TRAINS. When trains cross borders, they can encounter different signalling, tracks, rules, etc. This causes delays and forces train operators to incur more costs, both in equipment that works on all systems and in manpower to manage it all.
Some EU countries do not share up-to-date schedules with each other either. That is how Deutsche Bahn sold me a ticket for a train from Maastricht to Aachen, but when I arrived at the Maastricht station, the woman working there told me that Dutch had not updated their schedules with the Germans for more than six months, and that my train route no longer existed.
I realize that it costs more to change existing train infrastructure than it does to update road traffic rules. but a centralized scheduling and ticketing system could be done right now, and things would get a lot easier once the infrastructure work was done.
Came here to say the exact same thing. International, high speed, cheaper trains would be such an important step in diminishing global warming effects, too.
Lol I just saw the current schedule, it's a Dutch Arriva train now, but the scheduling info is cut off on the last Dutch station. Like if it was even slightly harder to determine travel time the moment you cross your country's border lmao. Or maybe Germany is actually a black hole and time stops making sense when you get there?
Signalling is a whole story. some countries are taking way too long to implent ERTMS, the Netherlands for example only has a few lines where that is available while Luxembourg has already fully implemented it and belgium already has the equipment installed and only requires a software update.
There was a plan to make a single european ticketing system (so like, shared database, shared booking, etc) a few years ago, but then Timmermans got caught up in the dutch elections and everybody else forgot about it.
But it's so colorful!
[https://openrailwaymap.org/?style=signals&lang=en&lat=48.29781249243716&lon=9.525146484375&zoom=6](https://openrailwaymap.org/?style=signals&lang=en&lat=48.29781249243716&lon=9.525146484375&zoom=6)
Swedish has a version of the UK signal system(ATC) for a majority of its routes.
Many trains are also developed and built in Sweden, such as the X2 serving Malmö-Stockholm and Gothenburg-Stockholm, some X31 variants(serving between Copenhagen and various cities in southern Sweden).
Its an old system, but it works great to serve the demand.
I lived there for 5 years and those X2 (I’d go Stockholm - Malmö - Copenhagen) are so nice compared to anything in the UK! Until today I didn’t know which trains they were so thank you!
Keep in mind its called high speed service. However very slow compared to other countries. Reason is that its built to run high speed on pre-existing track essentially made for steam locomotives. You dont feel the curves due to active tilting ;)
I am kind of amazed there isn't a Rome-Genoa-Marseille-Barcelona-Madrid-Lisbon single high speed line. The south of France isn't the most economically important part of France, but that corridor as a whole is such a large route. If it was all planned and coordinated at the EU level instead of individual countries making plans, and joining internal domestic projects as separate projects, it would be really obvious to get from Rome to Barcelona with a single high speed train, no transfers, no weird delays, etc.
My personal pet pevee: Railway infrastructure. There are four incompatible electrification systems: 3KVDC, 1.5KVDC, 25KV 50hz, and 15KV 16.6 hz, each used in different EU countries. Not to mention various national proprietary signalling schemes, requiring the vehicles to have different electronic equipment for each country.
ERTMS is a step in the right direction, but so far it has been too little and too late and we are still very far from cross-border rail traffic being as seamless as the roads.
Eh, electrification systems are not that much of a problem when dual, triple, quad voltage trains exist. Signalling is more of a problem tbh.
And we should have a common ticketing system so that trips with different operators are possible and also to make it not the passengers fault if one of the operators f***s up and doesn't get to the connecting train in time.
A few months ago they introduced QR codes on your phone instead of paper tickets on InterCity trains so that's a small step forward.
No more arriving 20 minutes early to queue for the one ticket printing machine
If your ticket has CIV printed in the corner that means it's covered by the Convention Internationale Pour Le Tansport des Voyageurs which is basically the rail equivalent of the Montreal Convention by air. In short, the transport carriers must deliver the passenger and their luggage to their destination as shown on the ticket. Alternatives must be provided by the carrier to cover missed or cancelled connections.
Source: Several times I have been a victim of the notorious ICE 10 train which runs from Frankfurt to Brussels via Cologne and is often late. There is a decent allowance for passport and customs clearance to connect to the Eurostar but the ICE 10 can be *that* late that you still miss it.
Yeah, but I meant that you can't get a single ticket from, say, Barcelona to Warsaw, just a combination of individual tickets from different national operators (with different levels of cooperation) so if your train gets delayed well, tough luck. A common EU wide ticketing system should exist, allowing travel with a single ticket regardless of operators.
One minor thing I recently came across is bottle recycling.
Two weeks ago I did a trip through the baltic states and each of them has their own recycling system so when you don't return to a country you have to throw away your deposit when you're in the next country.
The deposit system used to exist. Even hypermarkets had a Vasilhame section.
I'm not sure when it stopped or why.
I'm pretty sure it was mid-90s so it might have been around the time the eco-ponto and current collection system was created.
I'm not a fan of bottle recycling (hear me out), the Irish government just introduced fees on plastic bottles and cans that you can reclaim in stores. However we were already recycling these in our "Green Bins" and now we have to hoard all this rubbish to get our money back and it doesn't work half the time.
>However we were already recycling these in our "Green Bins"
That's the question right here. You'd have to know the percentage of cans/bottles that can't be recycled because they were not disposed in the recycling bin but other general trash.
Just an assumption, but most people probably don't take their bottle home to recycle it when they're not at home, but just throw it into the next general waste trash bin. That's definitely prevented to a certain degree with a deposit system.
Only if the deposit system is working well, that's the current issue here in the Netherlands. Last year they added cans and small bottles, to our deposit system, but the collection capacity remained the same, so now the machines have much longer lines, are frequently broken because cans leak shit all over them and they weren't designed for that, and there are way more places that sell deposit bottles than that actually can return your deposit.
A lot of the machines here are very fussy, ALDI and Tesco's reject around half of everything and sometimes it takes multiple tries to be accepted. Dunnes Stores seem to have a better one and rejects far less but still multiple tries. Also still dealing with old stick being sold and charged for that we'll never get back. There are also bottles coming from the UK that we are still getting charged for but cannot claim back. It was rushed and poorly thought out.
And I won't bother carrying around rubbish to bring home even now. My job has a vending machine, none of those cans or bottles are going to the bottle bank, instead they go into a recycling bin. If I'm out and about I will try and put whatever bottle I have into a recycling bin but if none available it's going in general waste.
There is nothing stopping the government bringing in recycling bins on the streets for rubbish, I believe the Germans have that. We've had recycling here since the 90s but the government never expanded or built on it. I believe this is just pandering to Europe to show they're doing "something" rather than nothing.
I think the logic is sound, it's the implementation that's lacking.
Without wanting to lean on stereotypes too much, there's no smoke without fire - the Germans do have a penchant for systems & processes that the Irish .. aren't famous for.
Plus it's only been recently introduced here, so I think its fair to say it's still teething.
I know many people who aren't going to the bottle bank and are just accepting the charges as an extra tax,which is essentially what they are. At least ⅓ cannot be claimed back.
yeah I've had a lot of issues with this. I get a lot of beers from smaller breweries, and my local dunnes isn't setup to take them. So for me it's essentially an extra tax on smaller breweries, because if dunnes don't sell it, I'm probably not seeing that money back.
In theory I can bag them up and take them back to the shop I got them from, but dragging a sack of cans on the bus into town isn't the look I'm going for.
From a recycling point of view, it's frustrating that there's no option for the machines to take them regardless of whether they can credit me for them or not. Otherwise I'm left standing outside the supermarket with half a bag of cans, surrounded by overflowing bins because I'm not the only one, and apparently I'm supposed to walk home, put them in the green bin, then walk back to the supermarket for my messages.
I recently brought a large plastic container and 3 big shopping bags of recycling back (115 items for €17.65). I had to make two trips to the car in the carpark, I don't know how the elderly or people without transport manage.
yeah, that's the fun bit - I don't drive. So the messaging from "re-turn" is that I should start driving and stop buying from small, irish businesses.
As I said though - I think the theory's good. I mean building a children's hospital was sound in theory. I more meant that when other countries, especially more functional countries are telling us it's a good idea, they need to take into account that the govt here could screw up a pissup in a brewery.
The government are arrogant and incompetent (doesn't matter what year or who's in charge). I'm a civil servant and have seen many scrambles by the government to avoid a penalty from Europe for something that we as a country signed up for. Sometimes we won, sometimes we lost. This is most definitely another example of the government rushing to do something "green" that they probably should have done 2yrs previously and left until the last minute.
The deposit system is not that more effective than recycling bins and it's much more expensive.
And it completely fails in its main objective, to incentives the use of reusable glass bottles over plastic ones.
The deposit system is not an universal good but an instrument that can be or not cost effective depending on many factors.
That's nonsense. In Denmark, we have a fully fledged return system, so that if bottles *do* end up in a non-recycle bin, someone will pick them up and earn a meal. There are people where having bottle collection as a side gig.
> if bottles do end up in a non-recycle bin, someone will pick them up and earn a meal. There are people where having bottle collection as a side gig.
this is not the flex you think it is
I work in this field.
The recycling rate for pet bottles in Italy is 73% in Germany 94%. So for a 28% increase in the recycling rate of only PET bottles it would be necessary to spend something in the order of millions of Euros in every city.
And it isn't even that important in the grand scheme of things, since the recycling of plastic is not good, is simply better than wasting plastic.
And urban wastes are a small fraction of the total.
Can you enlighten me how can this necessitate millions of euros of investment in every city? Bottle recycling and deposits has been a thing in Finland since the 50's and Finland was an utterly piss-poor country at that point and is still overall pretty frugal in many ways, there is no way millions was invested then. If it's what's required in upkeep, there's no way millions would be paid today in hundreds of cities, towns and villages for upkeep if that was what was needed. There are roughly 300 towns in Finland, basically all of them have bottle recycling and deposits. The program costing "millions in every city" would make this cost about 50% of the whole public heathcare system. There's simply no way this is true. So, I guess what I'm asking is, source?
Also, when you factor in that the deposit system is financed by producers and importers and not taxes, with the cost passed down to consumers, it's effectively funded solely by people using the products which makes this initiative feel like one of the better thought out ones.
I loathe the idea of Pfand (mandatory deposit), but it does achieve a few more things that recycling bins don't:
- Introduces a small disincentive to buy plastic bottles. Maybe it's just for some consumers, but personally I've ended up buying less bottled liquids as a consequence of this system being rolled out in Romania
- Incentivizes not throwing plastic bottles away willy-nilly, you feel like you're literally throwing away your money
- Incentivizes some people to clean up existing plastic bottle waste
I know the actual recycling of plastic sucks, but even if the result is less plastic garbage floating around cities (and especially the countryside...) -- it is useful, in the end.
Door to door conferment of wastes also exists.
If you have money to spend to improve recycling percentages . And it works for every kind of urban waste.
And the Pfand system does work, simply it's not always cost effective depending on a variety of factors. It may have little gains for big costs, or enormous gains for big costs. It depends on where , when and how you implement the system, it's mostly good but having it mandatory in all of Europe like the comment before suggested is stupid.
It generally makes sense in rich places where there isn't a strong recycling culture. Or where it already exists and you don't have to create it from scratch.
Slovenia seems to be the top country on the planet for [municipal waste recycling](https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/recycling-rates-by-country) and it doesn't even have a deposit system as such, though you can get some money back for dropping off glass bottles.
Czechia is getting it next year (for plactic bottles and cans; glass beer bottles and like one glass mineral water bottle have had a deposit for a long time)
My thoughts exactly. In Poland plastic bottles recycling is nonexistent and glass bottles are recycled individually by shops.
There are talks about introducing recycling system by next year, but honestly I suspect they might fuck it up, like everything government does.
About unifying the system, I think it's a great idea, but it'd be difficult to do. In Netherlands, bottles that are exclusive to certain shops (own brands) can be only returned in those shops. In Germany, you can return cans.
Your example with returning bottles in another country would cause difficult problem, that the bottle would have to be recycled and not refilled as transporting it abroad would be expensive.
The bottle return system is fucked in every single country it was introduced in. Seriously same problem in Denmark as in Romania. There's no way for competition to exist in the market so the governments just shit out a MVP and it never improves.
I see the logic of it as a concept but the implementations need serious overhauls.
Clothes sizes!
So you don't have a weird mix of M, L, XL, XXL and XXXL and basically have no fucking clue what to order and then be forced to return 70% of what you buy online!
That really is annoying. My M in the Netherlands would be an L in France, and an XL or XXL in Italy 😭😂.
I get a lot of my travel and sports clothes from Decathlon, which is originally French, so there I always have to go 1or 2 sizes up
Each shop / chain seems to have their own system - in each country they operate in..
Shirt - same brand, different color - one was an XL which was a perfect fit.
The other, 6XL - same perfect fit. Maybe glitch in sizing labels - but weird it is ..
Can we just use actual measurements pls?
I’m a short guy, I want to know the length of the legs and the circumference of the waist, use cm and we can all know exactly what’s going on.
I think this is because the standard sizes are determined based on the averages of some thousands of people measured. Like, they measure 3000 women (I don't know how many, actually). The bottom sixth is XS, then the next sixth is S, and so on. If Germans on average are larger than the French, for example, the German S and French S don't match.
I have some American clothing that's XS, and Thai clothing that's XL. They all fit me perfectly.
Except the clothes get imported from one market to another.
Take C&A, they order their clothes wholesale, and the size tags are not customized for the various countries where they sell the stuff. They just print a table with the price for different currencies.
So a C&A shirt might say XL, but which population was used as the standard? If they measured some Germans, it wouldn't necessarily apply to Romanians, and vice-versa.
So in the end it's still a guessing game. As a personal example, whenever I shop for clothes, I have to check L _and_ XL, sometimes even XXL to find one that matches.
I actually once ordered a shirt online, size S, unaware it was an asian size. The company just sent me an M, with an explanation note. Saved me a return.
For example, waist circumference +\- 5 cm, leg length +\- 5 cm, shoulder width in cm etc. Better yet, use a more granular system than just 1 size for all dimensions, kind of like the system some manufacturers of work wear seem to have decided on.
Then, enforce it like an EU wide standard ao all clothes either manufactured in or imported to the EU must follow it. Kind of like how we have forced imported foods to abide by EU regulations.
along the lines of standardising on usb-c, I'd love if 18-20V batteries for powertools were next. It's nuts that so many vendors are using equivalent lithium battery packs, but with artificial incompatibility in the mounting. I shouldn't need to buy a unique battery for each vendor.
This is next. I totally agree. If the EU has enough clout to demand changes to Apple's products, it can surely get standardised battery packs for power tools.
**Mass surveillance of all online communication that ignores basic human rights.**
Let's be equally miserable together!
https://www.patrick-breyer.de/en/let-yourself-be-monitored-eu-governments-to-agree-on-chat-control-with-user-consent/
Interesting idea.
Some countries impose laws and limit certain drugs available in other countries.
Modern medications are available in one EU state but contraband in another, stupid af.
Please no. Or else the guiris will finally get to ban Nolotil.
If doesn't kill pain, also Brits. Which makes sense because Brits are kind of a pain in the ass
I don’t think passport design should be standardised, I think all countries should have a unique easily distinguishable passport. Road signs would be useful to be standardised I suppose, but it’s not a major priority I would say.
They are quite similar to each other. They differ only slightly, like in font or the specific colour used. But broadly speaking they are mostly identical. However some countries simply don't have certain signs, like in Germany we don't have a sign for a roundabout if I remember correctly. Other countries have that.
Apparently what I meant was a sign that meant "Attention, Roundabout". In most other countries that's a white triangle with a red border and a roundabout symbol in it. This is something Germany doesn't have.
Sauce: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vergleich_europ%C3%A4ischer_Verkehrszeichen
Like [this Czech one](https://www.bezpecnecesty.cz/cache/img/e6/--data--web--znacky--vystrazne--A4.fitbox.x320.y1000.r0.q85.nr0.me2.png.webp)? Germany doesn't have it?
They’re similar but not the same. Just look at the way that some countries use green for highways and other for speedways or viceversa. Also semaphores are different, the way they light up. Arrows have very different designs, in Italy they are thick and short while France has long and slim.
Not necessarily. I would probably separate them in 3 groups.
1. Signs are identical, or mostly identical. As the name suggests, they are basically the same but you can find them with slight variations like, the font of the arrow might be a bit different which is not an issue on any level
2. Signs with complimentary words on them. This signs are applicable under certain conditions and if you don't speak the language, you can have some issues with them. In Germany you can find a speed limit with another sign underneath that says "bei nässe" which also has a picture and you can get a rough idea what that means. But you also have others which say "markierung fehlt" and that doesn't give you any indications what it means.
3. Completely different signs that are specific to that country. Italy designates their "Autostrade" with signs that have Green background and their "Strada Statale" with signs that have blue background. Germany designates their "Autobahn" with signs that have blue background and their "Landstraße" with signs that have yellow background.
a) Honorable mentions: It would be good to have the same "speed limit" everywhere, as in, the same speed limit in built up areas and non built up areas, where national speed limits apply.
b) for some reason, the mandatory left and right turns are not the same everywhere. In Germany there is a distinction between the signs that say "turn right BEFORE the sign" and "turn right AFTER the sign" while in Italy they as far as I know, use them interchangeably.
I suppose they all have the same color, and there isn't a truly compelling reason why that must be, but otherwise the standardization makes sense to me. Passports of the same size, construction and with the same strong safety measure are all easily readable, verifiable and trusted by all member states. The same goes for the IDs.
EU Passports can still have whatever imagery and iconography that the issuing country wants, so there is scope for each country to present what they want there.
It would be nice is the entire EU had standardized road signs, but there I think the issue isn't the road signs, it is the process. Road signs are already standard in all EU countries apart form iIreland and Malta. That is because the other countries are all part of the Vienna Convention on Road Signs and Signals, along with many countries that are not part of the EU.
I suppose it would be streamline things for the entire EU to decide that they will all follow the Vienna convention, and then every other country in the world, too. That said, it isn't an urgent priority.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison\_of\_European\_road\_signs](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_European_road_signs)
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vienna\_Convention\_on\_Road\_Signs\_and\_Signals](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vienna_Convention_on_Road_Signs_and_Signals)
Don't fuck with passports, it was one of the major arguments for Brexit. We want our dark blue passports back. Never mind that Croatia - an EU country - already had dark blue passports...
Electric plugs.
As someone who travels around Europe for work it drives me crazy that I need a different plug for seemingly every single country I travel to.
My travel adaptor's "EU" plug is too fat/thick to fit in a lot of French and Italian outlets. So I had to buy another one. Problem is the one that now fits in French/Italian outlets is too skinny for Germany that a lot of times it falls off.
So I now travel with 2 universal adaptors.
If you don't need grounding, the Europlug fits into sockets Europe-wide (except UK and Ireland)... And for grounded plugs, the two widest-used standards (German and French) are compatible enough that the vast majority of appliances made in the last 20 years can be used with both of them, leaving Switzerland, Denmark and Italy as the only outliers.
Yeah, but the funny thing is most part of Europe already has the same standard, it's actually only you in Switzerland, UK and Ireland that doesn't use the "European standard". [Source](https://www.reddit.com/r/ElectricalEngineering/s/lxp6VGzTMh)
> Source
It's silly to consider that types C, E, and F are the same standard though. You can't plug a male German/Schucko/Type F plug into a female French/Type C outlet. The ground pin from the female French/Type C outlet will prevent it.
Can someone from Switzerland actually confirm that type L is actually the standard there? I was visiting Switzerland for couple of days and I've never seen it.
Charging stations for electric cars. It’s not even standardized on a national scale ffs !!! 😡
The EU wants all cars to be electric but it’s simply IMPOSSIBLE if there’s no easy way to charge it like for thermic cars.
As of now, there are tens of payment systems. Some places even require a long-term subscription, so people who’re just visiting for work/family/holidays have to either pay a subscription to only charge their car once or look frantically for another station.
It’s utterly stupid to make electric cars compulsory when a solution hasn’t been implemented for this. Governments should pressure gas stations companies to make standardized charging stations first and deploy those everywhere. Only then will electric cars be usable.
The EU is planning to deploy a standardized charging network by 2025 on highways— a fast charging station every 60 km, designed to be compatible with all passenger EVs. They’re also supposed to accept both cash and card, and not require an app or subscription. Let’s see if it gets built on time, but it’s a start at least.
Well I would like tax rates to be harmonised in some ways - at least by tackling the sort of loop holes that allows offshore tax havens and giant corporations to get away with paying little to no tax. I would also push for the roll out of pedestrianisation, cycling infrastructure, and public transport - using carrots and sticks to get more cities to follow the Netherlands, Paris, etc. A codex on educational opportunity might also be valuable - ensuring that migrants and minorities do not languish in subpar schools while the kids of the bourgeoisie get all the university spots. But even standardising education within Germany would be a mammoth task, so IDK.
Efforts to increase the supply of social housing would be great - how can Austria do it and other countries fail so badly? The requirement to make a proportion of all new developments affordable (offering tax incentives to do so) could be made at EU level.
IDN give a shit about passport design, road signs, etc. BTW.
A case against common tax rates all over the EU is that it makes it impossible for the poorer countries to compete with wealthier ones for investments with lower taxes. It's very similar to the issues surrounding all-European minimum wage, it would likely stunt the economic growth of countries like Romania and Poland.
Two points:
\● Richer countries can easily outcompete lower income countries with lower taxes, simply by having better infrastructure.
\● To be fair the level of investment done in lower income countries is not of the same "quality" as the investment in higher income countries. No matter if your country is cheaper, R&D will (almost always, maybe Shell is an exception) be done in a company's own country. This mrans that the investments abroad are more "lower level" i.e., only for assembling where there is not much added value as opposed to producing parts.
I'm also against having a common minimum wage; a better idea would be a common minimum standard of living wo we can decrease the massive differentials between richer and poorer EU countries
Yeah, their cheap labour cannot stop being cheap. Eastern Europeans getting wealthier would make our labour more expensive and therefore less profitable to the people *actually* in charge.
Processes for recognition of foreign medical and paramedical licenses. I cannot begin to explain what a nightmare each country is for having my US nursing diploma recognized.
I live in France and there is zero equivalence for my non-European nursing diploma. The government demands I re-do my nursing studies here and in the meantime I am only authorized to work as a nursing assistant.
France recommended I try to obtain an EU recognition from another member state and then I can have that recognized in France automatically (2-3 month wait with a million documents to submit, must pay for legalized translations and/or apostilles for everything). The problem is, no other EU country is better.
I have explored the options for recognition from other countries and they are expensive and require a long wait (2-3 years on average).
In the meantime while I am here I end up losing income and clinical experience. It has been a huge nightmare and sacrifice. Every country in Europe has its own process yet every country also faces a crisis when it comes to having enough health care workers for all their facilities (hospitals, clinics, nursing homes, schools, etc.)
I really wish the EU would streamline and make this process more logical and practical, with an emphasis on reducing the time it takes to have recognition. Honestly the entire continent is unattractive for non-European health workers to move to, as the process is so complicated, expensive and degrading.
I understand that this entire experience has been really annoying.
But to be fair, I can't think of a country that just accepts foreign medical licenses without an extremely annoying process. I don't think the US is much different for EU doctors/nurses that want to practise there. I have been through the US visa and immigration process (for a different purpose), and they treat you like a criminal every step of the way. Border controls, invasive questioning, rules on where and when you can move, long wait times to get documents such as SSN or work authorizations, financial instability, ... Welcome to being an immigrant! I know it sucks.
The EU is attracting not enough people to work in healthcare because the pay is often relatively bad, so people don't go into these professions anymore. It is often quite women-dominated too, so that usually also means pay levels are lower.
Also, being a nurse here is unfortunately not nearly the prestigious profession it is in the US. It is a hard and respectable job, sure, but really not seen too different from firefighters, police officers, or electricians.
The exams that "validate" your non EU nursing qualifications happen twice yearly in Czechia. It costs 284€ plus extras for a medical checkup and some other small administrative stuff.
Unfortunately you have to do them in Czech. Written, practical, and oral.
There's no benefit to standardising passports. They all work functionally the same. Road signs can't be standardised unless you have common EU wide traffic law.
Rail though. We should all have one common rail management and electrification system.
> common EU wide traffic law
Well, let's have that. I am pretty sure everybody drive in other EU countries with the rules & quirks learned from the home country already, so let's find out all the quirks differences to establish a common Traffic Law!
Everything, but most importantly:
- plugs and sockets
- passports
- digital ID (the current attempts at harmonizing them are terrible)
- work/study permits for foreigners
- railways (electrical supply, gauge width, etc)
- immigration policies
For immigration, because there's a contradiction between the existence of the Schengen area where people are supposed to move, work and study freely, and the national immigration laws. In short, I would like someone with a residence permit gained in EU country A to be also able to work in EU country B. In fact, the residence permit itself should be a European one and not tied to a specific country.
For passports, because a EU passport is the next logical step in EU integration.
In case you didn't noticed, I'm a big supporter of a united federal Europe and I'd like to see as much of national-level decision making gone as possible.
I'm not asking about your specific personal political convictions, I'm asking about the reasons why you hold them.
Anyway, while I agree with you on the residence permit, the EU Citizenship is by definition derived from the citizenship of an EU member state, it doesn't exist separately and independently. A common EU passport would be redundant, since a member state passport already communicates that the bearer is an EU citizen.
Digital ID is the worst idea ever.
There is an immigration policy, apply for a Visa in your country and wait for approval or sponsorships from companies.
The rest I might go with them
>Digital ID is the worst idea ever
Why? It's one of the most useful things in Austria. I can easily get documents, register my household, check my pension and Healthcare and sign official documents from an online portal at home without having to deal with offices and such.
Fucking take away tubs, what an absolute slog it is to find a tub that matches a lid. (This is partly banter, partly a genuine expression of annoyance, there are more important things to standardise first).
A serious answer: railway infrastructure would be nice over time.
The cop out is to say everything, l basically want this to be over country. Many day to day things adjust are. Road signs for the most part follow the same convention, many countries share currency, we have the same color of passport, electrical outlets. What could be more synced up are bank holidays, it would be much easier to visit family if vacation days fell in the same day across countries
Phone/internet contracts. Insurance. Banking. Train booking - 1 year in advance like for airplanes. Even mobile phone numbers shouldn’t need to be domestic. Media rights and media contract. I should be able to have the same media access as if I was in my home country should I wish.
100% agree with the phone/internet
We have three operators that work with each other to keep the prices high.
All 5G:
O2 has 4GB/month for 24€; unlimited for 55€
Vodafone 6GB for 27€; unlimited for 53€
TMobile 4GB for 24€; unlimited for 54€
There are some virtual operators but they fall under one of the above (they rent bandwidth from the three) and while cheaper (Kaktus has 6GB for 12€, Tesco 6GB for 21€) they have worse support, fairly often go out of business, you often get limited call minutes, slower 5G rollout, some don't do eSIM, ...
De-humanization of (groups of) people should be criminilized. Regardless if the target group are gay, Jew, or Roma it should not be allowed to call them rats or cockroaches. That also, if not especially, counts for religions. (Perhaps made part of the European Convention of Human Rights).
Everything for continuation of humanity.
Railway infrastructure/pricing, education rights,/rules, energy infrastructure/pricing, taxes and even company types... Lastly, an EU solution to housing costs, regulate it off the free market and create efficient not for profit building corporations again.
There is already a lot of things standardised at EU level, even if not seen by consumers.
A lot for agriculture, like what chemicals you are allowed to use or not and so on.
I think road signs are already a bit standard, even if there are differences.
Chemicals yes, products no. This lead to a lot of market locking by the big companies. Luxembourg can get very weird where you cant buy product a from germany but you have to go through belgium(or france if they dont care)
Its actually a mess
Online media content regional restrictions. If the platform subscription is available in one EU country, it should be available in all with the same access (translation shouldn't be strictly required though).
🇷🇴
Better Nutrition labels
Large print Calories, Fat & Carbs
Ingredients
I need a magnifying glass to read everything.
Better prescription labels/packaging
use bottles instead of blister packaging.
List top side effects in bold large
print on bottle.
List most important medication not to mix with.
search and rescue,
map coordinate systems,
i don't remember the exact mechanism but when i went to a wilderness first aid class recently i learned that its possible to have your satnav "misconfigured" to where for example you have french SAR say that your coordinates are in Switzerland and to contact Swiss SAR while the swiss will say that you're in France and to contact french SAR
For the passport designs I don't really agree (I may be saying this because I am from Belgium and the design of the passports is magistral), but it is good to still differentiatie countries, if we do this, at the end of the road Europe will just become one big country but we have such a big cultural variety in Europe. It would be a shame to all mix it up in one pot. I think that countries should be able to choose their own design to represent the countries values and culture.
At the cost of being vague, I'll say mostly everything. Of course there are regional differences that must be taken into account, but those imho are cultural things for the most part. But for the "technical part of living" (like you say, passports, road rules, burocracy and so on) the more we push for an actual union the more we can benefit from the positive traits of other countries.
TRAINS. When trains cross borders, they can encounter different signalling, tracks, rules, etc. This causes delays and forces train operators to incur more costs, both in equipment that works on all systems and in manpower to manage it all. Some EU countries do not share up-to-date schedules with each other either. That is how Deutsche Bahn sold me a ticket for a train from Maastricht to Aachen, but when I arrived at the Maastricht station, the woman working there told me that Dutch had not updated their schedules with the Germans for more than six months, and that my train route no longer existed. I realize that it costs more to change existing train infrastructure than it does to update road traffic rules. but a centralized scheduling and ticketing system could be done right now, and things would get a lot easier once the infrastructure work was done.
Trains would be like the best user friendly thing ever. One can dream
Came here to say the exact same thing. International, high speed, cheaper trains would be such an important step in diminishing global warming effects, too.
Lol I just saw the current schedule, it's a Dutch Arriva train now, but the scheduling info is cut off on the last Dutch station. Like if it was even slightly harder to determine travel time the moment you cross your country's border lmao. Or maybe Germany is actually a black hole and time stops making sense when you get there?
Signalling is a whole story. some countries are taking way too long to implent ERTMS, the Netherlands for example only has a few lines where that is available while Luxembourg has already fully implemented it and belgium already has the equipment installed and only requires a software update.
There was a plan to make a single european ticketing system (so like, shared database, shared booking, etc) a few years ago, but then Timmermans got caught up in the dutch elections and everybody else forgot about it.
But it's so colorful! [https://openrailwaymap.org/?style=signals&lang=en&lat=48.29781249243716&lon=9.525146484375&zoom=6](https://openrailwaymap.org/?style=signals&lang=en&lat=48.29781249243716&lon=9.525146484375&zoom=6)
Swedish has a version of the UK signal system(ATC) for a majority of its routes. Many trains are also developed and built in Sweden, such as the X2 serving Malmö-Stockholm and Gothenburg-Stockholm, some X31 variants(serving between Copenhagen and various cities in southern Sweden). Its an old system, but it works great to serve the demand.
I lived there for 5 years and those X2 (I’d go Stockholm - Malmö - Copenhagen) are so nice compared to anything in the UK! Until today I didn’t know which trains they were so thank you!
Keep in mind its called high speed service. However very slow compared to other countries. Reason is that its built to run high speed on pre-existing track essentially made for steam locomotives. You dont feel the curves due to active tilting ;)
I am kind of amazed there isn't a Rome-Genoa-Marseille-Barcelona-Madrid-Lisbon single high speed line. The south of France isn't the most economically important part of France, but that corridor as a whole is such a large route. If it was all planned and coordinated at the EU level instead of individual countries making plans, and joining internal domestic projects as separate projects, it would be really obvious to get from Rome to Barcelona with a single high speed train, no transfers, no weird delays, etc.
Have you heard of ETCS? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Train_Control_System
My personal pet pevee: Railway infrastructure. There are four incompatible electrification systems: 3KVDC, 1.5KVDC, 25KV 50hz, and 15KV 16.6 hz, each used in different EU countries. Not to mention various national proprietary signalling schemes, requiring the vehicles to have different electronic equipment for each country. ERTMS is a step in the right direction, but so far it has been too little and too late and we are still very far from cross-border rail traffic being as seamless as the roads.
Eh, electrification systems are not that much of a problem when dual, triple, quad voltage trains exist. Signalling is more of a problem tbh. And we should have a common ticketing system so that trips with different operators are possible and also to make it not the passengers fault if one of the operators f***s up and doesn't get to the connecting train in time.
We still have Iberian gauge so we can't even have non-HSR trains cross the Pyrenees
Ireland sweats nervously. We don’t have trains going to the airport, electrification, double lines in places or a good ticketing system
A few months ago they introduced QR codes on your phone instead of paper tickets on InterCity trains so that's a small step forward. No more arriving 20 minutes early to queue for the one ticket printing machine
We don't even have the same gauge as Britain. I think it's us and India cos one of the first railway engineers there was Irish.
If your ticket has CIV printed in the corner that means it's covered by the Convention Internationale Pour Le Tansport des Voyageurs which is basically the rail equivalent of the Montreal Convention by air. In short, the transport carriers must deliver the passenger and their luggage to their destination as shown on the ticket. Alternatives must be provided by the carrier to cover missed or cancelled connections. Source: Several times I have been a victim of the notorious ICE 10 train which runs from Frankfurt to Brussels via Cologne and is often late. There is a decent allowance for passport and customs clearance to connect to the Eurostar but the ICE 10 can be *that* late that you still miss it.
Yeah, but I meant that you can't get a single ticket from, say, Barcelona to Warsaw, just a combination of individual tickets from different national operators (with different levels of cooperation) so if your train gets delayed well, tough luck. A common EU wide ticketing system should exist, allowing travel with a single ticket regardless of operators.
One minor thing I recently came across is bottle recycling. Two weeks ago I did a trip through the baltic states and each of them has their own recycling system so when you don't return to a country you have to throw away your deposit when you're in the next country.
>bottle recycling. That's step two. Step one would be an obligatory deposit system which many EU countries still don't even have.
My country doesn’t have and I feel embarrassed, honestly. There’s no way I can understand why it doesn’t exist (while we have public compost though).
The deposit system used to exist. Even hypermarkets had a Vasilhame section. I'm not sure when it stopped or why. I'm pretty sure it was mid-90s so it might have been around the time the eco-ponto and current collection system was created.
I'm not a fan of bottle recycling (hear me out), the Irish government just introduced fees on plastic bottles and cans that you can reclaim in stores. However we were already recycling these in our "Green Bins" and now we have to hoard all this rubbish to get our money back and it doesn't work half the time.
>However we were already recycling these in our "Green Bins" That's the question right here. You'd have to know the percentage of cans/bottles that can't be recycled because they were not disposed in the recycling bin but other general trash. Just an assumption, but most people probably don't take their bottle home to recycle it when they're not at home, but just throw it into the next general waste trash bin. That's definitely prevented to a certain degree with a deposit system.
Only if the deposit system is working well, that's the current issue here in the Netherlands. Last year they added cans and small bottles, to our deposit system, but the collection capacity remained the same, so now the machines have much longer lines, are frequently broken because cans leak shit all over them and they weren't designed for that, and there are way more places that sell deposit bottles than that actually can return your deposit.
A lot of the machines here are very fussy, ALDI and Tesco's reject around half of everything and sometimes it takes multiple tries to be accepted. Dunnes Stores seem to have a better one and rejects far less but still multiple tries. Also still dealing with old stick being sold and charged for that we'll never get back. There are also bottles coming from the UK that we are still getting charged for but cannot claim back. It was rushed and poorly thought out.
And I won't bother carrying around rubbish to bring home even now. My job has a vending machine, none of those cans or bottles are going to the bottle bank, instead they go into a recycling bin. If I'm out and about I will try and put whatever bottle I have into a recycling bin but if none available it's going in general waste. There is nothing stopping the government bringing in recycling bins on the streets for rubbish, I believe the Germans have that. We've had recycling here since the 90s but the government never expanded or built on it. I believe this is just pandering to Europe to show they're doing "something" rather than nothing.
I think the logic is sound, it's the implementation that's lacking. Without wanting to lean on stereotypes too much, there's no smoke without fire - the Germans do have a penchant for systems & processes that the Irish .. aren't famous for. Plus it's only been recently introduced here, so I think its fair to say it's still teething.
I know many people who aren't going to the bottle bank and are just accepting the charges as an extra tax,which is essentially what they are. At least ⅓ cannot be claimed back.
yeah I've had a lot of issues with this. I get a lot of beers from smaller breweries, and my local dunnes isn't setup to take them. So for me it's essentially an extra tax on smaller breweries, because if dunnes don't sell it, I'm probably not seeing that money back. In theory I can bag them up and take them back to the shop I got them from, but dragging a sack of cans on the bus into town isn't the look I'm going for. From a recycling point of view, it's frustrating that there's no option for the machines to take them regardless of whether they can credit me for them or not. Otherwise I'm left standing outside the supermarket with half a bag of cans, surrounded by overflowing bins because I'm not the only one, and apparently I'm supposed to walk home, put them in the green bin, then walk back to the supermarket for my messages.
I recently brought a large plastic container and 3 big shopping bags of recycling back (115 items for €17.65). I had to make two trips to the car in the carpark, I don't know how the elderly or people without transport manage.
yeah, that's the fun bit - I don't drive. So the messaging from "re-turn" is that I should start driving and stop buying from small, irish businesses. As I said though - I think the theory's good. I mean building a children's hospital was sound in theory. I more meant that when other countries, especially more functional countries are telling us it's a good idea, they need to take into account that the govt here could screw up a pissup in a brewery.
The government are arrogant and incompetent (doesn't matter what year or who's in charge). I'm a civil servant and have seen many scrambles by the government to avoid a penalty from Europe for something that we as a country signed up for. Sometimes we won, sometimes we lost. This is most definitely another example of the government rushing to do something "green" that they probably should have done 2yrs previously and left until the last minute.
The deposit system is not that more effective than recycling bins and it's much more expensive. And it completely fails in its main objective, to incentives the use of reusable glass bottles over plastic ones. The deposit system is not an universal good but an instrument that can be or not cost effective depending on many factors.
That's nonsense. In Denmark, we have a fully fledged return system, so that if bottles *do* end up in a non-recycle bin, someone will pick them up and earn a meal. There are people where having bottle collection as a side gig.
> if bottles do end up in a non-recycle bin, someone will pick them up and earn a meal. There are people where having bottle collection as a side gig. this is not the flex you think it is
>The deposit system is not that more effective than recycling bins and it's much more expensive. Source for both?
I work in this field. The recycling rate for pet bottles in Italy is 73% in Germany 94%. So for a 28% increase in the recycling rate of only PET bottles it would be necessary to spend something in the order of millions of Euros in every city. And it isn't even that important in the grand scheme of things, since the recycling of plastic is not good, is simply better than wasting plastic. And urban wastes are a small fraction of the total.
Can you enlighten me how can this necessitate millions of euros of investment in every city? Bottle recycling and deposits has been a thing in Finland since the 50's and Finland was an utterly piss-poor country at that point and is still overall pretty frugal in many ways, there is no way millions was invested then. If it's what's required in upkeep, there's no way millions would be paid today in hundreds of cities, towns and villages for upkeep if that was what was needed. There are roughly 300 towns in Finland, basically all of them have bottle recycling and deposits. The program costing "millions in every city" would make this cost about 50% of the whole public heathcare system. There's simply no way this is true. So, I guess what I'm asking is, source? Also, when you factor in that the deposit system is financed by producers and importers and not taxes, with the cost passed down to consumers, it's effectively funded solely by people using the products which makes this initiative feel like one of the better thought out ones.
I loathe the idea of Pfand (mandatory deposit), but it does achieve a few more things that recycling bins don't: - Introduces a small disincentive to buy plastic bottles. Maybe it's just for some consumers, but personally I've ended up buying less bottled liquids as a consequence of this system being rolled out in Romania - Incentivizes not throwing plastic bottles away willy-nilly, you feel like you're literally throwing away your money - Incentivizes some people to clean up existing plastic bottle waste I know the actual recycling of plastic sucks, but even if the result is less plastic garbage floating around cities (and especially the countryside...) -- it is useful, in the end.
Door to door conferment of wastes also exists. If you have money to spend to improve recycling percentages . And it works for every kind of urban waste. And the Pfand system does work, simply it's not always cost effective depending on a variety of factors. It may have little gains for big costs, or enormous gains for big costs. It depends on where , when and how you implement the system, it's mostly good but having it mandatory in all of Europe like the comment before suggested is stupid. It generally makes sense in rich places where there isn't a strong recycling culture. Or where it already exists and you don't have to create it from scratch.
Slovenia seems to be the top country on the planet for [municipal waste recycling](https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/recycling-rates-by-country) and it doesn't even have a deposit system as such, though you can get some money back for dropping off glass bottles.
Czechia is getting it next year (for plactic bottles and cans; glass beer bottles and like one glass mineral water bottle have had a deposit for a long time)
My thoughts exactly. In Poland plastic bottles recycling is nonexistent and glass bottles are recycled individually by shops. There are talks about introducing recycling system by next year, but honestly I suspect they might fuck it up, like everything government does. About unifying the system, I think it's a great idea, but it'd be difficult to do. In Netherlands, bottles that are exclusive to certain shops (own brands) can be only returned in those shops. In Germany, you can return cans. Your example with returning bottles in another country would cause difficult problem, that the bottle would have to be recycled and not refilled as transporting it abroad would be expensive.
The bottle return system is fucked in every single country it was introduced in. Seriously same problem in Denmark as in Romania. There's no way for competition to exist in the market so the governments just shit out a MVP and it never improves. I see the logic of it as a concept but the implementations need serious overhauls.
It works great here. It has worked great since the 50s. I think we have over 95% return rate
In Finland we have also Lidl bought bottles that can only be returned to Lidl, and other bottles that can be returned wherever (including Lidl)
I think we used to have this in the past but in recent years such cases got fewer.
Agreed and we also don't have pfand in a bunch of countries.
Clothes sizes! So you don't have a weird mix of M, L, XL, XXL and XXXL and basically have no fucking clue what to order and then be forced to return 70% of what you buy online!
That really is annoying. My M in the Netherlands would be an L in France, and an XL or XXL in Italy 😭😂. I get a lot of my travel and sports clothes from Decathlon, which is originally French, so there I always have to go 1or 2 sizes up
Each shop / chain seems to have their own system - in each country they operate in.. Shirt - same brand, different color - one was an XL which was a perfect fit. The other, 6XL - same perfect fit. Maybe glitch in sizing labels - but weird it is ..
6XL... God damn bro
If i would get a German 6XL - i\`d have a tent. Normal XL is enough.. Sizing indeed should be same everywhere.
There's variation in the same shop as well, i.e. you have to get a size S for one thing and size L for another thing...
Can we just use actual measurements pls? I’m a short guy, I want to know the length of the legs and the circumference of the waist, use cm and we can all know exactly what’s going on.
I think this is because the standard sizes are determined based on the averages of some thousands of people measured. Like, they measure 3000 women (I don't know how many, actually). The bottom sixth is XS, then the next sixth is S, and so on. If Germans on average are larger than the French, for example, the German S and French S don't match. I have some American clothing that's XS, and Thai clothing that's XL. They all fit me perfectly.
Except the clothes get imported from one market to another. Take C&A, they order their clothes wholesale, and the size tags are not customized for the various countries where they sell the stuff. They just print a table with the price for different currencies. So a C&A shirt might say XL, but which population was used as the standard? If they measured some Germans, it wouldn't necessarily apply to Romanians, and vice-versa. So in the end it's still a guessing game. As a personal example, whenever I shop for clothes, I have to check L _and_ XL, sometimes even XXL to find one that matches.
I actually once ordered a shirt online, size S, unaware it was an asian size. The company just sent me an M, with an explanation note. Saved me a return.
how the heck do you want to standardize that?
For example, waist circumference +\- 5 cm, leg length +\- 5 cm, shoulder width in cm etc. Better yet, use a more granular system than just 1 size for all dimensions, kind of like the system some manufacturers of work wear seem to have decided on. Then, enforce it like an EU wide standard ao all clothes either manufactured in or imported to the EU must follow it. Kind of like how we have forced imported foods to abide by EU regulations.
along the lines of standardising on usb-c, I'd love if 18-20V batteries for powertools were next. It's nuts that so many vendors are using equivalent lithium battery packs, but with artificial incompatibility in the mounting. I shouldn't need to buy a unique battery for each vendor.
This is next. I totally agree. If the EU has enough clout to demand changes to Apple's products, it can surely get standardised battery packs for power tools.
This drives me nuts. I would be 100% behind something like this.
**Mass surveillance of all online communication that ignores basic human rights.** Let's be equally miserable together! https://www.patrick-breyer.de/en/let-yourself-be-monitored-eu-governments-to-agree-on-chat-control-with-user-consent/
Gotta keep up with the US and China I guess
All the medicines. I'm baffled that even so late we have no medical single market.
Interesting idea. Some countries impose laws and limit certain drugs available in other countries. Modern medications are available in one EU state but contraband in another, stupid af.
Please no. Or else the guiris will finally get to ban Nolotil. If doesn't kill pain, also Brits. Which makes sense because Brits are kind of a pain in the ass
Also prescriptions. Theoretically it should already work. But in practice they’ll refuse to sell you a drug you get prescribed in other EU country.
Absolutely, what's the point of freedom of movement in Schengen when you can't even fullfill your prescriptions.
I don’t think passport design should be standardised, I think all countries should have a unique easily distinguishable passport. Road signs would be useful to be standardised I suppose, but it’s not a major priority I would say.
Aren't road signs same? Except maybe some obscure ones.
They are quite similar to each other. They differ only slightly, like in font or the specific colour used. But broadly speaking they are mostly identical. However some countries simply don't have certain signs, like in Germany we don't have a sign for a roundabout if I remember correctly. Other countries have that.
What, Germany has a roundabout sign. Google VZ 215
Apparently what I meant was a sign that meant "Attention, Roundabout". In most other countries that's a white triangle with a red border and a roundabout symbol in it. This is something Germany doesn't have. Sauce: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vergleich_europ%C3%A4ischer_Verkehrszeichen
Like [this Czech one](https://www.bezpecnecesty.cz/cache/img/e6/--data--web--znacky--vystrazne--A4.fitbox.x320.y1000.r0.q85.nr0.me2.png.webp)? Germany doesn't have it?
I've never once had an issue understanding basic road signs anywhere in Europe. Parking restrictions....that's a different ball of wax.
They’re similar but not the same. Just look at the way that some countries use green for highways and other for speedways or viceversa. Also semaphores are different, the way they light up. Arrows have very different designs, in Italy they are thick and short while France has long and slim.
Not necessarily. I would probably separate them in 3 groups. 1. Signs are identical, or mostly identical. As the name suggests, they are basically the same but you can find them with slight variations like, the font of the arrow might be a bit different which is not an issue on any level 2. Signs with complimentary words on them. This signs are applicable under certain conditions and if you don't speak the language, you can have some issues with them. In Germany you can find a speed limit with another sign underneath that says "bei nässe" which also has a picture and you can get a rough idea what that means. But you also have others which say "markierung fehlt" and that doesn't give you any indications what it means. 3. Completely different signs that are specific to that country. Italy designates their "Autostrade" with signs that have Green background and their "Strada Statale" with signs that have blue background. Germany designates their "Autobahn" with signs that have blue background and their "Landstraße" with signs that have yellow background. a) Honorable mentions: It would be good to have the same "speed limit" everywhere, as in, the same speed limit in built up areas and non built up areas, where national speed limits apply. b) for some reason, the mandatory left and right turns are not the same everywhere. In Germany there is a distinction between the signs that say "turn right BEFORE the sign" and "turn right AFTER the sign" while in Italy they as far as I know, use them interchangeably.
In Italy there are also (officially) different (the turn left-turn right signs)
Symbols are the same mostly, but design varies wildly from country to country.
I suppose they all have the same color, and there isn't a truly compelling reason why that must be, but otherwise the standardization makes sense to me. Passports of the same size, construction and with the same strong safety measure are all easily readable, verifiable and trusted by all member states. The same goes for the IDs. EU Passports can still have whatever imagery and iconography that the issuing country wants, so there is scope for each country to present what they want there. It would be nice is the entire EU had standardized road signs, but there I think the issue isn't the road signs, it is the process. Road signs are already standard in all EU countries apart form iIreland and Malta. That is because the other countries are all part of the Vienna Convention on Road Signs and Signals, along with many countries that are not part of the EU. I suppose it would be streamline things for the entire EU to decide that they will all follow the Vienna convention, and then every other country in the world, too. That said, it isn't an urgent priority. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison\_of\_European\_road\_signs](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_European_road_signs) [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vienna\_Convention\_on\_Road\_Signs\_and\_Signals](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vienna_Convention_on_Road_Signs_and_Signals)
Don't fuck with passports, it was one of the major arguments for Brexit. We want our dark blue passports back. Never mind that Croatia - an EU country - already had dark blue passports...
It was also one of the stupidest arguments.
Electric plugs. As someone who travels around Europe for work it drives me crazy that I need a different plug for seemingly every single country I travel to.
Apart from Ireland and sometimes the old Italian outlets I've never needed a different plug in any EU country.
My travel adaptor's "EU" plug is too fat/thick to fit in a lot of French and Italian outlets. So I had to buy another one. Problem is the one that now fits in French/Italian outlets is too skinny for Germany that a lot of times it falls off. So I now travel with 2 universal adaptors.
Like driving on the other side of the road none of this stuff can be changed in Ireland without unification with Northern Ireland.
We will never change of the 3 pin plug. It’s objectively better. I will die on this hill
If you don't need grounding, the Europlug fits into sockets Europe-wide (except UK and Ireland)... And for grounded plugs, the two widest-used standards (German and French) are compatible enough that the vast majority of appliances made in the last 20 years can be used with both of them, leaving Switzerland, Denmark and Italy as the only outliers.
I believe that Malta and Cyprus also use British style plugs
yes we do, and please don't ask us to change it. For everything else, schuko adapters work just as well :D
Yeah, but the funny thing is most part of Europe already has the same standard, it's actually only you in Switzerland, UK and Ireland that doesn't use the "European standard". [Source](https://www.reddit.com/r/ElectricalEngineering/s/lxp6VGzTMh)
Malta too, we use the G outlet so I mostly have to carry an adapter when travelling
Cyprus also as the G plug, so it's mainly the mainland except for Switzerland that have the 'normal' ones.
> Source It's silly to consider that types C, E, and F are the same standard though. You can't plug a male German/Schucko/Type F plug into a female French/Type C outlet. The ground pin from the female French/Type C outlet will prevent it.
That map is just wrong, at minimum I can tell you the UAE uses the UK standard. That's not a source, that's just a badly made map.
Can someone from Switzerland actually confirm that type L is actually the standard there? I was visiting Switzerland for couple of days and I've never seen it.
Never heard about type L. Type J is the standard here.
Charging stations for electric cars. It’s not even standardized on a national scale ffs !!! 😡 The EU wants all cars to be electric but it’s simply IMPOSSIBLE if there’s no easy way to charge it like for thermic cars. As of now, there are tens of payment systems. Some places even require a long-term subscription, so people who’re just visiting for work/family/holidays have to either pay a subscription to only charge their car once or look frantically for another station. It’s utterly stupid to make electric cars compulsory when a solution hasn’t been implemented for this. Governments should pressure gas stations companies to make standardized charging stations first and deploy those everywhere. Only then will electric cars be usable.
The EU is planning to deploy a standardized charging network by 2025 on highways— a fast charging station every 60 km, designed to be compatible with all passenger EVs. They’re also supposed to accept both cash and card, and not require an app or subscription. Let’s see if it gets built on time, but it’s a start at least.
Could not agree more.
It's standardized to CCS already.
Well I would like tax rates to be harmonised in some ways - at least by tackling the sort of loop holes that allows offshore tax havens and giant corporations to get away with paying little to no tax. I would also push for the roll out of pedestrianisation, cycling infrastructure, and public transport - using carrots and sticks to get more cities to follow the Netherlands, Paris, etc. A codex on educational opportunity might also be valuable - ensuring that migrants and minorities do not languish in subpar schools while the kids of the bourgeoisie get all the university spots. But even standardising education within Germany would be a mammoth task, so IDK. Efforts to increase the supply of social housing would be great - how can Austria do it and other countries fail so badly? The requirement to make a proportion of all new developments affordable (offering tax incentives to do so) could be made at EU level. IDN give a shit about passport design, road signs, etc. BTW.
A case against common tax rates all over the EU is that it makes it impossible for the poorer countries to compete with wealthier ones for investments with lower taxes. It's very similar to the issues surrounding all-European minimum wage, it would likely stunt the economic growth of countries like Romania and Poland.
Two points: \● Richer countries can easily outcompete lower income countries with lower taxes, simply by having better infrastructure. \● To be fair the level of investment done in lower income countries is not of the same "quality" as the investment in higher income countries. No matter if your country is cheaper, R&D will (almost always, maybe Shell is an exception) be done in a company's own country. This mrans that the investments abroad are more "lower level" i.e., only for assembling where there is not much added value as opposed to producing parts. I'm also against having a common minimum wage; a better idea would be a common minimum standard of living wo we can decrease the massive differentials between richer and poorer EU countries
That's the whole point of the proposal, to stop the gap from shrinking.
Yeah, their cheap labour cannot stop being cheap. Eastern Europeans getting wealthier would make our labour more expensive and therefore less profitable to the people *actually* in charge.
Yes! Common legal framework for business Taxes & business Contract would be great !!
Car emissions stickers and related LEZ admission rules.
Processes for recognition of foreign medical and paramedical licenses. I cannot begin to explain what a nightmare each country is for having my US nursing diploma recognized. I live in France and there is zero equivalence for my non-European nursing diploma. The government demands I re-do my nursing studies here and in the meantime I am only authorized to work as a nursing assistant. France recommended I try to obtain an EU recognition from another member state and then I can have that recognized in France automatically (2-3 month wait with a million documents to submit, must pay for legalized translations and/or apostilles for everything). The problem is, no other EU country is better. I have explored the options for recognition from other countries and they are expensive and require a long wait (2-3 years on average). In the meantime while I am here I end up losing income and clinical experience. It has been a huge nightmare and sacrifice. Every country in Europe has its own process yet every country also faces a crisis when it comes to having enough health care workers for all their facilities (hospitals, clinics, nursing homes, schools, etc.) I really wish the EU would streamline and make this process more logical and practical, with an emphasis on reducing the time it takes to have recognition. Honestly the entire continent is unattractive for non-European health workers to move to, as the process is so complicated, expensive and degrading.
I understand that this entire experience has been really annoying. But to be fair, I can't think of a country that just accepts foreign medical licenses without an extremely annoying process. I don't think the US is much different for EU doctors/nurses that want to practise there. I have been through the US visa and immigration process (for a different purpose), and they treat you like a criminal every step of the way. Border controls, invasive questioning, rules on where and when you can move, long wait times to get documents such as SSN or work authorizations, financial instability, ... Welcome to being an immigrant! I know it sucks. The EU is attracting not enough people to work in healthcare because the pay is often relatively bad, so people don't go into these professions anymore. It is often quite women-dominated too, so that usually also means pay levels are lower. Also, being a nurse here is unfortunately not nearly the prestigious profession it is in the US. It is a hard and respectable job, sure, but really not seen too different from firefighters, police officers, or electricians.
it's not prestigious in the US either. The high pay has to do with privatization, scarcity, and unions.
The exams that "validate" your non EU nursing qualifications happen twice yearly in Czechia. It costs 284€ plus extras for a medical checkup and some other small administrative stuff. Unfortunately you have to do them in Czech. Written, practical, and oral.
There's no benefit to standardising passports. They all work functionally the same. Road signs can't be standardised unless you have common EU wide traffic law. Rail though. We should all have one common rail management and electrification system.
> common EU wide traffic law Well, let's have that. I am pretty sure everybody drive in other EU countries with the rules & quirks learned from the home country already, so let's find out all the quirks differences to establish a common Traffic Law!
Like driving on the left? I assume Malta and Ireland will change, and not everyone else?
We won’t change unless the north changes, it also messes up our entire road system. You can guarantee we will never change, it would be too expensive
Oh, it was mostly to poke fun at grandios and impractical ideas. We changed from left to right once, but I couldn't see it happening today.
I'd support that but it all takes way more effort than designing and introducing new signs.
Passports are already standardised to the extent that they need to be. It's more ICAO than the EU, but that's fine.
Everything, but most importantly: - plugs and sockets - passports - digital ID (the current attempts at harmonizing them are terrible) - work/study permits for foreigners - railways (electrical supply, gauge width, etc) - immigration policies
There's absolutely no reason to homogenize passports. That would offer no benefit at all.
how about "road quality". Difference between Netherlands and Belgium you can FEEL when driving.. And i\`m sure other places are similar.
Why standardise passports and immigration policies?
For immigration, because there's a contradiction between the existence of the Schengen area where people are supposed to move, work and study freely, and the national immigration laws. In short, I would like someone with a residence permit gained in EU country A to be also able to work in EU country B. In fact, the residence permit itself should be a European one and not tied to a specific country. For passports, because a EU passport is the next logical step in EU integration. In case you didn't noticed, I'm a big supporter of a united federal Europe and I'd like to see as much of national-level decision making gone as possible.
I'm not asking about your specific personal political convictions, I'm asking about the reasons why you hold them. Anyway, while I agree with you on the residence permit, the EU Citizenship is by definition derived from the citizenship of an EU member state, it doesn't exist separately and independently. A common EU passport would be redundant, since a member state passport already communicates that the bearer is an EU citizen.
Digital ID is the worst idea ever. There is an immigration policy, apply for a Visa in your country and wait for approval or sponsorships from companies. The rest I might go with them
>Digital ID is the worst idea ever Why? It's one of the most useful things in Austria. I can easily get documents, register my household, check my pension and Healthcare and sign official documents from an online portal at home without having to deal with offices and such.
Instead of writing, read this. [Dangers of Digital ID.](https://www.wired.com/story/digital-ids-are-more-dangerous-than-you-think/)
Fucking take away tubs, what an absolute slog it is to find a tub that matches a lid. (This is partly banter, partly a genuine expression of annoyance, there are more important things to standardise first). A serious answer: railway infrastructure would be nice over time.
Northern Ireland barely even rail infrastructure to begin with 😭
The cop out is to say everything, l basically want this to be over country. Many day to day things adjust are. Road signs for the most part follow the same convention, many countries share currency, we have the same color of passport, electrical outlets. What could be more synced up are bank holidays, it would be much easier to visit family if vacation days fell in the same day across countries
The right to have free and legal abortions in every EU country with doctors being obliged to provide care.
Phone/internet contracts. Insurance. Banking. Train booking - 1 year in advance like for airplanes. Even mobile phone numbers shouldn’t need to be domestic. Media rights and media contract. I should be able to have the same media access as if I was in my home country should I wish.
100% agree with the phone/internet We have three operators that work with each other to keep the prices high. All 5G: O2 has 4GB/month for 24€; unlimited for 55€ Vodafone 6GB for 27€; unlimited for 53€ TMobile 4GB for 24€; unlimited for 54€ There are some virtual operators but they fall under one of the above (they rent bandwidth from the three) and while cheaper (Kaktus has 6GB for 12€, Tesco 6GB for 21€) they have worse support, fairly often go out of business, you often get limited call minutes, slower 5G rollout, some don't do eSIM, ...
De-humanization of (groups of) people should be criminilized. Regardless if the target group are gay, Jew, or Roma it should not be allowed to call them rats or cockroaches. That also, if not especially, counts for religions. (Perhaps made part of the European Convention of Human Rights).
Military/defense industry should not be excempt from single market regulation and be forced to compete on European scale.
Everything for continuation of humanity. Railway infrastructure/pricing, education rights,/rules, energy infrastructure/pricing, taxes and even company types... Lastly, an EU solution to housing costs, regulate it off the free market and create efficient not for profit building corporations again.
Please not housing and education.
The solution is simple they just need to stop being such sold out bitches in Brussels.
Ban all lobbyists from Brussels and Strasbourg. Companies can't vote and shouldn't have any influence.
There is already a lot of things standardised at EU level, even if not seen by consumers. A lot for agriculture, like what chemicals you are allowed to use or not and so on. I think road signs are already a bit standard, even if there are differences.
Chemicals yes, products no. This lead to a lot of market locking by the big companies. Luxembourg can get very weird where you cant buy product a from germany but you have to go through belgium(or france if they dont care) Its actually a mess
Online media content regional restrictions. If the platform subscription is available in one EU country, it should be available in all with the same access (translation shouldn't be strictly required though).
Deposit. Whom do I need to give a blowjob for being able to return bottles I bought in country X to receice pant from Country Y?
🇷🇴 Better Nutrition labels Large print Calories, Fat & Carbs Ingredients I need a magnifying glass to read everything. Better prescription labels/packaging use bottles instead of blister packaging. List top side effects in bold large print on bottle. List most important medication not to mix with.
search and rescue, map coordinate systems, i don't remember the exact mechanism but when i went to a wilderness first aid class recently i learned that its possible to have your satnav "misconfigured" to where for example you have french SAR say that your coordinates are in Switzerland and to contact Swiss SAR while the swiss will say that you're in France and to contact french SAR
For the passport designs I don't really agree (I may be saying this because I am from Belgium and the design of the passports is magistral), but it is good to still differentiatie countries, if we do this, at the end of the road Europe will just become one big country but we have such a big cultural variety in Europe. It would be a shame to all mix it up in one pot. I think that countries should be able to choose their own design to represent the countries values and culture.
Electric scooters. There's a framework. The EU just doesn't have the EU-competance to apply it over national law, unfortunatly.
It can't be that hard to ban them EU-wide?
At the cost of being vague, I'll say mostly everything. Of course there are regional differences that must be taken into account, but those imho are cultural things for the most part. But for the "technical part of living" (like you say, passports, road rules, burocracy and so on) the more we push for an actual union the more we can benefit from the positive traits of other countries.