever face.

Equally as important is the fact that the European Parliament can vote the Commission out of office anytime as well.

Which means nothing if they are not elected by the European Parliament by a vote of consent. The Commission can be also fired anytime by the European Parliament anytime later, if it loses support in the chamber.

I think you confused something here. While I agree that it is nonsense to claim that the Commission “is the EU”, it is not really a legislative body. While it is true that the Commission “initiates” legislation, it is an executive institution and such work is more in line with national governments drafting new legislation (even if there commonly Parliaments then rubber stamp a legislative initiative based on that). The two legislative institutions of the EU are the European Parliament and the Council of the European Union (comprised of ministers from each national government), the amend, veto or agree on legislation together, with committee work etc, as one would expect from legislatives.

The EU Commission is elected by the European Parliament into power and can be fired by the European Parliament anytime. Pretty much standard for governments in parliamentary democracies. If that isn’t democratic, you don’t consider parliamentary democracies democratic in general?

The Commission is unique in the way that it alone can initiate legislation but the right to initiative is routinely blown out of proportion. In most countries this power of their parliaments is mostly facade nowadays, because the governments there are actually drafting legislation and if needed parliaments just rubber stamp the initiative. This is further watered down because both Council and Parliament can propose legislative initiative to the Commission, which the Commission usually follows through. While the Commission can try to prevent legal initiative, it can do little to prevent the amending of current legislative proposals in the works. This is actually relevant for Stop Killing Games, if you followed the news of the initiative.

I get the feeling you are not really aware of how the EU functions. Despotism is absolutist rule, calling that the EU or any EU institution is pretty absurd and detached from reality. There is hardly a political entity, less centralised than the EU, still capable of routinely drafting common legislation. Also, while there is a democratic deficit (but hardly larger than in many other democracies nowadays), the Commission is elected into power by the directly elected European Parliament and can’t pass ordinary legislation without a majority in the EP in support of it and the latter having the power to amend the hell out of it, if it doesn’t outright veto it straight away.