Brussels

A few weeks ago, I caught up with Braulster again, and I asked him what had changed.

We talk about developments in EU regulations so unworkable that Brussels is telling member states not to enforce them before they've even come into force.

We talk about German energy policy, a chancellor polling at just 15%, and who is pressing charges against people who call him a liar online, and a coalition where every sensible idea dies at the hands of the party that just suffered its worst election result in living memory.

German democracy is in crisis.

My main takeaways from this chat are regulatory risk in Europe is becoming unpriceable.

The EU's methane regulation carries fines of up to twenty percent of global turnover for reporting obligations that are physically impossible to meet.

Brussels' answer is to tell member states not to enforce.

But unenforced but live law leaves companies with a liability and structurally higher costs of capital.

Officials in Rome say that they're going to use their navy to escort their merchant fleet in the Red Sea, fearful... that these ships will be attacked by the Iranian Bakhtuthis.

Italy's prime minister says that she's not going to wait for Brussels or other European nations to step up here and protect their interests.

She will take the lead.

That is in no small part because about 40% of Italy's trade moves through that Suez Canal.

And I said, well, I sort of almost joked, um, frivolously.

I said, um, well, if you got on a really top Brussels based PR campaign, um, uh, public affairs team, we got a whole bunch of experts behind it.

We wrote reports and issue press release and work around the clock.

Um, We could do it.

And that school is basically really, that was like a transformation place or like a... years that it's like in between being a student and an artist so you have like amazing lessons.

I was studying with my professor Augustin Dumais and at the same time you have many opportunities to perform also with orchestras and on big stages like Beaux-Arts in Brussels and at the same time like I've always participated in many competitions since I was studying in Amsterdam So because of my competition success, I've been offered many important concerts and debuts with orchestras in Germany and Italy the last year.

And yeah, I think for me, it has been quite gradual.

But of course, still, the last year has been a big change.

... debating people from Reform and things like that.

So, uh, my, my, my lore is essentially working in Brussels, Vienna on human rights issues at the EU, EU level.

Um, uh, so that was my entire passion, my skill and academic background.

And then I basically saw Brexit as a threat to human rights.

Because I was working in Brussels for an NGO that really focused on the Gulf States of Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, UAE, Qatar, um, and how the UK and Western countries in general were selling weapons to Saudi Arabia, which were being used to bomb hospitals and schools in Yemen.

We were training Bahraini police officers who were then going back to Bahrain and torturing human rights offenders.

So I, I, I saw basically the EU at least trying to push back on some of that.

But beware, as the European politician notes, there is a trick.

The strict environmental rules of Brussels actually work like hidden darts.

They eat the commercial profits of developing countries.

Europe does the work of the climate, but unloads the costs on its partners.

Staying in Brussels, the rules on the responsibility of artificial intelligence change.

If an autonomous software does a serious damage, the legal and financial burden falls directly on the accounts of those who have developed it.

Also

There's already sabre rattling in Canada about that.

the Brussels boogie men, women, and you can hear some of the Brexit arguments being rehashed, but I think this is a much lower or lesser relationship than purely economic, and so we'll have to say.

Economic

insecurity makes sense.

Aha, I think I would risk a little sporting flutter that you don't go there at all.

Not go to Mawson's? No, sir, by that day you will be the business manager of the Franco Midland Hardware Company Limited with 134 branches in the towns and villages of France, not counting one in Brussels and one in San Remo.

This took my breath away.

I never heard of it, said I.

It pushes the innovation somewhere else.

But Brussels

is making much smarter moves on trade.

While Washington defaults to export bans and tariffs under stress, the European Union just reached a massive free trade agreement with the Philippines.