Either the EU opens Hormuz or the EU pays twice the pre war rate for gas / oil indefinitely. Of course at least they can put the subjects that bitch about it in jail now.
Like a lot of the rest of the world they would probably rather take the alternative option and accelerate the transition to clean energy. Has the upside of not handing more power to an authoritarian state on the other side of the Atlantic that clearly hates them and routinely threatens them.
how is EU supposed to open hormuz? do you expect them to raise armies and go to war over a shipping lane? I think US demonstrated plenty enough this is not a viable strategy (this was known for the past 50 years)
Well everyone pays the same for oil (unless there are export/import control and adjusted by transportation costs) worldwide.
So americans will be paying 2x as well its just that some of that money will stay in the country instead of going to the middle easter or US (which happens to be the largest supplier of oil to the EU)
Back in 2025 EU imported ~15% from the gulf. China was over 40% and Japan at 95%...
The European Comission is the top decision maker of the EU. The European citizen has zero (0) influence on the members or actions of the EC. No different than the politburo in China.
That is incorrect. Usually, the legislation happens in the trilogue, which is an abomination and everything but well representing it's citizens interest, but the Commission can do very very little if the council says no. That again is a body consisting of elected officials with varying degrees of distance from a direct election.
Best example for a change: everything that happened after Magyar replaced Orban in the council.
This is just to say... Its complicated. The EU can definitely do with a reform and better, stronger democratic legitimacy.
It is slightly different than China, China has implemented hotlines/apps for citizen complaints in response to social pressure, and it actually attempts to address those complaints.
This is for proposing legislation, not fixing local quality of life issues, and the success rate has been rather poor. China’s system has a broad scale, but is directed at local problems and has a very high success rate.
As I understand it, many of the issues faced by petitioners in the past were due to local corruption; officials would physically prevent petitioners from traveling to the petition office to deliver a complaint. The new systems (12345, 12388, and the apps) are intended to bypass that and have done a decent job at reducing corruption.
The Citizen’s Initiative is more of a referendum system for proposing bills, but due to its non-binding nature those bills are often ignored. China’s system doesn’t necessarily bind the government to action either, but given the small scale of the problems they are motivated to fix them.
This does not excuse China’s human rights abuses, but if you’re going to be abused either way, I can see why some would prefer to do it in a place with a rising standard of living and with a government that seems interested in improving.
From what I can tell, there are many issues that aren’t off limits to criticize on Chinese social media. In fact, recurring social media complaints are what spurred development of the hotline system.
It’s mainly complaints that are considered sensitive or destabilizing that are suppressed. This should sound familiar to those of us in the West. Germany actually goes farther by directly funding left-wing protest groups, as these are not considered destabilizing.
They have lower crime rates, more modern infrastructure, plentiful housing, lower cost of living (especially electricity), they're the place to be if you want to manufacture anything, affordable childcare, incredibly well educated doctors, many of the most incredible leisure and entertainment events in the world and they don't ban air conditioning.
So yeah, if I had to choose to live in a country where I had to toe the party line and bite my tongue when it came to political expression it would be China. At least they would be providing a high quality of life and a secure and peaceful society in exchange even if I had to deal with the negatives of being a minority in their country.
We have spent 20 years criticising China for the great firewall and control of social media, but now are adopting similar laws ourselves.
There is significant probability that China will have better quality of life than Europe in 2045 and that very little will be left of European liberties
