> Sweden has ordered the expansion of a key power interconnector to Denmark to be halted after failing to reach agreement with the European Commission over bottleneck fees.
The interconnect already exists as Konti-Scan 1 and 2. Konti-Scan Connect, when built, will replace them.
> Bottleneck revenues, or capacity fees as they are also called, arise when there are large price differences between electricity areas, often between electricity area 2 (southern Norrland) and 3 (Svealand and northern Götaland). The price differences arise when the capacity in the network is not sufficient to transfer the electricity surplus in the north to the south where the supply is too small. When Svenska kraftnät handles this, revenues arise for the authority corresponding to the price differences.
In the UK, which has a single electricity market for the whole country, we have curtailment fees. There is insufficent grid capacity between Scotland and England. When lots of power in England is needed, Scottish wind farms could provide it, but the grid can't deliver it. So the grid operator pays twice -- a curtailment fee to the wind farms to ask them to dump their energy, and a fee to English power stations to switch on the gas turbines and provide the power England needs that it can't get from the bottlenecked grid connection to Scotland.
I have the suspicion that Sweden fears having to pay the equivalent of curtailment fees to Denmark. The EU agreed that wouldn't have to happen... but the EU still wants to constrain Sweden into using its collected bottleneck fees to upgrade its grid infrastructure, hastening their demise, rather than use it to subsidise power production.
> In March, the Commission agreed that Sweden would not have to share bottleneck fees paid to Svenska Kraftnät with other EU countries. But a new conflict has blown up over some of the Commission’s other proposals. According to TT, the Commission will not agree to let Sweden use the bottleneck fees to fund power production as well as grid expansion.
Sweden will not pay curtailment fees, such a thing does not exist. The reason is exactly what you quote at the end.
To state it again:
1. The intranational powercables means that German demand raises electricity prices in southern Sweden, which means businesses and consumers pay a premium vs what they would have paid without the cable
2. The extra charge is captured by network operators as what is called bottleneck fees and it's billions of euros per year, very large sums
3. The EC first wanted to confiscate these funds, which come from Swedish consumers and businesses. Now they want to rule about their use. Obviously this is completely unacceptable and nothing more than a bureaucratic powergrab, and no country would accept it.
You must always remember that the European Commission is unelected and has the same level of democratic involvement as that of China's Standing Committee.
The European council (which consists of elected country heads) nominates a Comission President and the members of the parliament (elected politicians) vote on the nominated president candidate and need absolute majority to confirm.
That president then tries to form the commission with one representative from each member state. The parliament then has to vote again to confirm the commission.
Sure it's not ideal. But compared to China, the population of the EU has influence.
Each member state elected their own government, which in turned determined their head of state by their own country's rules, then those heads of governments appointed VDL.
Do we even have a real choice with our governments? As a minor yet dramatic exemple, last year in France the Front Populaire won the last parliamentary elections, and according to republican tradition and common interpretation of the constitution, should have formed a government. But that was refused by Macron who named yet again an even more impopular proto-fascist government because it's technically in his power.
I hate to make this argument because the PRC is far from a political ideal for me, but the chinese political system also has elections and votes. Voting is not what democracy is about, and very indirect elections for a vast body with immense powers even less so.
I have yet to meet anyone happy with the european commission policies, except for very minor and timid arrangements such as the USB-C connector (and even then, Apple fanboys complained). The rest is all about destroying every pro-consumer/pro-worker/pro-environment regulation in favor of big multinationals who employs thousands of lobbyists across Brussels and Strasbourg.
Indeed. Every time it is mentioned(without fail) how undemocratic the European Commission is, someone points out that the demos has a say via 3 levels of indirections. But that is not at all what democracy is all about.
I am supposed to have a say about how the country I live in is run. That is democracy. Not that I get to vote on a person who votes on a person who votes on another person who may or may not agree with me.
It's why I live in Switzerland now, and not the EU.
Following that logic, any minister appointed by a head of government is "unelected and has the same level of democratic involvement as that of China's Standing Committee".
1. What does this have to do with Denmark? This is about upgrading an existing link from Sweden to Denmark (seems mainly for maintenance reasons, not capacity; it's only increasing from 715MW to 1000MW)
2. Why did the EU have to reassure Sweden wouldn't have to pay bottleneck fees to Denmark?
3. If you have such great power generation in the north of Sweden, why isn't it available to South Sweden where the demand is? (whether that's to Germany, Denmark or Sweden itself)
Germany is currently getting power from you directly, as well as via the existing Denmark connection (this project is merely upgrading it from 700MW to 1000MW), as well as via Lithuania if it wanted. Germany gets more of its energy from Norway and Denmark directly without involving you. Not to mention all the other countries that surround Germany.
So if your problem is Germany, why are you complaining about Denmark?
2. No, I see the issue now. It's not that Sweden objects paying money to Denmark, it's that Sweden objects paying for any other country's grid upgrade.
3. I ask about Northern Sweden because I heard it had lots of potential for electricity generation, but it can't even get it to Stockholm, never mind Malmö, due to north/south grid capacity issues purely inside Sweden. Your current curtailment is about 3.8TWh per year. I read that when you can't get power into the SE4 area, which can happen daily, the prices shoot up as it needs to import from Denmark, Germany, etc.
Wouldn't it be better for all concerned if this was addressed? You then wouldn't have such a price differential between areas of your own country.
Hmm, so basically Sweden has a surplus of goods (electricity), but the EU commissions is trying to pay for it with coupons that look like money but can't be used to buy everything, and now Sweden is saying "no, tak".
Sweden does not have surplus electricity. We have production of electricity that is better matched to demand than other nations, most notably the disaster that is Germany. German demand is causing Swedish industrial production to shut down due to increased energy prices, which makes production unprofitable.
Oh for Pete's sake, Sweden. Anything to avoid building more North-South connectivity.
Sweden is currently split into four pricing areas due to lack of grid capacity. All the cheap electricity is typically in the north (hydro) and then the price creeps up when you head south.
It's too bad the live electricity flow data is offline today, but there's a common pattern where SE1 pricing area in the north sends little under 2 GW to Finland (single zone) and most of it gets exported to SE3 around Stockholm.
The Commission will not agree to let Sweden use the bottleneck fees to fund nuclear power production. Or to be more precise, German and Danish high electricity prices financing the expansion of Swedish nuclear sector.
"Sweden’s center-right government is simultaneously pursuing one of Europe’s most ambitious nuclear expansion agendas, seeking financing frameworks for four large-scale reactors or equivalent modular nuclear capacity totaling roughly 5,000 MW. Half of this capacity is targeted for commissioning by 2035. The government increasingly views congestion revenues as an important funding mechanism to support these ambitions."
From an economical and political point of view this is actually interesting.
The free market in EU caused the high electricity prices in Germany to be partially transferred to Swedish consumers, despite Sweden being a net exporter.
From a political POV, Sweden couldn't really stop this (or the government didnt want to as they were making bilions on transfer fees). And this cable would make things significantly worse for the swedish consumers
Germany cleverly designed this particular variant of the 'free market' to ensure that access to cheap energy can't be used as a competitive advantage against their industries when they closed their nuclear plants. Having the same price in northern Sweden and Norway in winter as in central Europe is insane.
Now Sweden is stuck in a terrible situation where we're forced to quickly sell our excess energy to Google/Microsoft/Facebook before the EU will force the use of the bottleneck fees to build more cables to Germany.
Northern Sweden don't have the same prices as central Europe or even close to that. The underlying reason is that the transfer capability doesn't handle equalizing it. However, southern Sweden is a lot closer - Sweden is divided into 4 different price regions with insufficient transfer capability between them.
This is a good live map of how Europe is partitioned into zones and what their prices are. Right now you can see a large price difference between Sweden and Denmark and also with Norway.
Britain is often suffering high prices, likely due to lack of capacity in connections with the mainland EU.
Europe is scrambling to expand its electricity network, which doesn't have enough capacity. I don't know how badly Sweden and Denmark are affected, but in e.g. the Netherlands it inhibits the move away from fossil fuel for both homes and companies, and even disrupts building developments. So, anything that delays this for unexpected reasons is news. Is it interesting enough for HN? That's for you to decide.
Sweden is very well positioned due to well developed hydro, but when germany was forced to give up russian gas, more electricity was exported, causing record high prices.
Interestingly, the hydro plants are located in the north and the national power grid is not dimensioned for massive export, so the export to germany from the south of sweden caused a strong price gradient.
Most of the US isn't online yet, so I would expect this to be mostly people from the East side of the pond voting on it. In any case, onto the merits of the article itself:
Renewable, net zero energy requires massively expanding the grid to regions that cannot supply enough from regions that can. I.e. hydro during Dunkelflaute.
Here, we find yet another type of stumbling block in setting up such a system.
You're not missing anything. Its extremely uninteresting and nothing out of the ordinary in the early phases of large infrastructure projects. I guess EU/Denmark/power generation is a sure thing to reach the HN front page nowadays.
Sweden has already successfully regulated so that the state-owned grid operator is collecting the profits. But other countries have privatized grids and don't particularly enjoy it when an operator forgoes grid expansion in favor of collecting on the price difference. I guess this will result in a compromise where grid operators are required to invest a minimum amount of their bottleneck revenues into grid expansion, while Sweden can take out the rest in a way that's less enticing for private operators. After all, that Sweden is negotiating at all indicates they would like new electricity market regulations in principle, just not this particular aspect of the current proposal.
> So congestion revenues are essentially arbitrage?
There are significant capital costs to moving power. As I understand it, an example within the US is the relationship between the regional transmission operator (RTO) SPP and MISO, who have overlapping territory. In order for move power between certain areas of SPP, it travels over MISO lines. This eats into MISO capacity. As a result the two RTOs are working on a joint project.
There is not EU bashing, there is EU political confrontation between rational and irrational countries. My electricity bill is more expensive because we provide energy to all our neighbors and over that the EC think the french state subsidize its national electric operator too much which slowdown the deployment of new nuclear reactors. That cannot be both, give us our money back by allowing advantageous tariffs in countries with a good energy policy or let us develop our production base without interfering.
Good one. If anything, this is a refreshing change from the daily "look how independent and free Europe is now that the commune of Nowhereaux's planning committee switched from Excel to LibreOffice" article
The article isn't, but many accounts now dish out anti-EU narratives in any topic remotely touching Europe.
A lot of it for sure is either direct propaganda, or internalized anti-EU sentiments after reading too much of that propaganda on other platforms.
Weak Europe is what both Russia and the current US administration are explicitly promoting, so it's not surprising to see an uptick of those comments. Most countries now have pro-Russian alt-right/left parties, and their supporters are very exposed to foreign state sponsored messaging.
Because EU is a socialist and authoritarian project that will lead to war and disaster. Only the nationalist right has realized this, and the people are angry. It's boiling under the surface. The EU will either slowly sink down into irrelevance, or if noting is done, and the evil expands, it will lead to outright war.
The Danish traders are parasites on the energy infrastructure earning billions in arbitrage fees taking advantage of being the transit of Norwegian and Swedish power exports. All I can see from the EU energy market is an enormous wealth transfer from the users to the middle men. The market does not work unless the goal is to enrich the financial elite.
Resource is expensive in location A due to too low supply. Resource is cheap in location B due to higher supply. Moving resource from B to A is non-trivial.
Why is it so crazy that the facilitators of getting the resource moved get compensated?
Because those of high supply get barely anything for it and retain their high consumer prices.
So if you're a swede you don't want this connection to even exist.
The facilitator is not someone in the free market trying to offer the service for a low price either. It's a government essentially forcing profit to be given to a middleman and anther country.
> Because those of high supply get barely anything for it and retain their high consumer prices. So if you're a swede you don't want this connection to even exist.
As a Norwegian (very similar situation to the Swedes wrt power export): hard disagree. Most of our electrical power production is publicly owned, so we do indeed get something for the export. More cables, please!
> The facilitator is not someone in the free market trying to offer the service for a low price either. It's a government essentially forcing profit to be given to a middleman and anther country.
No, it's a mechanism to encourage interconnection.
Let's not make this a Nordic conflict. We, the Nordic countries need to stay brothers and sisters with each other as we have done for centuries (not without sometimes serious squabbles, but still). Not even a European countries conflict. It is the EU as an institution that has started growing and reaching way beyond the will and welfare of the people.
But it seems you didn't even read what I responded to? Not to mention Denmark spraying Skåne with poop for a long time. And Sweden did vote yes to these regulations.
”Tack ni svenska vakttorn, med plutonium tvingar vi dansken på knä! Här – Danmark, utskitet av kalk och vatten. Där – Sverige, hugget ur granit. Danskjävlar!”.
”Tack ni svenska vakttorn, med plutonium tvingar vi dansken på knä! Här – Danmark, utskitet av kalk och vatten. Där – Sverige, hugget ur granit. Danskjävlar!”
Spain tried to kick out all the bankers (in this case "the jews"). It was a financial disaster.
That you don't understand financial markets doesn't mean the realities of those marks won't hurt you really really badly if you try to adjust it with communist misapprehensions.
This news is from May 2026.
https://www.europesays.com/dk/80254/
> Sweden has ordered the expansion of a key power interconnector to Denmark to be halted after failing to reach agreement with the European Commission over bottleneck fees.
The interconnect already exists as Konti-Scan 1 and 2. Konti-Scan Connect, when built, will replace them.
What are "bottleneck fees"?
https://swedenherald.com/article/surplus-from-electricity-cu...
> Bottleneck revenues, or capacity fees as they are also called, arise when there are large price differences between electricity areas, often between electricity area 2 (southern Norrland) and 3 (Svealand and northern Götaland). The price differences arise when the capacity in the network is not sufficient to transfer the electricity surplus in the north to the south where the supply is too small. When Svenska kraftnät handles this, revenues arise for the authority corresponding to the price differences.
In the UK, which has a single electricity market for the whole country, we have curtailment fees. There is insufficent grid capacity between Scotland and England. When lots of power in England is needed, Scottish wind farms could provide it, but the grid can't deliver it. So the grid operator pays twice -- a curtailment fee to the wind farms to ask them to dump their energy, and a fee to English power stations to switch on the gas turbines and provide the power England needs that it can't get from the bottlenecked grid connection to Scotland.
I have the suspicion that Sweden fears having to pay the equivalent of curtailment fees to Denmark. The EU agreed that wouldn't have to happen... but the EU still wants to constrain Sweden into using its collected bottleneck fees to upgrade its grid infrastructure, hastening their demise, rather than use it to subsidise power production.
> In March, the Commission agreed that Sweden would not have to share bottleneck fees paid to Svenska Kraftnät with other EU countries. But a new conflict has blown up over some of the Commission’s other proposals. According to TT, the Commission will not agree to let Sweden use the bottleneck fees to fund power production as well as grid expansion.
Sweden will not pay curtailment fees, such a thing does not exist. The reason is exactly what you quote at the end.
To state it again:
1. The intranational powercables means that German demand raises electricity prices in southern Sweden, which means businesses and consumers pay a premium vs what they would have paid without the cable
2. The extra charge is captured by network operators as what is called bottleneck fees and it's billions of euros per year, very large sums
3. The EC first wanted to confiscate these funds, which come from Swedish consumers and businesses. Now they want to rule about their use. Obviously this is completely unacceptable and nothing more than a bureaucratic powergrab, and no country would accept it.
Costs not born by those who made the decision is kind of a key property of the EU integration project in general.
You must always remember that the European Commission is unelected and has the same level of democratic involvement as that of China's Standing Committee.
The European council (which consists of elected country heads) nominates a Comission President and the members of the parliament (elected politicians) vote on the nominated president candidate and need absolute majority to confirm. That president then tries to form the commission with one representative from each member state. The parliament then has to vote again to confirm the commission.
Sure it's not ideal. But compared to China, the population of the EU has influence.
The European population had no say in VDLs appointment and she would not be there if we did.
Each member state elected their own government, which in turned determined their head of state by their own country's rules, then those heads of governments appointed VDL.
Do we even have a real choice with our governments? As a minor yet dramatic exemple, last year in France the Front Populaire won the last parliamentary elections, and according to republican tradition and common interpretation of the constitution, should have formed a government. But that was refused by Macron who named yet again an even more impopular proto-fascist government because it's technically in his power.
I hate to make this argument because the PRC is far from a political ideal for me, but the chinese political system also has elections and votes. Voting is not what democracy is about, and very indirect elections for a vast body with immense powers even less so.
I have yet to meet anyone happy with the european commission policies, except for very minor and timid arrangements such as the USB-C connector (and even then, Apple fanboys complained). The rest is all about destroying every pro-consumer/pro-worker/pro-environment regulation in favor of big multinationals who employs thousands of lobbyists across Brussels and Strasbourg.
Indeed. Every time it is mentioned(without fail) how undemocratic the European Commission is, someone points out that the demos has a say via 3 levels of indirections. But that is not at all what democracy is all about.
I am supposed to have a say about how the country I live in is run. That is democracy. Not that I get to vote on a person who votes on a person who votes on another person who may or may not agree with me.
It's why I live in Switzerland now, and not the EU.
Following that logic, any minister appointed by a head of government is "unelected and has the same level of democratic involvement as that of China's Standing Committee".
But that statement would be bullshit.
So,
1. What does this have to do with Denmark? This is about upgrading an existing link from Sweden to Denmark (seems mainly for maintenance reasons, not capacity; it's only increasing from 715MW to 1000MW)
2. Why did the EU have to reassure Sweden wouldn't have to pay bottleneck fees to Denmark?
3. If you have such great power generation in the north of Sweden, why isn't it available to South Sweden where the demand is? (whether that's to Germany, Denmark or Sweden itself)
[flagged]
Rude.
1. Let's consult the map: https://www.entsoe.eu/data/map/
Also https://www.svk.se/services/imagehandler/v1/image/55796/1300
Germany is currently getting power from you directly, as well as via the existing Denmark connection (this project is merely upgrading it from 700MW to 1000MW), as well as via Lithuania if it wanted. Germany gets more of its energy from Norway and Denmark directly without involving you. Not to mention all the other countries that surround Germany.
So if your problem is Germany, why are you complaining about Denmark?
2. No, I see the issue now. It's not that Sweden objects paying money to Denmark, it's that Sweden objects paying for any other country's grid upgrade.
3. I ask about Northern Sweden because I heard it had lots of potential for electricity generation, but it can't even get it to Stockholm, never mind Malmö, due to north/south grid capacity issues purely inside Sweden. Your current curtailment is about 3.8TWh per year. I read that when you can't get power into the SE4 area, which can happen daily, the prices shoot up as it needs to import from Denmark, Germany, etc.
Wouldn't it be better for all concerned if this was addressed? You then wouldn't have such a price differential between areas of your own country.
Hmm, so basically Sweden has a surplus of goods (electricity), but the EU commissions is trying to pay for it with coupons that look like money but can't be used to buy everything, and now Sweden is saying "no, tak".
Sweden does not have surplus electricity. We have production of electricity that is better matched to demand than other nations, most notably the disaster that is Germany. German demand is causing Swedish industrial production to shut down due to increased energy prices, which makes production unprofitable.
Oh for Pete's sake, Sweden. Anything to avoid building more North-South connectivity.
Sweden is currently split into four pricing areas due to lack of grid capacity. All the cheap electricity is typically in the north (hydro) and then the price creeps up when you head south.
It's too bad the live electricity flow data is offline today, but there's a common pattern where SE1 pricing area in the north sends little under 2 GW to Finland (single zone) and most of it gets exported to SE3 around Stockholm.
The Commission will not agree to let Sweden use the bottleneck fees to fund nuclear power production. Or to be more precise, German and Danish high electricity prices financing the expansion of Swedish nuclear sector.
"Sweden’s center-right government is simultaneously pursuing one of Europe’s most ambitious nuclear expansion agendas, seeking financing frameworks for four large-scale reactors or equivalent modular nuclear capacity totaling roughly 5,000 MW. Half of this capacity is targeted for commissioning by 2035. The government increasingly views congestion revenues as an important funding mechanism to support these ambitions."
https://constructionreviewonline.com/konti-skan-connect-proj...
So a bureaucratic dispute between Sweden and the EU has led to an infrastructure project being paused.
This sounds... exceptionally uninteresting. Am I missing something here?
Or is this just a dog whistle for the HN crowd who like to complain about anything related to EU regulations?
From an economical and political point of view this is actually interesting.
The free market in EU caused the high electricity prices in Germany to be partially transferred to Swedish consumers, despite Sweden being a net exporter.
From a political POV, Sweden couldn't really stop this (or the government didnt want to as they were making bilions on transfer fees). And this cable would make things significantly worse for the swedish consumers
Germany cleverly designed this particular variant of the 'free market' to ensure that access to cheap energy can't be used as a competitive advantage against their industries when they closed their nuclear plants. Having the same price in northern Sweden and Norway in winter as in central Europe is insane.
Now Sweden is stuck in a terrible situation where we're forced to quickly sell our excess energy to Google/Microsoft/Facebook before the EU will force the use of the bottleneck fees to build more cables to Germany.
Northern Sweden don't have the same prices as central Europe or even close to that. The underlying reason is that the transfer capability doesn't handle equalizing it. However, southern Sweden is a lot closer - Sweden is divided into 4 different price regions with insufficient transfer capability between them.
This is a good live map of how Europe is partitioned into zones and what their prices are. Right now you can see a large price difference between Sweden and Denmark and also with Norway.
Britain is often suffering high prices, likely due to lack of capacity in connections with the mainland EU.
https://app.electricitymaps.com/map/zone/DK-DK2/live/fifteen...
Europe is scrambling to expand its electricity network, which doesn't have enough capacity. I don't know how badly Sweden and Denmark are affected, but in e.g. the Netherlands it inhibits the move away from fossil fuel for both homes and companies, and even disrupts building developments. So, anything that delays this for unexpected reasons is news. Is it interesting enough for HN? That's for you to decide.
Sweden is very well positioned due to well developed hydro, but when germany was forced to give up russian gas, more electricity was exported, causing record high prices.
Interestingly, the hydro plants are located in the north and the national power grid is not dimensioned for massive export, so the export to germany from the south of sweden caused a strong price gradient.
Yes, I read that in other comments too, and it's the main factoid for me to take away.
Most of the US isn't online yet, so I would expect this to be mostly people from the East side of the pond voting on it. In any case, onto the merits of the article itself:
Renewable, net zero energy requires massively expanding the grid to regions that cannot supply enough from regions that can. I.e. hydro during Dunkelflaute.
Here, we find yet another type of stumbling block in setting up such a system.
Yeah, not super riveting stuff, I suppose...
> Or is this just a dog whistle for the HN crowd who like to complain about anything related to EU regulations?
Only topped by the number of people who love to cheer for US vs China while living in neither.
You're not missing anything. Its extremely uninteresting and nothing out of the ordinary in the early phases of large infrastructure projects. I guess EU/Denmark/power generation is a sure thing to reach the HN front page nowadays.
[dead]
So congestion revenues are essentially arbitrage?
Is that something that really requires that much more regulation? If there's one thing markets tend to be good at solving it's arbitrage.
It does require regulation if you, as the state, find it inconvenient where the proceeds of the arbitrage end up.
Sweden has already successfully regulated so that the state-owned grid operator is collecting the profits. But other countries have privatized grids and don't particularly enjoy it when an operator forgoes grid expansion in favor of collecting on the price difference. I guess this will result in a compromise where grid operators are required to invest a minimum amount of their bottleneck revenues into grid expansion, while Sweden can take out the rest in a way that's less enticing for private operators. After all, that Sweden is negotiating at all indicates they would like new electricity market regulations in principle, just not this particular aspect of the current proposal.
> So congestion revenues are essentially arbitrage?
There are significant capital costs to moving power. As I understand it, an example within the US is the relationship between the regional transmission operator (RTO) SPP and MISO, who have overlapping territory. In order for move power between certain areas of SPP, it travels over MISO lines. This eats into MISO capacity. As a result the two RTOs are working on a joint project.
https://www.spglobal.com/energy/en/news-research/latest-news...
Why the constant EU bashing on this site now?
There is not EU bashing, there is EU political confrontation between rational and irrational countries. My electricity bill is more expensive because we provide energy to all our neighbors and over that the EC think the french state subsidize its national electric operator too much which slowdown the deployment of new nuclear reactors. That cannot be both, give us our money back by allowing advantageous tariffs in countries with a good energy policy or let us develop our production base without interfering.
Ask the Europeans, most of the US wasn't online when this hit the front page.
Good one. If anything, this is a refreshing change from the daily "look how independent and free Europe is now that the commune of Nowhereaux's planning committee switched from Excel to LibreOffice" article
I'm not sure this is EU bashing, it could equally be Sweden bashing.
The article isn't, but many accounts now dish out anti-EU narratives in any topic remotely touching Europe.
A lot of it for sure is either direct propaganda, or internalized anti-EU sentiments after reading too much of that propaganda on other platforms.
Weak Europe is what both Russia and the current US administration are explicitly promoting, so it's not surprising to see an uptick of those comments. Most countries now have pro-Russian alt-right/left parties, and their supporters are very exposed to foreign state sponsored messaging.
There has been a lot of EU-bashing in general for many years of course, but I hadn't noticed an uptick on HN yet.
Because EU is a socialist and authoritarian project that will lead to war and disaster. Only the nationalist right has realized this, and the people are angry. It's boiling under the surface. The EU will either slowly sink down into irrelevance, or if noting is done, and the evil expands, it will lead to outright war.
[dead]
[flagged]
The Danish traders are parasites on the energy infrastructure earning billions in arbitrage fees taking advantage of being the transit of Norwegian and Swedish power exports. All I can see from the EU energy market is an enormous wealth transfer from the users to the middle men. The market does not work unless the goal is to enrich the financial elite.
Resource is expensive in location A due to too low supply. Resource is cheap in location B due to higher supply. Moving resource from B to A is non-trivial.
Why is it so crazy that the facilitators of getting the resource moved get compensated?
Because those of high supply get barely anything for it and retain their high consumer prices. So if you're a swede you don't want this connection to even exist.
The facilitator is not someone in the free market trying to offer the service for a low price either. It's a government essentially forcing profit to be given to a middleman and anther country.
> Because those of high supply get barely anything for it and retain their high consumer prices. So if you're a swede you don't want this connection to even exist.
As a Norwegian (very similar situation to the Swedes wrt power export): hard disagree. Most of our electrical power production is publicly owned, so we do indeed get something for the export. More cables, please!
> The facilitator is not someone in the free market trying to offer the service for a low price either. It's a government essentially forcing profit to be given to a middleman and anther country.
No, it's a mechanism to encourage interconnection.
Danskjävlar
Let's not make this a Nordic conflict. We, the Nordic countries need to stay brothers and sisters with each other as we have done for centuries (not without sometimes serious squabbles, but still). Not even a European countries conflict. It is the EU as an institution that has started growing and reaching way beyond the will and welfare of the people.
In jest.
But it seems you didn't even read what I responded to? Not to mention Denmark spraying Skåne with poop for a long time. And Sweden did vote yes to these regulations.
I read it, but OK, I misunderstood.
”Tack ni svenska vakttorn, med plutonium tvingar vi dansken på knä! Här – Danmark, utskitet av kalk och vatten. Där – Sverige, hugget ur granit. Danskjävlar!”.
From the immortal TV-show Riget!
De är bittra att de förlorade Skåne
Tillbaka till r/unket med dig.
”Tack ni svenska vakttorn, med plutonium tvingar vi dansken på knä! Här – Danmark, utskitet av kalk och vatten. Där – Sverige, hugget ur granit. Danskjävlar!”
Spain tried to kick out all the bankers (in this case "the jews"). It was a financial disaster.
That you don't understand financial markets doesn't mean the realities of those marks won't hurt you really really badly if you try to adjust it with communist misapprehensions.
Trying to conflate anticapitalism and antisemitism is intellectually deeply dishonest and indicative of ideological capture.
There's a strong tradition of a Jewish Left fwiw.
I'm not the one who conflated it, Spain did, fwiw.
The point is that banking is something you remove at your peril.
Sweden bullying Denmark, a tale as old as time.