RVN: Free movement of goods… except when you actually benefit from it
Somewhere near the border a Dutch citizen stands with a few cartons of cigarettes in the trunk. Legally bought in Belgium or Germany, for personal use.
According to De Telegraaf this is now part of a “criminal circuit”. The state is missing out on billions. Something must be done.
And look at that: suddenly borders can be controlled.
Interesting.
Because when it comes to hundreds of thousands of asylum seekers per year, we have been told for years that border control is “impossible”, “inhumane” or “too expensive”.
But when the treasury loses excise duty on cigarettes, capacity, legal room and political will suddenly appear.
Free movement of goods, they say.
Until you actually benefit from it.
How free is that movement really?
Try taking out a regular German mobile phone subscription as a Dutch resident.
Good luck. Providers look at you blankly, systems don’t talk to each other, and somewhere in the fine print it says the offer is “not intended for permanent residence in the Netherlands”.
Or buy a car in Germany. On paper a solid deal.
In practice: registration tax, paperwork, inspection requirements, fiscal hurdles and an authority watching you closely.
Then try driving for a longer period on foreign plates while living in the Netherlands.
You’ll get pulled over faster than a cyclist riding without lights in Amsterdam.
Meanwhile large companies and capital flows move smoothly across borders.
Profits disappear to Ireland or Luxembourg, goods travel unhindered, and nobody talks about a “criminal circuit”.
And then there are the trust offices and letterbox companies.
For years artists, multinationals and wealthy individuals could park their rights or profits through Amsterdam structures to reduce tax. Think of well-known names that were officially based in the Netherlands while living and working elsewhere. That used to be called “smart tax planning” and was actively facilitated.
The rules have become stricter, but the principle remains recognisable: optimisation is mainly available to those who are big and well-advised. For the ordinary citizen every cross-border saving quickly feels suspicious.
For them the internal market is a highway.
For you it is an obstacle course with toll gates, forms and selective enforcement.
The real principle
Free movement of goods and services is in practice mainly free movement as long as:
the state benefits from it, or
large players gain from it.
The moment ordinary people make use of the price differences the government itself created (extremely high excise duties, tax burden, regulation), the story changes.
Suddenly it becomes evasion, unfair competition or — the favourite term — a criminal circuit.
It is the same pattern we see everywhere:
rules that are flexible for those in power and rigid for the citizen.
OIM way out
An internal market that only works in one direction is not a free market.
It is a system with a revolving door: open for the right parties, closed or obstructed for everyone else.
Keep collecting these examples.
Not as complaints about cigarettes or cars, but as evidence of how selectively “freedom” is applied.
Question for you
If borders can suddenly be controlled when excise revenue is being lost…
why would that be impossible with other forms of cross-border movement?
And why does “free movement” so often feel like one-way traffic for the ordinary Dutch citizen?
This post is 100% authentic and verifiable via:
https://openinternetmanifest.org/nl/hash-verifier
### RVN: Free movement of goods… except when you actually benefit from it
Somewhere near the border a Dutch citizen stands with a few cartons of cigarettes in the trunk. Legally bought in Belgium or Germany, for personal use.
According to De Telegraaf this is now part of a “criminal circuit”. The state is missing out on billions. Something must be done.
And look at that: suddenly borders *can* be controlled.
Interesting.
Because when it comes to hundreds of thousands of asylum seekers per year, we have been told for years that border control is “impossible”, “inhumane” or “too expensive”.
But when the treasury loses excise duty on cigarettes, capacity, legal room and political will suddenly appear.
Free movement of goods, they say.
Until you actually benefit from it.
### How free is that movement really?
Try taking out a regular German mobile phone subscription as a Dutch resident.
Good luck. Providers look at you blankly, systems don’t talk to each other, and somewhere in the fine print it says the offer is “not intended for permanent residence in the Netherlands”.
Or buy a car in Germany. On paper a solid deal.
In practice: registration tax, paperwork, inspection requirements, fiscal hurdles and an authority watching you closely.
Then try driving for a longer period on foreign plates while living in the Netherlands.
You’ll get pulled over faster than a cyclist riding without lights in Amsterdam.
Meanwhile large companies and capital flows move smoothly across borders.
Profits disappear to Ireland or Luxembourg, goods travel unhindered, and nobody talks about a “criminal circuit”.
And then there are the trust offices and letterbox companies.
For years artists, multinationals and wealthy individuals could park their rights or profits through Amsterdam structures to reduce tax. Think of well-known names that were officially based in the Netherlands while living and working elsewhere. That used to be called “smart tax planning” and was actively facilitated.
The rules have become stricter, but the principle remains recognisable: optimisation is mainly available to those who are big and well-advised. For the ordinary citizen every cross-border saving quickly feels suspicious.
For them the internal market is a highway.
For you it is an obstacle course with toll gates, forms and selective enforcement.
### The real principle
Free movement of goods and services is in practice mainly free movement as long as:
- the state benefits from it, or
- large players gain from it.
The moment ordinary people make use of the price differences the government itself created (extremely high excise duties, tax burden, regulation), the story changes.
Suddenly it becomes evasion, unfair competition or — the favourite term — a criminal circuit.
It is the same pattern we see everywhere:
rules that are flexible for those in power and rigid for the citizen.
### OIM way out
An internal market that only works in one direction is not a free market.
It is a system with a revolving door: open for the right parties, closed or obstructed for everyone else.
Keep collecting these examples.
Not as complaints about cigarettes or cars, but as evidence of how selectively “freedom” is applied.
**Question for you**
If borders can suddenly be controlled when excise revenue is being lost…
why would that be impossible with other forms of cross-border movement?
And why does “free movement” so often feel like one-way traffic for the ordinary Dutch citizen?
#FreeMovement #ExciseDuty #EU #SelectiveRules #Borders #RealityVsNarrative #RVN #OpenInternetManifest
https://openinternetmanifest.org
This post is 100% authentic and verifiable via:
https://openinternetmanifest.org/nl/hash-verifier
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