When Rules Build Giants
Europe means well. Truly.
Regulations to protect our privacy, limit Big Tech’s power, save the planet; it all sounds great on paper.
But in practice? Those very same rules are slowly drowning small business owners.
While Brussels is busy trying to rein in the power of large corporations, those same corporations are laughing all the way to the bank.
Because who can afford compliance teams, lawyers, and consultants?
Exactly. Not the independent entrepreneur with a few servers, a handful of staff, and a pile of invoices waiting to be processed. They watch their profit margin evaporate in a sea of obligations and audits they barely understand.
The irony is painful: the rules that were meant to break monopolies are actually making the powerful even stronger.
And the Netherlands eagerly joins in; not only implementing every EU directive, but adding extra layers of its own. We want to be the best student in the class. The only problem? Real life isn’t a classroom. It’s a business that needs to stay online, every single day.
We’re losing sight of what matters.
Innovation is slowing down, risk-taking is punished, and trust has been replaced by suspicion.
The small entrepreneur, once the backbone of Europe, is slowly being phased out.
It’s time for someone to stand up and say: enough. Regulations should protect, not suffocate.
We don’t need more paperwork, we need more trust, simplicity, and humanity.
Because if we keep going like this, soon there will be only multinationals left.
And then we might as well rename the “European market” for what it has become:
the showroom of Big Tech because rules build giants.
This is the seventh post in a new series called Behind the Uptime, written by Patrick, CEO and owner of 040Hosting, where I’ll share insights, decisions, and the thinking behind how we run a stable, fast, and honest hosting platform—offering a peek behind the curtain of what keeps your sites running smoothly every single day.
