Energy prices? Unit labour costs? Pisa Scores? VC Investments as percentage of GDP? Number of IPOs? Taxation of Income? Punctuality of public transport?
As far as I understand, the VW Amarok is based on the Ford Ranger, the VW T7 Transporter (their Commercial vehicle) is based on the Ford Transit Custom. The T7 Multivan and California are still built on their own VW platform.
It seems a lot of blame is put on regulation when there is also a lack of a "can do attitude" or a sense or urgency that procedures that might have been okay to take a couple of years in the past have to happen much more quickly nowadays.
The lack of can-do-attitude can be explained by regulations, imho. After you've seen the first few trivial things take ages because somebody has yet to stamp form 23b in triplicate and hand in 1k pages of environmental impact assessment, noise studies and socio-economic impact predictions, you loose the belief that you can do anything here. After you've been stonewalled by a few bureaucrats over a missing comma in their particular interpretation of subsection b12 subparagraph d footnote 11, you start going about your days looking for excuses not do to any work as well. After several people have cited "liability" and "legal risk" as arguments against babysitting their neighours cat for a day, you might start fearing that nebulous liability thing yourself.
The whole culture is poisoned by regulations imho.
Previous poster got a point though. Yes regulations are ridiculous thanks to every German and every EU government piling on more crap.
Zero argument there. 100% true.
But its also true that things CAN get through regulations. 1000 pages of environmental impact assessment takes time. But it doesn't take years. Things can be done in parallel if someone actually gave a fuck.
Sadly no one does because by the time anything starts 2-3 new governments/administrators/mayors have been in place. And people don't like to work on things someone else already took credit for.
> 1000 pages of environmental impact assessment takes time. But it doesn't take years.
Oh, but it does. For example, if there is a suspected hamster population, you need at least one year of data gathering to assess local population state. And then you need a resettlement plan for the hamsters. This alone takes at least a year because of the data gathering, and of course you need an expensive and busy hamster expert to do the gathering and writing.
Oh, and btw, that's just for permitting. After you get your permit, you have to have those hamsters professionally resettled, observed and documented.
You are right that it is theoretically still possible to get stuff done. Prime example is Elon Musks Gigafactory in Brandenburg, where there was enough political and economic pressure to get it done. But that is a rare thing to happen, and lots of those steps you have to do are out of your control and up to some bureaucrat who is of course "very busy" and "cannot at this time give an estimate as to when the permit might be completed". It is just hard to convey how bad it really is...
I'm glad for any initiative that leads to less crap reaching the markets that is either dangerous or has a shelf life of a few months before breaking down. The EU as a whole will become even less competitive if we don't re-gain some level of quality awareness and place quality at the center of the things we consume and produce.
This should not be understood as anti-China but should apply to all products on the EU market. China has some well-respected quality-conscious consumer brands (e.g. Hifiman, Fenix Lights, DJI, Anker, Govee...) but it seems a lot of smaller companies there put easy revenue over any concerns for quality.
I want to emphasise your latter point - I have a Lenovo work laptop, Fenix head torches and various other high quality Chinese products. Any company selling into the EU needs to meet the QC and regulatory requirements, and many well known Chinese brands already do so, and so their products naturally sell at a premium to the cheapest options. A little more thought in purchasing by buyers would go a long way in helping the commissions efforts to reduce harmful goods.
It is even worse for the planet when scammers keep flooding the market with low-quality products, a majority of people become accustomed to low quality and short replacement cycles, and the minority who cares about quality and product safety has to go through the returns process today but has no high quality options left anymore tomorrow as there is no longer a market for them.
The stuff on aliexpress is not low quality. I mean, some for sure is if you look for the cheapest items, but there is plenty of solid quality stuff there as well.
