It’s the easy way out imo, instead of employing expensive labour to actually catch criminals, and somehow society has been convinced that it’s ok.
I do think it’s a gradient and not black and white. Retail security scanners - ok fine, cameras everywhere - why?
if you usually keep 10k of cash in your pocket, you're probably someone who's not scared by criminals.
And I only know two types of people with those characteristics: corrupted cops and other criminals.
EDIT: it is actually 3 kinds, the third one being taxi drivers, which in my country are mostly low-level criminals.
Remember earlier this year when people in Lebanon had to hold bank managers at gun point to try and withdraw money from their own accounts so they could buy basic goods as the economy collapsed?
The "CaSh hAZ nO PuRpOSe eXCePt fOR cRImE" crowd in this comment section have massive blind spots due to a general ignorance of monetary history. I'm not surprised politicians are laughing while taking advantage of it.
https://www.occrp.org/en/the-pandora-papers/pandora-papers-r...
"Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky rode to power on pledges to clean up the Eastern European country, but the Pandora Papers reveal he and his close circle were the beneficiaries of a network of offshore companies, including some that owned expensive London property."
It is amazing how many hn users appreciate their bank and government to keep track of their purchases and hope more people will become like them - just because they can't imagine buying anything worth 10k.
When even HN is in full swing anti cash - and with current inflation rates 10k probably won't even purchase a propper bike in the near future - we will enter dark times for any privacy loving individual.
To preserve the status quo, you need more regulation to protect the big companies (even if it looks like it's protecting you from them) and you need to kill anything that it is not inside your circle. (ie: trying to make a $10 transaction with imaginary math token to buy a coffee from your bohemian neighbor? -> 10 years jail!)
It's all way downhill from here. You are welcome. You can also come to South East Asia and you can deal crypto/cash/ewallets. Do work without taxes/social security or any of that shit for various "enterprises" here that are doing real useful shit but do not have the competency (ie: hotels, accounting, some translation guy needed something, etc...) Life is cheaper here, and pay is relatively good, so you'll be able to make it.
Honestly if GDPR pisses off Americans, it probably means it hit on the nail.
Here's mine: "Freedom" is what you have in the absence of coercion. The freest state of being is being the last person alive on Earth. Freedom gives you nothing, because if freedom gave you something then someone else would have been coerced into giving it to you. Freedom also gives you the chance to do everything you need to do to survive and thrive.
In a society, we necessarily give up some freedom because my freedom to have stuff is threatened by your freedom to take it when I'm not looking (you would not have had that freedom in isolation). In more recent times, we have started to give up freedom in exchange for security, too, and everyone thinks that is worthwhile, although we disagree on how far you should go. The US military budget and all the government healthcare programs in the world are this kind of trade.
That's what GDPR is: it's a trade of freedom for the security of European sovereignty and European business (notice how I didn't mention privacy or user security). It's not about the "little guy" vs the "big corporations," the big corporations have plenty of money and lawyers they can use to comply. The people that all of these laws hit are the startups and small companies. This philosophy is why there are no European unicorns. Europe as a whole has given up the freedom to "start up" without compliance with a huge number of rules and regulations (or money to pay bribes). Uniquely, GDPR goes a step further and tries to impose this burden on everyone in the world, not just people and companies that have signed up for the European project.
In the European worldview, there seem to be a lot of "rights" exemplified by the UN human rights charter. These include things that nobody had 25 years ago, like "the right to high-speed internet." These "rights" and "freedoms" really aren't freedom: someone has to pay to provide them at the end of the day. For those of us across the pond, these are weird trades: you voluntarily pay incredibly high tax rates and huge administrative burdens for these supposed "rights," some of which look like luxuries to us, and feel as though they don't make you any less free.
This is precious! The US has imposed their views on the internet for the past 30 years. How is GDPR unique? The difference is once again that GDPR is favorable to EU citizens (because yeah, GDPR only applies to EU citizens) and your laws (Cloud Act, DMCA, and basically all your copyright laws that stole us our fair use rights and allow for tech behemoths to grow and exist) just favor big companies, and only them. Don’t confuse freedom and extreme liberalism.
> Europe as a whole has given up the freedom to "start up" without compliance with a huge number of rules and regulations
Yes. This is a good thing. The end doesn’t justify the means. We still have unicorns and well doing companies.
> notice how I didn't mention privacy or user security).
Well, your mistake.
1. It applies to everyone, with no thought of company residency or size.
2. It applies to all forms of "personal information" and "processing," defined ridiculously broadly.
This means that the following things are technically illegal by the text of the law:
* Storing the email address of an EU-based customer of your consulting shop on a private server not in the EU, and (God forbid) using it to send a sales email to that person.
* Storing the IP address of an abusive user of a SaaS website (in order to block them) if that user happens to be in the EU and your server is not.
Should these be illegal?
I have no problem with the GDPR that you wish you had, by the way. My problem is with the one that exists. It neither stops the wholesale harvesting of information nor actually benefits privacy.
So definitely - not pain.
Digital Services Act - great
Chat control and all the other pushes for increased surveillance - terrible, don't these guys know history?
There is no need to applaud/reject them all.
> I assume GDPR is very popular here despite making software development a huge pain
If it creates a huge pain, then the data probably wasn't handled in a respectful way in the first place.
GDPR has a few good ideas about encrypting data buried in its ~170 articles, but most companies were doing that already because data breaches are expensive.
The rest of GDPR is about (essentially) trade protectionism: they want you using European servers to store and process data. They want that data in easy reach of other EU laws and enforcement agencies.
I would go so far as to say that most startups which don't do 100% of their compute within European borders are likely non-compliant with GDPR by the law as written.
Edit: To be clear, I would have no problem with the level of trade protectionism if it only applied to companies that do $X million of business in the EU. That's how every other data residency law is set up. If you want to force series E+ companies through weird hurdles, have fun.
What personal data do the startups require that's hard to rein?
This likely affects a number of people that is so small, that it's irrelevant. Not sure it makes sense to say that such a law that effects a tiny number of individuals is penalizing everyone.
No. Just no.
Rights are not a for-profit balance sheet, such as when Google support provides crappy service, or ghosts you, in the name of profit.
Rights are rights. Entrenched, untouchable, everlasting. And each loss affects us all, for the next right taken, is from you.
Telling people they must use private enterprise, a third party and pay a fee, to conduct commerce between them, is a fascist act.
And guess what. 30 years from now, when that 10k is like 500, what then?
Because limits like these are never raised.
the right to use large amounts of cash is a fictional right.
By forcing the use of 3rd parties, to be able to trade, for people to sell goods they craft and create, there is an abridgement of multiple rights.
This will be overturned.
The Cold War days seem so nostalgic; it seems there was a shared camaraderie between Europeans and Americans as "Westerners", all on the same team, etc. Now as an American I feel increasingly like Europe and the U.S. are drifting apart, and policies like these are additional wedges driving the split.
Inflation will take care of that. Also, you can't convert that money to Gold or Crypto and a house is too damn expensive to buy. So someone with 20k Euros will end up with 2k euros in value.
There are many non-constitutional rights (such as this one) that are not everlasting and laws can also be adapted.
I really don't understand the value of your post as it sounds like speculation based on wrong preconditions.
Removing rights can be a good thing.
Shall we bring back the right to have slaves? Shall we bring back the right to murder those we don't like? Removing those rights from people has only made the world a better place.
As you say, rights are rights.
Removing those rights from people has only made the world a better place... ...
If it’s illegal then it’s just going to go off the books, at a small cost to taxes and accuracy of records, for some people; but for others it will force them to end this traditional practice, and I can imagine that might cause hardship.
But yeah, Russians under the bed, sure.
They will succeed? With or without this limit, you're fucked.
You want to avoid problems? Get involved in local politics, or start a media publication or literally any one of a thousand things you could do right now which is going to be a lot easier then "become an off the grid fugitive dissident".
It isn't as easy as you are saying. If it was this easy, there would be no issues, no poverty, no refuge etc.
I guess you would have an underground economy for a while by those that are willing to be old-cash only, but good luck paying tax and other items that require the new currency/notes.
We as society are spending literally billions to make our cities and infrastructure accessible for people with disabilities. Their number also very small, but we decided it is well relevant.
With medical breakthroughs increasing the age of life too, this is only likely to increase with time
That's not how we deal with minorities
Citation required.
It would be like asking me to prove that not many people have done the calculation of 15435 divided by 12.5 in their life. I can just tell you from basic logical thinking, that it's not likely that many people have.
A lot more people have used large quantities of cash for non-criminal activity. The few times I have used huge quantities of cash, it has been for stupid reasons: someone doesn't take credit cards or bank transfers, and won't trust a check until it clears, so it's easier to just use a pile of cash. By the way, I keep plenty of cash around so I can still pay for stuff even if the internet goes out regionally.
Also note that this does not really stop criminals or rich people from moving money around: there are plenty of ways around these laws.
1. Isn’t easy to provide provisions for.(which is how cash payments can be made legal). 2. Doesn’t require criminal activity in Europe.
I think a lot of people are thinking about this with the US tax system in the back of their minds.
The tax system in many European countries is very different. We pay WAY more income tax. That means that the incentives for tax avoidance are much greater. As a result tax avoidance is a European pastime.
I think that a more transparent financial system is a great thing to strive for. Less financial privacy is is likely to lead to. 1. less money going toward lobbying. 2. Less tax avoidance 3. Less hidden wealth. 4. Less/more expensive money laundering.
It might someday even lead to successful taxation of wealth instead of income.
That will change with this law, finally. Or put them out of business. That's a good thing, don't you agree?
> so I can still pay for stuff even if the internet goes out regionally
If you having to pay transactions >10k frequently enough that network outages block you, I'd wager you're doing exactly the kind of something this law should prevent.
> there are plenty of ways around these laws.
Sure, but now there's an instrument in the toolbox which wasn't there before. Or are you arguing that outlaws gonna outlaw no matter what, so why even try?
Or here's a novel idea: Try not to support coercive laws and rules that seek to stamp out the possibility of people having unorthodox or somewhat unusual voluntary payment preferences, just because you don't personally like them.
>If you having to pay transactions >10k frequently enough that network outages block you, I'd wager you're doing exactly the kind of something this law should prevent.
Because somebody has cash and payment needs, or levels of preparedness that your own narrow thinking doesn't digest isn't a good reason to automatically assume that they're probably a criminal who should be targeted by invasive and authoritarian controls. Frankly, it's something of a sick mentality to immediately treat with suspicion of criminal activity those who support or personally prefer conducting their financial affairs differently from how you do.
As for your final comment, People wanting to transact privately aren't nuts and bolts to be removed from the scene by some nasty, dirty little toolbox of edicts by politicians who regularly protect corruption on larger scales. It's absurdly malicious, or at least plain ignorant to think that way. There are much more fundamental and obvious reasons underpinning the fight against parasitic, invasive financial laws. Read a little about both modern politics in much of the world and modern history even in Europe itself to at least slightly understand the basis for resisting these rules on cash.
Germany initially wanted there to be 10,000EUR notes for this very reason.
There are a whole lot of people there that want to pay cash for everything, including things like cars and houses.
Moreover there are some countries (like Germany) where people routinely use a lot of cash to (say) buy a car or a business.
It's actually pretty common to need to buy things over $10k. It's pretty common for vendors to not take checks. It's pretty common to not have high enough credit limits to cover these types of purchases.
There still isn't any way to do this other than cash.
It's unusual to carry around this much cash every day, but it's totally normal to carry this much cash sometimes for specific large purchases.
That's a very USA-centric comment. Checks are virtually unheard of in Europe and no one would pay so much money in cash. You would do a wire transfer or a card payment for that.
Payments in cash to a professional from a French citizen have been capped at 1000€ in France for years with virtually no impact. I have never seen or heard of someone attempting to use that much cash.
But, > money laundering doesn’t work like that. You don’t have large cash payments, you have a ton of smaller cash payments.
> big banks launder money, have better oversight there instead of restricting cash
Those $5 and $10 bills getting laundered started from a $50K transaction getting laundered.
Just imagine one criminal say's to another:
Sorry i cant take those 15k euros, it's illegal didn't you know that???
Yes i buy drugs and sell them...i don't think the mafia has anything against that money, they will then just give it to the Vatican bank to wash it.
If you really don't understand that this i just a excuse....
I seriously don't understand what point you're attempting to make here. This legislation will make it harder for people to simply launder money. Yes, you are right that it won't stop people from complicatedly laundering money but that's not the point of the legislation.
Too bad eh? But schengen..and thinking about it switzerland too, hey criminals! You are once again welcomed to give us (switzerland) the money, because you cant use it somewhere else....what a excellent idea.
>I seriously don't understand what point you're attempting to make here.
I don't understand why try to defend a law that is as effective as german power production.
So you accept that your tangent is not relevant?
I feel like you're not actually interested in this specific subject but rather just have an anti-EU axe to grind. That's a tiresome way to be and I would suggest you try to hold in your urges and stay on subject. There's plenty of time and space to have these discussions but railroading any discussion about the EU into angry Farage-esqe diatribe is the domain of demagogues.
SEPA transfers take 30 seconds to clear.
> You give somebody money and get a car
or you give them the money and get back nothing, because "what money are you talking about?"
> thats the safest transaction for both sides
that's literally the less safe!
> Are you going to wire somebody 10k+ for a car you can't have instantly?
If you are buying something worth more than 10k and you need it now, something's obviously not right.
Keep in mind that to actually have more than 10k cash immediately available it means you only deal with cash and keep them somewhere they are less safe than a bank or cost you a lot more than a bank.
Which, again, is already very suspicious.
And no, it's not about regular people, median account balance in Germany is less than 5.000 euros but suddenly there's a need to pay 10k in cash to buy cars that you need right now and you casually had the money in your pocket, because it's a common thing to do.
I call it BS!
not entirely true, there are several countries in europe in which a SEPA transfer is shown in the beneficiary the next day, the most famous one being Italy. Italy also being the one with specific laws against mafia and terrorism, therefore such transfer would require you to add some additional papers.
> > thats the safest transaction for both sides > that's literally the less safe!
well so it's a bank transfer because once the money has been sent you cannot get it back, the bank acts only on specific cases.
there's literally a million of cases of scams via ebay or similar that involved bank transfers and for which the bank was just "sorry".
> If you are buying something worth more than 10k and you need it now, something's obviously not right.
you are confusing "out of the ordinary" with "not right" and i'd like to remind you our legal systems in EU are still based on "innocent until proven guilty" principle.
In the UK you have to register with HMRC under money laundering supervision regulations if you are a business or trader that takes in cash payments over 10,000 euro.
I’d prefer to still have the option of a cash payment, even if it’s one I’d rarely if ever utilize.
Just a bank transfer.
Which is not free, anonymous, and require a third party.
Can't argue against the anonymous part of it but when the transaction is between me, the seller and the bank, I'm not sure why it would need to be anonymous.
Regarding anonymous part, there are some people life refuge/dissidents who might wanna hide their expenditure?
Also, I don't wanna give any data access to government because I don't trust them simply.
sine intelligentia non sunt secreta
I believe that by anonymous you meant secret.
It's not anonymous, the person who sold the item already learned a lot of things about you and you about the buyer, including your faces and what was the transaction about, which is often more than enough to identify people.
What difference does it makes if the bank knows about the transaction?
And why you wanna hide it from the bank?
There's probably a good reason, but it raises more questions than it's worth, so the reason must be veeeeeery good.
Buying a car with a bank transfer is a great way to get scammed by someone selling the same car multiple times.
The guy using a fake app to pretend that they didn't receive a wire transfer isn't going to end up in a fight, the guy robbing someone of their cash might.
Not only that, bank transfers do not protect you from robbery. You can be forced to make a wire transfer, just as you can be forced to hand over cash.
There are also instant transfers that cost around 1€ of fixed commissions. They complete in about ten seconds after which the other side can check their account and the money will be there.
And finally you can use a money order if you really don't want to do a bank transfer and prefer paper.
I wouldn't know, given that I am European.
> The buyer has a bank transfer id and both parts can check the status with their bank.
Generally there is no quick and easy way to verify that the beneficiary has actually received their funds.
>There are also instant transfers that cost around 1€ of fixed commissions. They complete in about ten seconds after which the other side can check their account and the money will be there.
So what? There are lots of banks which do not support instant transfers, sometimes instant transfer money just doesn't show up instantly and there's very little visibility that end-users would have into that.
you, if you transferred the money.
the seller, if you did not.
Another common scam involves the buyer using a fake bank app to pay for goods, seller sees the money transferred right in front of them but never receives it.
Anyone involved in the construction business.
But yeah, if you're a wage slave in the tertiary sector, you're very unlikely to realize how and why cash is necessary or even a matter of survival for a large class of workers out there.
If you're paying for a big-ish shop, e.g. over 100chf, the major supermarkets won't blink if you proffer a 1k note because that's how the older generation get their pension. I've personally paid for about 20chf worth of stuff with a 200 note.
Suggesting laborious bureaucratic transactions over several days removes this common occurrence in that world, along with at many other gatherings of specialists - antiques, pedigree animals, whatever
If I send a 10k payment to someone via bank transfer it's in their bank account in 10 seconds. Maybe you live in a country where there are much harsher restrictions?
Scenario two - Person A gives Person B $10,000 in cash for their classic car at the car show. Person A leaves, and Person B could give a shit about anything to do with Person A as soon as they are out of sight.
I would not feel at ease walking around with 10k€
In fact I would find it extremely suspicious if someone told me it's their preferred method to get paid. I would totally expect a mugging.
I do myself all higher priced purchases in cash, even go to the bank and withdraw the money to go to the shop next door. For the same reason I use a VPN. My provider and my bank have no right know what I do or not do.
Would a certified check so the same trick?
Cash can be faked too
Cash can be faked but it has good anticounterfeiting features, unlike checks.
It's probably a good idea to have some reasonable amount of cash on hand for times when electronic payments aren't available for whatever reason (natural disasters, for example).
Americans should consider having a working bank sector.
My biggest cash purchase ever was a monitor 20 years ago for less than 10% of this limit.
I don't even have cash in my wallet any more, and I don't know anyone who has.
I have never payed more than say $3k in cash. It just doesn’t make sense to do so.
Privacy shouldn’t exist for financial transactions. It makes it easier to launder money or hide wealth. There is no other use for “dark” financial transactions.
There is no tyranny in making finances of everyone transparent. It doesn’t force anyone to make different choices about WHAT to do with their money. It makes what people pay for auditable.
This makes a very tenuous assumption that government is always justified in any money it seeks to take away or trace, or that nobody ever has a good and even moral reason for hiding their money from a hungry state.
That's an awfully narrow view of reality or even the long history of governments becoming downright predatory.
Yes, privacy absolutely should exist for financial transactions. It's flat out naive, or elitist and authoritarian to believe that the state deserves a constant right to know where every penny you have goes and how to confiscate it whenever it pleases.
Especially on bullion items, there's very narrow margins, and I'd expect a high transaction-reversal risk (i. e. demanding refunds or charging back if the price of gold dropped after purchase).
In practice, this means that many dealers will charge a higher price for using non-cash payment systems. At least in the US, some dealers will even be explicitly cash-only.
Six one-ounce gold coins would get you over USD/EUR 10,000, and isn't that exotic of a purchase in that context.
A documented payment system might be viable for that scenario, if it was completely zero-cost to merchants and consumers, although some dealers might still not want the reversal risks. However, conjuring that would require major state intervention.
Let me quote someone smart on privacy topic:
> Arguing that you don’t care about the right to privacy because you have nothing to hide is no different than saying you don’t care about free speech because you have nothing to say.
Cash = privacy. I dont want to get stripped from privacy by anyone for any reason.
You are not allowed to hide such transactions by law in the country where I am from.
I'd rather say: the EU is penalizing a very few people who usually pay €10k cash.
People that legitimately need to make cash payments for more than 10k represent probably less than 1% of the population. And I'd be surprised even most people that can do it would do it.
So?
It doesn't affect anyone. No one in Europe uses cash for anything more expensive than maybe 200 euros. Of course in some countries like Sweden and the Netherlands no one uses cash any more at all, and almost all ATM machines have been removed. I believe cash-only places are now outlawed. The reason for this is because of the small stores run by immigrants that does you-never-know-what with the money you give them.
> People pay taxes in order to have their bureaucrats serve them by creating a safe financial and social environment
Safe in this case means eliminating those shady cash-only stores. Here in Europe the cash-only stores (nowadays outlawed) were mostly run by immigrants. We're talking pizzerias, barber shops, fast food trucks, corner cafes. Places where a lot of cash is laundered.
God riddance to those places.
That is absurd. People regularly pay for things like new computer with cash.
And family member was buying a flat recently - seller wanted cash, so transaction took place in a bank. Cash was withdrawn (around 90 000 euro?), exchanged when sale was notarized and deposited.
As I understand, this would not be legal anymore?
Really sounds like your family member accidentally helped launder money.
(and obviously, seller wanted cash) (and it is possible that I misunderstood something)
And I would do the same - just to avoid worrying that maybe transfer is not going to arrive or get reverted or something (that is 100% hypothetical, I do own any housing).
So I am mildly unhappy that it gets outlawed.
In the real (non-criminal) world you would have a conveyancing solicitor handle it, and he would take care of the contract, the transfer, checking for liens, stamp duty etc.
How do you even know the seller owns the flat when you do everything in cash?
I expect that they also checked at least basic status of that property and that it had no mortgage, encumbrances etc recorded in the land register.
I bet that bank also recorded that transactions.
It would have worked just as well in you example transaction where both parties were in a bank. In my example it worked by exchanging this piece of paper while at the notary.
(This is my understanding on how most of the house sales work in Italy)
Doesn't make sense unless you've worded what happened incorrectly by accident.
I would be really anxious if I would be selling something worth 80% of my wealth.
Maybe the entire thing was hilariously pointless? But neither buyer nor seller was expert on this stuff.
(unless seller was hiding really well and it was some 6D chess)
In my one visit to the Netherlands I had to use cash because small places wouldn't take Visa/MC because it was too expensive for them. They had no problem accepting cash tho.
Which Netherlands have you been to?
Ethnic restaurants in Amsterdam, say around De Pijp, often force payment in cash.
Are you sure you really want to pay for items at a 'coffee shop' in Amsterdam by card?
They're legal stores, not some heavily armed pot dealer in an alley. Why not?
Tbh I didn't even think of trying the legal weed when I was in NL.
You mean Mastercard's brand?
> Businesses in Denmark and the EU may not charge a fee for your payment with Dankort, Visa/Dankort, Visakort, MasterCard and other ordinary payment cards issued in the EU.
> Company cards are exempt from the ban. Shops may charge a fee if you use a payment card issued to a company or public organisation.
https://taenk.dk/privatoekonomi/gode-raad/gebyrer-paa-betali...
LOL, you have clearly never had to build a house.
Or if the banks all decide to introduce very high fees for transactions?
Sold a used car just last year, got 2700€ in cash for it.
Much easier than doing a bank transfer (which takes 1 day to arrive, if you're unlucky, and can be rolled back), or a paypal transfer (which can be undone) or anything else between to individuals.
For b2c or b2b I agree, nobody pays that much in cash, but for individuals transacting with one another, it still seems the easiest option.
In Europe do you not have cashier's checks? That's what we use in the US for something like a used car, since most people don't want to carry around a car's worth of cash, even for a short period of time.
You go to the bank, and get a check drawn on the bank for the amount. The person receiving it can call the bank to verify it's valid if they don't trust it. And if you get robbed (or lose it) you can have the check cancelled.
You don't need to visit the bank, just phone. There's no reason you should fall for a scam like that.
However I have received them from HMRC for refunds.
It's a cashier's check.
They're not used frequently -- really only for things like closing a bank account, buying a used car, putting down an apartment deposit and first month's rent, that kind of thing.
I haven't written a personal check in close to 20 years either, but I've certainly needed to use a cashier's check a handful of times!
cashier checks are equivalent to cash and follow the same limits.
https://www.euronews.com/next/2022/10/26/eu-pushes-for-banks...
where did the buyer kept the money?
> which takes 1 day to arrive
you're saying it like it really makes a difference or like cash is safer and easier to handle.
How much time does it take to deposit the money to your bank account?
Is your time free?
Do you like to lose money and time so that other people can use cash coming from who knows where?
> but for individuals transacting with one another, it still seems the easiest option.
back to question #1 again: what kind of people keep thousands of euros at home?
I know no one who does it.
You notice it most when buying a house and you sit awkwardly in a room with the seller waiting for the money to be transferred so you can leave with the keys.
Santander to HSBC is a pretty slow one for some reason.
I’ve had some slow transfers from HSBC to Barclays too.
In Sweden it took about an hour for Handelsbanken to Nordea, so I’m comfortable saying that there’s some kind of threshold that’s universally accepted for large bank transfers during working hours.
Bizarre how the EU is penalizing everyone in order to 'make it harder for criminals to launder dirty money'.
People pay taxes in order to have their bureaucrats serve them by creating a safe financial and social environment, not to have them assume everyone is a criminal/terrorist and greatly impede access to their assets based on that logic.
The EU (formerly the 'common market') has become an authoritarian, autocratic monster.