The claim is that poor people have a human right to beg. I’m skeptical but suppose it’s true. Brussels has professional beggars. Beggars who are not poor cannot use the human rights defense.

As for genuinely poor beggars, they should be getting social aid. The aid should account for level of need, number of dependents in the family, etc. Begging abuses that balance and disproportionately rewards those who create a public eyesore. Donors who go through a charity have some confidence that there is an even distribution and a vetting process to weed out the non-poor beggars. Doesn’t the social system satisfy the human rights of the poor? If not, why not?

(edit) Past thread about brussels enforcing the anti-begging rule:

https://belgae.social/post/1415474

How can you be so naive as to think money in the bank is yours? That’s not /your/ money in the bank. It’s the bank’s money. There is an IOU from the bank to you.

Same with cash money. It’s no longer backed by gold reserves. It’s backed by nothing. All you have is /trust/; just like gift cards. Have look at what’s printed on US dollar banknotes. It’s spelled out for you.

You can exchange your pesos to euros. Can you do the same with your pokemon cards?

Of course. Just as I bought the gift cards with euros, the person on the other side of the transaction received euros for the gift cards. I could play either role depending on what I am starting with.

Of course gift cards are money. You can’t buy a burger in Germany with Mexican pesos either. But Mexican pesos don’t cease to be money on the basis that it’s not usable everywhere for everything.

Note as well you may be able to buy a burger at the Ikea cafeteria using an Ikea gift card. Haven’t tried it, but nonetheless it would be a shitty test for deciding whether to call it money.

PlayStation gift card, Nintendo gift card, Spotify gift card, etc. The sky is the limit.

That’s money. They exist to buy stuff. And when it expires, it’s money expiring. It’s of course a swindle.

You cannot spend a cake, it still has a point though.

indeed, because a cake is not money. Unlike gift cards, which function strictly as money.

Edit: “phone credit” Is it a for a real company, or for a burner kind of phone?

Not sure what you’re trying to ask but burner phones were banned in Belgium around ~10 years ago. All GSM cards must be registered to a gov-issued ID.

Why would you want a gift card that is not money? If you can’t spend it, what’s the point?

Nice! Good riddance to the Google boot-licking tracking scooters! Hopefully the damn things will stop needlessly cluster-fucking the bicycle racks so we can actually secure our bikes.

I suppose it doesn’t help that when people install their own solar panels, the injection rate in Brussels is a small fraction of the consumption rate. IIRC, I think I pay around 30 ¢€ per kWh. If I injected energy from PVs, I would get 2 ¢€ per kWh.

Did you eventually get your answer?

I don’t have a concrete answer so I did not respond when I first saw your post. When there is a cross-border scenario within the EU, data subjects have the right to choose whether to file locally or in the remote country. And generally if two SAs are working together on the case, the data subject can designate which country is the lead supervisory authority. I don’t imagine that this aspect would change when the UK is involved as the UK’s GDPR closely mirrors the EU one.

I’m confused by the relationship between your 1st and 2nd sentence. Your 1st sentence is about making a long stop and your 2nd is about taking an indirect route.

An SNCB worker told me the EU law which allows people to stop at a station along their route and take a break and return to the itinerary has been eliminated. So we no longer have that right under EU law but you seem to be saying Belgium gives passengers the right to stop when travelling within Belgium, correct?

About the app… I have no clue. Google maps with public transport option on?

I should clarify that I would never download an app from Google playstore or use Google Maps (or any google service). I was asking for tools (or “apps”) that can be run using a browser (most websites are actually javascript apps these days). And I would be open to f-droid apps or other free software.

Anyway, since the EU law was dropped my hunt for a resource that lets me pin a waypoint but not the destination is somewhat moot. Although perhaps still interesting in light of the Belgian law you mention.

Considering the pro-privacy nature of this thread, we could use a link to a site that does not block Tor. Like this:

https://www.reneweuropegroup.eu/news/2026-06-04/filmed-by-metas-glasses-without-their-knowledge

Considering De Lijn unlawfully refuses cash payments in Brussels, those looking to dodge De Lijn’s fares would be wise to simply offer cash. When the driver refuses, (and they will), the consumer has a strong case for not paying a fine.

Note this trick only works in Brussels. In other regions, De Lijn has a shop that accepts cash.

Most legit providers offer filter rules you can configure as you need.

Filters are for email post-delivery. By the time a server is executing your filter instructions, Microsoft’s server has already delivered the message and disconnected. It’s too late at that point. If some rare mail service were to bounce a message based on user-specified filters, it would have to be after the msg has already been delivered. This would risk “backscatter”, whereby the bounced response attempts to connect to the /perceived/ sending server, which could be incorrect. And even if it is correct, the sending server may not accept the bounced msg.

The configuration I describe can only competently be done on the server and it necessarily must be the same behavior for all users on that server because the refusal happens before the sending server even has a chance to send an SMTP “RCPT TO” line.

Unless you are intentionally finding services that do not use M$ infrastructure then you risk losing a lot of access.

It would be senders who lose access. I’m already happy to not connect to surveillance advertisers. The idea is that users on surveillance ad platforms lose access so they cannot deliver to my inbox.

Any email service could be configured to block Microsoft.

Indeed, whoever controls the server could do that. But who does? I don’t have an always-on WAN-facing machine, so I am interested in finding an email provider who does the blocking because as an end user I don’t have the privs.

I’m not sure why you want to do that at the platform level though. That’s a great way to not have delivered legitimate email traffic.

Microsoft is a surveillance advertiser who I boycott. I do not want to feed MS’s ad machine. For outbound mail, I can do an MX lookup first and only send email to non-MS non-Google recipients, but that’s not reliable because some recipients mask their email providers using a firewall like barracuda networks. So when such users try to email me, I would like their email to be refused.

About blocking “legit” traffic, MS does that anyway. I’ve seen MS reject RFC-compliant non-spam email 1st hand. I am happy to reciprocate.

What they don’t mention is that ~15 or so years ago beer in the US was all garbage. But the trend of artisinal beers and microbreweries started to take off. Now you can get decent domestic beer in an ordinary grocery store in the US. So they no longer have to rely so heavily on Belgium for that.

On top of Trump’s tarrifs, that would explain why exports are expected to drop as far as the US market goes. Not sure how big of a chunk that was.

From the article:

Critics say this trend leads to unfair competition for European online shops and increases the risk of fraud, such as undervaluation, counterfeiting and non-compliant products.

Critics of what? Surely they must mean critics of the previous status quo, not critics of the new policy. The new policy gives EU shops an advantage over non-EU shops.

“If you have eight different items in your parcel ordered online, this tax will amount to 24 euros in total. In some cases, the value of the tax will exceed the value of the parcel.”

Oof. That’s harsh for online shoppers. But as an offline-only consumer, I welcome this new policy. It’s all a swindle anyway. Even when customs duty was /zero/ they would charge a flat “clearance fee” of €10. My first imported item was worth <€10 but I was forced to pay €10 for the “priviledge” of the courrier dealing with customs on my behalf. WTF… I got fleeced. My first online purchase became my last.

So now I buy everything offline, locally. Some items I can no longer find in local shops. When I ask for an item expected to be in a shop, shop owners are not embarrassed to say “get it online”. Went to a battery shop. Their sole trade is to just sell batteries. I used to be able to say “I need a battery for laptop model XYZ”. They would order it and call me when the order is ready for pick-up. No longer. Now they say go online. If you need a non-standard battery, you’re fucked in Brussels.

Maybe this new law will help the offline market improve.

Thanks! IIUC (from a machine translation), there is no code of “good administrative” conduct for Germany:

Administrative Procedure Act (VwVfG) § 10 Non-formal nature of the administrative procedure The administrative procedure is not bound to specific forms unless there are special legal provisions for the form of the procedure. It is simple, practical and quick to carry out.

I wouldn’t go that far. I mean, it’s not great that they have the liberty of writing a vague or minimal standard for themselves. But at least you can hold them to their own standard. And in situations where there is no standard in place, you can argue that your CFREU Art.41 rights are generally undermined.

A good judge would treat an unwritten standard in favor of the complainant. There is a legal concept in contract law that says the benefit of vague or ambiguous terms in a contract goes to the party who did not draft the contract. This principle punishes the side who had the advantage of writing the contract for their negligence. Hopefully a similar concept would be considered in the case of good administration. Not sure if this principle exists in Europe or how realistic that is.

I have encountered several cases where a Belgian administrative office violated the Belgian standards. In principle I can escalate a complaint on that basis. I would not consider this useless.

I hate the fuckin’ things because they are flooding the street with unavoidable surveillance cameras wherever the cars go, grabbing our faces and probably logging our identity and location. At the same time, we probably need them to have surveillance so that when they run over a kid that the car thinks is a tumbleweed, there is evidence to analyse.

Not at all shocked to hear that Trump hates welfare states. But it’s unclear specifically what Trump plans to do to threaten pharmaceutical access in Belgium.