How come? I only can see a controversy from 2022 about hosting RT, and they have since suspended bussiness in Russia. I couldn’t find any other connection.

Thanks, this is much more insightful than the headlines. If we take PMI as the indicator, then for Germany and the Eurozone it has been bad for last three years, and this year actually have seen an improvement in form of a smaller contraction,

https://tradingeconomics.com/germany/manufacturing-pmi https://tradingeconomics.com/euro-area/manufacturing-pmi

For US and China it looks like within the random range for last three years.

https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/manufacturing-pmi https://tradingeconomics.com/china/manufacturing-pmi

This is so horrible. A country in Europe subsidizes a company working on a technology for the future, but gets not real stakes in it. They build infrastructure in Europe. The government changes, stops subsidies, the management goes berserk (or turns out to just want to make moneys, no morals, what a surprise) in the meanwhile. No restructuring (or - it goes through a US “restructuring” protocol). Then it gets sold to Americans, with the infrastructure.

It’s quite a repetitive thing, but arte.tv has quite some content made from European perspective. mubi.com has arthouse cinema with global coverage, and Europe may well be the most vibrant place for arthouse cinema (though international production and audience is a very distinctive trait of arthouse).

Most of the time I go to a cinema I see this network at the intro - www.europa-cinemas.org Local, indie cinema, even if you watch at home most of the time, might be a great place to look for interesting movies. Some of them also play classics (I know BioRio does it in Stockholm)

I’ve sometimes been sometimes watching “TLDR Europe” and “EU Made Simple” for EU news. They are on Youtube, but I believe there is a PeerTube copy now (would appreciate a link).

News is easy: The Guardian, Deutsche Welle, Le Monde, France24, all have fully working sites in English - whatever suits you.

From podcasts one of the things I’ve tried is the award-winning Living Planet podcast from Deutsche Welle: https://www.dw.com/en/living-planet/program-19028671 Kinda in similar mood, but more hippie/way-out/thought-provoking is “Forest of Thought” based in Uppsala, Sweden: https://forestofthought.com/

In general, I am not sure if “alternative to” approach works for culture. European culture is markedly different from American. At least for me, it is one of the reasons to stay in this part of the world.

“Stays” on Gotogate redirect you to Booking.com. Similarly, most listing from HomeToGo are just cross-links from Booking

Booking.com is owned by American Booking Holdings

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Booking_Holdings

I think this is what OP meant. Regulation can also come from lobbying. (I.e., it is a tool, that can be used for good and for evil.)

Yes, and Blik also has a contactless option which you can use instead of a card for in-person purchases!

Do we want tech giants, though?

You can cross-post (https://lemmy.world/post/1067695)

If people would watch more Arte and Mubi the world would be a much better place, regardless of (or, in addition to) the changes money flows and personal data usage.

About Mistral:

Critically, Mistral Compute aims to provide a competitive edge to entire industries and countries in Europe, the Middle East, Asia, and the entire Southern Hemisphere that have been waiting for an alternative to US or China-based cloud and AI providers. This applies equally to the global entities of US or Chinese companies that want to serve international customers, particularly in Europe, with AI that is operating and running regionally.

https://mistral.ai/news/mistral-compute

Nope. Your feddit is not. The EU cloud services are listed here (and others) are not. Tuta is not.

I don’t think any of the alternatives listed here use AWS/Azure/GCP. I did not check the search engines, music streaming, mubi.com, and Collabora.

The only thing I found is that OnlyOffice allows to connect to GCP and AWS (you need to enable it on your own): https://helpcenter.onlyoffice.com/workspace/administration/control-panel-storage.aspx

And Mistral is available on AWS, Azure, GCP, but that’s because it is an “open-source” LLM ¯_(ツ)_/¯

It seems to be complicated (surprise, EU law is complicated). I found this article about agreements with Mercosur and Canada. In the latter case, it seems ratification is peneding - it should be ratified by all EU states. But most of the deal with Canada is in place and working, as it has been “provisionally applied”.

https://www.blg.com/en/insights/2025/06/finding-a-ratification-solution-in-the-eu-mercosur-trade-deal

From European Comission’s website

Between signing and ratifying the deal, parts of the agreement can be ‘provisionally applied’ – put into effect before ratification – if the Council decides to do so.

Provisional application usually only takes effect once the European Parliament has given its consent.

https://policy.trade.ec.europa.eu/eu-trade-relationships-country-and-region/making-trade-policy_en

Sources are conflicting on this one, so i throw it up. EU Made Simple agrees with you, but BBC writes that specific countries need to accept the agreement. We need an expert in EU law (and this is a very high qualification…)

The political agreement of 27 July 2025 is not legally binding. Beyond taking the immediate actions committed, the EU and the US will further negotiate, in line with their relevant internal procedures, to fully implement the political agreement.

Let’s see what happens next. The member states need to agree, right?

Oh, that’s gonna be a shitshow. I blame the “EU Made Simple” channel for saying veto is not needed. But BBC also says the approval is needed, and it just makes more sense. My knowledge in law is insufficient to confirm.

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cx2xylk3d07o

I don’t think they can veto a trade deal

Got it. But China did it one year before the end of the term, much smarter…

Though, honestly, the numbers are sick and it is probably a BS pledge. You can find a good breakdown of the infeasibility of the energy imports here: https://archive.ph/GBv9T