Whenever a US law and a foreign law conflict, the US law always wins when you are in the United States. Complying with US laws is also a perfectly valid defense if a European citizen or state ends up bringing action against you in a US court.
Yup. Which is basically a no-op. You need a court having jurisdiction over the defendant to have any relief. Even if you receive a financial judgement, international law does not put much weight in absentia cases.
Again - regardless of if a domestic court believes they have jurisdiction, any court case not brought in the venue of the defendant is effectively meaningless as you cannot be granted meaningful relief.
If the destination bank account is outside the EU, they can't touch it without cooperation from the defendant countries courts - which requires you to file in the defendants venue. If an EU country unilaterally seized intra-bank remittance they would be cut off from the international banking system without hesitation.
You seem to really be grasping at straws here, but the EU is not some all powerful entity that can enforce its laws outside its jurisdiction.
> Again - regardless of if a domestic court believes they have jurisdiction, any court case not brought in the venue of the defendant is effectively meaningless as you cannot be granted meaningful relief.
Of course you can, you simply reach for assets within the border of said member country or the EU.
As I mentioned in my previous comment, you can for example get the funds from outgoing payments by customers of said company.
You can also freeze accounts, prevent ownership or investments by any citizen of that country as well.
> If the destination bank account is outside the EU, they can't touch it without cooperation from the defendant countries courts - which requires you to file in the defendants venue. If an EU country unilaterally seized intra-bank remittance they would be cut off from the international banking system without hesitation.
There is nothing unilateral about a country seising money as payment of a fine from a company. This is a standard tool that every countries' IRS equivalent agency have in their tool belt.
> You seem to really be grasping at straws here, but the EU is not some all powerful entity that can enforce its laws outside its jurisdiction.
I never said that EU is all powerful, however, if business is done within the EU, EU countries have the power to access any and all funds going to the US for companies that do not comply.
They can also decide to block said service as a punitive measure.
> Of course you can, you simply reach for assets within the border of said member country or the EU.
Which is exactly what I said. If the US company has an EU subsidiary you sue in that venue that can grant you relief. There are US tax implications of holding foreign assets, so the 1% of US companies with overseas interests create a foreign subsidiary, the other 99% have absolutely nothing within the reach of the EU.
> There is nothing unilateral about a country seising money as payment of a fine from a company.
Funds in transit belong to the sender until they arrive in the destination account. The EU would be seizing the funds of an innocent third party (the customer), and the target company would just shrug and say "your payment didn't arrive send it again." The EU cannot seize a transaction in flight and also compel the target company to honor it against their books.
> if business is done within the EU, EU countries have the power to access any and all funds going to the US for companies that do not comply.
See above. Taking money from random EU customers I guess is something they could do, but I imagine their citizenry would be none too pleased about it.
Let me try to simplify it for you: the EU cannot take what is not in EU jurisdiction without the cooperation of the foreign court. If a company says they were complying with their domestic law which violated EU law, they would likely not receive the cooperation of domestic courts to grant relief.
If say Google were to not follow the GDPR for example, even if they didn't have any European subsidiaries, the EU or a member country would simply make all Google customers pay their subscription fees to them instead of Google as fine payment for the fine.
Customers would see no service disruption.
In your example Google would not receive the funds and credit the customers account. How would they differentiate an EU government stealing the money from a customer who just didn't pay and say they did?
Feel free to call up your credit card or power company and ask them what happens if you send them a payment but it gets seized by the government along the way. Their answer will be that you still owe them money.
In your example the EU customers would be out the money, not Google. With no EU nexus (in your hypothetical) they cannot compel Google to provide services they were not paid for.
> How would they differentiate an EU government stealing the money from a customer who just didn't pay and say they did?
Because they would have been notified by a court beforehand and the fine would constitute an outstanding debt linked to a lost lawsuit.
Once that happens, the national collection agencies would take over and use the tools at their disposal, like collecting from customers directly, which is the equivalent of garnishing wages but for companies.
They would then receive regular updates about the remaining debt and what was already paid and by whom.
> Feel free to call up your credit card or power company and ask them what happens if you send them a payment but it gets seized by the government along the way. Their answer will be that you still owe them money.
If Google then refused service to the customers who's payments were redirected to that country's collection agencies, then additional punitive measure would be taken by the country.
Some of the punitive measure could be:
- growing interests on the outstanding debt
- blocking the service within the country or EU
- advertise that Google is delinquent and is refusing to pay it's debt to financial institutions
- prevent banks and financial institutions from loaning money or investing in Google
- configure an embargo for imports and exports towards Google
- extradition requests for C-suite or adding them to Interpol and Europol wanted people list
- etc.
> In your example the EU customers would be out the money, not Google. With no EU nexus (in your hypothetical) they cannot compel Google to provide services they were not paid for.
They can't force Google to provide services but Google will also lose that market (for the EU that's 450M people) and increasing punitive measures.
Also, Google refusing to pay would probably discourage financial institutions anywhere from servicing Google in the future and other countries from authorising Google on it's national market.
Whenever a US law and a foreign law conflict, the US law always wins when you are in the United States. Complying with US laws is also a perfectly valid defense if a European citizen or state ends up bringing action against you in a US court.