Why European law is not a software setting you can switch off
It is about time that someone in the Netherlands took action against the kind of legal corrosion that occurs when companies start copying Terms and Conditions from other companies. Terms that may be perfectly valid in the United States, but are completely at odds with both Dutch and European law.
Keep wearing your baseball cap. Keep walking around in your Vietnam-made sneakers. But leave Dutch law alone. It is a solid legal system, staffed by somewhat overworked judges who have little interest in resolving conflicts created by corporations that simply copy and paste legal terms without regard for local law.
I understand that companies have to think globally, and I sincerely wish them success in doing so.
Say ‘fuck you’ around the office as often as you like and translate every conceivable Dutch job title into English. Be my guest. But keep your hands off rights that have been tested for reasonableness over centuries.
Let it sink in that our system is not the American system. There are substantial differences between the two. In recent years, those differences have only become more pronounced.
I am not a lawyer, so feel free to ignore what I am about to say, but perhaps the biggest difference is this: our laws are created through a democratic process and guaranteed by government institutions. They are not drafted by the legal department of a large corporation on the assumption that injured parties can always take their chances in court.
Americans would sooner litigate themselves into bankruptcy than repair a pothole in the road.
That is their style: flamboyant, grandiose, and largely unburdened by a long historical tradition.
Democracy is not always enjoyable. It can happen that political parties you very deliberately did not vote for end up introducing legislation that makes you deeply unhappy. But be grateful that our legal system is not shaped and moulded by a small group of, in my view, rather arbitrary eccentrics who happened to accumulate enough money to acquire power.
You are not really supposed to say this out loud, but it has little to do with democracy. Or, to put it more carefully, it has little in common with a mature democracy.
Always read your Terms and Conditions and check whether they are actually enforceable where you live. Or don’t read them at all, but at least make sure you understand your rights as a European citizen.