European Union = Soviet Union 2.0. Some of our readers might choke when reading this. Are we going too far when saying this? Let’s have a look at some hard facts.
Planned economy and taxpayers’ money waste
During the cold war the Western countries were laughing at the planned economy in the Soviet Union and proudly saying that THEY were living in a world of liberty where every entrepreneur decided on his own what he wanted to offer and how, in which quantity, and which processes he’d like to apply. The governments did not impose strict rules on it.
Today’s reality:
- Netherlands forbid advertising of flights, cruises and other travel options which might cause “damage to the environment” – is it not a governmental intervention into the freedom of doing business?
- The same Netherlands imposed a reduction of livestock on farmers due to high emissions of nitrogen and methane. The farmers should be compensated by € 615,7 billion provided by the European Union – the money of taxpayers which is flowing from each EU country into the EU budget. In other words, every EU citizen involuntary pays for killing Dutch cows, pigs and chicken. Is it not a governmental intervention into the freedom of doing business? Well, in the eyes of the EU politicians it will surely have less impact on the local environment if the meat is transported from Mercosur countries by ships producing CO2 emissions on their way from Latin America to Europe. And the cows and pigs should fart (sorry, produce their emissions) better in Latin America than in Europe.
- In Schiphol (airport of Amsterdam – one of the biggest in the EU) smokers are completely banned. There is no place in the whole airport area behind the security where you still can smoke. If you still want to smoke – go out, smoke outside, go again through the security checks. Isn’t it clear discrimination and exclusion of certain groups. It does not cost much to create (or rather to keep what was there before) just few smoker lounges in the area behind the security controls. If the discrimination happened based on other criteria (let’s just imagine, race or gender as an example), the human rights watch would be directly demonstrating in front of the airport building. Smokers do not interest anybody. They just pollute the environment. Maybe, they should be also banned to Mercosur?
- Germany imposes a modernization of real estate to the owners. It’s not the owners anymore who decide when and how they would like to modernize their properties. It’s imposed from the top. Nobody cares how the owner will find the necessary money for the work. Worst case – the owner could be expropriated if he does not follow… Welcome to taste a flavor of communism.
- Germany cheerfully offers € 2,2 billion in Africa. But if it is about the needs in the own country, there is no money: parental allowance should be shortened, increase of BaföG (German state-funded financial aid program to students and trainees) to match the inflation is planned to be skipped, higher retirement age is in discussion, some medical services included in the basic medical insurance are to be cancelled and so on. – Squeezing the own population at max, while spending generously abroad. Taxpayer’s Black Book lists all the governmental projects where the taxpayers’ money was simply burned without any sense.
This list can be extended; there are around 100 cases just in Germany coming on top every year and mentioned in the Black Book. Other countries in the EU don’t do much better.
Democracy towards democratorship
The reader could reply that we still live in a democracy while the Soviet Union had dictatorial traces controlling the citizens, restricting their rights and imposing a certain way of life. A real dictatorship!
Well, the democracy in the EU is turning more and more into a dictatorship as well. But as long as it is approved from the top, the restrictions are allowed and still happen under the umbrella of “democracy”. So let’s call it for the moment democratorship. Wonna proof? Let’s go.
In an interview to Spiegel back in 1999, Jean-Claude Juncker (at that time president of the European Commission) said the following:
“We make a decision, put it out there, and wait a while to see what happens. If there is no major outcry or uprising—because most people don’t even grasp what has been decided—then we move forward, step by step, until there is no turning back.”
Citizen exodus
Due to more and more restrictive politic which interferes the liberty of entrepreneurship, many businesses and entrepreneurs are living nowadays their countries. In Germany, for example, around 270.000 Germans leave their country every year. Surely, some of them cannot find their way abroad and return. But the net exit of Germans (the difference between those leaving and those returning) is still -80.000 year over year.
Government pretending that the budgets are empty and throwing taxpayers’ money into senseless projects at the same time (s. Black Book of Taxpayers) feels that more and more taxpayers leave and the budgets are indeed filling up not so efficiently. Instead of applying creativity to find the ways to make their countries more attractive to the HNWI and successful businesses, they rather invest their efforts into finding ways how to prevent the increasing exit.
Exit taxes
The result: exit taxes which are introduced in more and more countries within EU. And if in the past, the exit tax was imposed only if you were owning shares of a corporation on a fictious sale of those shares, the new exit tax would also take into account your personal assets, like cryptocurrency, stocks and ETF etc. Before you get the blessing of the tax authorities that you can leave in peace, they can estimate the taxes based on a fictitious sale of your assets. Actually, you are taxed on unrealized gains. You do not have them in reality, but you are taxed “as if”. For example, this is going to be the case in Netherlands as well starting 2027.
Spain does not even need to impose the exit tax. If you leave the country, you have to prove the new tax residency elsewhere. And pay attention not to have it in one of the countries on the blacklist of Spanish authorities. The tax certificate from there will not be recognized, and you will remain the Spanish tax resident, even if living abroad.
AMLA
At the same time, there are more and more controls of the own citizens established within the EU. One of the last – AMLA. Anti-money-laundering authority. The new European super-authority controlling banks, insurances, financial advisors and others having to do with finances in one or another way. Surely, the protection against money laundering and against terrorism is extremely important nowadays.
The issue is: what starts today as suppression of money laundering, can end up creating exact profiles of each EU citizen as a basis for capital levy, property levy and additional taxation.
Already today, AMLA wants financial institutions to register a lot about each of their clients: nationality, place of birth, profession, industry, origin of the money, expected transactions, political functions, ownership of company shares and much more.
All financial institutions are already preparing to work with AMLA. However, many law offices, law associations, insurance companies etc. raise alarms: the bureaucracy increases significantly. There are sometimes questionnaires of AMLA with 114 pages of instructions, to be filled in per client.
Data striptease and AI
The data striptease is getting nearly limitless. Law associations talk about possible erosion of their obligation of confidentiality. Citizens will not be seen as free property owners, account owners, but as a generalized suspected thread.
Banks are already preparing to the regulation pressure and become extremely cautious. They react by implementing AI observation solutions which check any activity on any account. This creates a kind of automated suspicion logic. Any suspicious activity, like an unusually high transaction volume, a conversion from cryptocurrency to fiat money, a payment to other country – and the AI raises alarm. The checks are invisible to citizens, but suddenly you get a request to explain the money movement. Where is the money from? Do you have proofs? Contracts? Tax assessments? And if the explanation is still not sufficient for the bank, the case is communicated to AMLA. Your account is frozen or closed. Suddenly, you cannot pay your rent, your supermarket purchases, your bills… And get no explanation from the bank.
Do you see any parallels to the Soviet Union? Maybe, Marx had right in his Communist Manifesto: “A spectre is haunting Europe—the spectre of communism.” But now it is just hiding behind the name of democracy?
Successful people do not wait until “there is no turning back”. They prepare their plan B, plan C etc. well before they could need it. It is too late to start jumping around when the borders are closed and your accounts are frozen. You need to have an opportunity to escape well in advance. And there are sufficient opportunities in the world. Just don’t wait too long:
