cross-posted from: https://slrpnk.net/post/11683421
The EU has quietly imposed cash limits EU-wide:
- €3k limit on anonymous payments
- €10k limit regardless (link which also lists state-by-state limits).
From the jailed¹ article:
An EU-wide maximum limit of €10 000 is set for cash payments, which will make it harder for criminals to launder dirty money.
It will also strip dignity and autonomy from non-criminal adults, you nannying assholes!
In addition, according to the provisional agreement, obliged entities will need to identify and verify the identity of a person who carries out an occasional transaction in cash between €3 000 and €10 000.
The hunt for “money launderers” and “terrorists” is not likely meaningfully facilitated by depriving the privacy of people involved in small €3k transactions. It’s a bogus excuse for empowering a police surveillance state. It’s a shame how quietly this apparently happened. No news or chatter about it.
¹ the EU’s own website is an exclusive privacy-abusing Cloudflare site inaccessible several demographics of people. Sad that we need to rely on the website of a US library to get equitable access to official EU communication.
update
The Pirate party’s reaction is spot on. They also point out that cryptocurrency is affected. Which in the end amounts to forced banking.
#warOnCash
Considering $us 1 has about the same spending power as €1, €3k covers room and board in Utrecht (the cheapest indexed city in NL) for about ~11 days:
https://aoprals.state.gov/web920/per_diem_action.asp?MenuHide=1&CountryCode=1101
And min wage is set at €2150 (take-home pay, so likely ~€3k gross). So yes, ⅓ of a month.
It’s a show stopper for me. I will not work for that amount because it’s a small fraction of my market value. That nixes Netherlands, Belgium, France, and Spain. I’m fine with tax declarations so the real limit for me working in the EU is the €10k limit. But that’s still a pay cut. And it limits me to Germany and perhaps a few other countries. So working full-time in Europe has essentially become a non-starter for me.
I’m not even sure what we’re trading it for. Illusion of privacy from your own state?
Reread the thread. Privacy from Google, Microsoft, Apple, Cloudflare, Paypal/Zittle, JP Morgan Chase, Visa, Mastercard, the telecoms, countless payment processors, as well as unwarranted gov. snooping.
And that just touches on the confidentiality aspect of privacy. Yet privacy is actually more about control.
I don’t know what those numbers are supposed to be used for, but they are certainly not to be used for estimating cost of living.
Per diem is an estimate of room and board, so indeed it’s a city-specific measure of cost of living. The minimum wage figures are a nationwide amount that doesn’t deviate too far from cost of living (targets a “living wage”), but it obviously has the bluntness of being fixed nationwide. But as you can see from the per diem variations, there are vast differences from one city to the next. The min wage is likely above living wages in Utrecht, but below living wages in Amsterdam.
Can you rent a flat anonymously? Doesn’t that have to be reported for tax anyway? All of examples I’m seeing here are flat out tax fraud heaven.
Can you rent a flat anonymously?
I would hope so, as far as the EU goes. If the EU were to force leases to be registered and to name all occupants, it would be absurdly over interventionalist and it would be a blatant privacy abuse. Belgium requires leases to be registered but then the registration process makes email address a required field. So if someone does not have an email address registration is not possible (despite registration being a legal obligation – would be interesting to see what happens in court when someone is prosecuted for not registering due to not having an email address). Apart from that, there is no rule that all occupants must be listed on the lease. And cash rent payments are legal.
It would also be surprisingly extreme if hotels were forced to collect identities of their guests. They likely do it anyway to know who to go after for damages, but a gov mandate would be excessively interventionalist.
