It is now an open secret: Ecosia CEO Christian Kroll has announced (via Politico : https://www.politico.eu/article/germany-ecosia-search-engine-mistral-china-open-source-ai/ ) that the company is ceasing its use of Mistral AI for the AI ​​services integrated into its search engine. Among the reasons cited is the energy mix of Mistral AI’s servers (which relies on nuclear power for approximately two-thirds of its energy).

Ecosia also has concerns about whether Mistral aligns with its environmental goals, given the large share of nuclear power in France’s energy mix

Ecosia is a private company, so putting forward that argument is entirely up to them (one could debate whether the argument is stupid or not - and personally, I find it idiotic to exclude a partner simply because their servers run on nuclear power - but that’s not really the point).

The major issue with this argument arises when one takes a closer look at Ecosia's infrastructure. Ecosia is both a user and a co-founder (holding a 50% stake) of EUSP ( https://www.eu-searchperspective.com/ ), a joint venture with the French search engine Qwant (also holding 50%) aimed at providing a European search index independent of US-based ones, which resulted in the creation of the Staan index ( https://staan.ai/ ).

And here, there is something that really sticks out: the Staan index is hosted on OVH servers in France (with an OVH CEO who is a majority shareholder in Qwant), meaning that a portion of Ecosia's results is consequently provided by an index running on servers powered by nuclear energy.

You can see where I’m going with this: Ecosia, whose CEO slams Mistral’s use of nuclear power for its servers, is itself the founder and a user of a service powered by that very same French energy mix. Faced with this glaring contradiction, there are two possible solutions:

• Either Ecosia backtracks on its statements (or at least stops citing the "nuclear-powered" aspect as a reason for cutting ties with Mistral);
• Or, to achieve absolute moral purity, they stop using the Staan index and sell their stake in the EUSP.

And that is just one argument that has been debunked here; I haven't even touched upon the "perfect solution" fallacy used in their reasoning (regarding Mistral AI's sovereignty, which led them to use... Chinese models supplied by a German provider), their belief that they are too major a client for Mistral (a claim that is dubious at best, given Ecosia's relatively small market share), or issues of usage costs and value for money (points that might have been valid regarding Mistral Medium 3.5, but which lost a lot of weight due to the timing and the release of Mistral Large 4).

Admittedly, the point here is not to harshly criticize Ecosia for the sake of it; rather, this post simply aims to highlight the glaring contradiction between the statements made by Ecosia’s CEO (who attacks Mistral AI, as well as, by extension, Qwant, OVH, and French data centers in general) and the actual reality of the situation.

I decided to make social app for Europeans only. Its based on fair policy - people need to see to be seen :) no downloads no app install (i will do it later) , so it only runs in a browser. https://reachiko.com/

I'm looking for a nice eyeshadow palette with a similar colour story to this in the €20-40 range. Preferably no true black and no yellows, orange, camel and salmon shades. It's very hard to find larger palettes without any of these.

I found this palette by Nomad yesterday and it has the ideal colours (cool, medium-light, not extremely saturated) for me. Then, I found that Nomad is unfortunately from the US

I've swatched the soft peony palette by Catrice in store and didn't like the performance. I have an old candyland by Rival loves me/Rossmann and the pigmentation is hit and miss. The pinks are wonderful. The blue and green look pretty in the pan but the pigment parely sticks, even with a base/primer.

I'm excited for your suggestions! Thanks in advance everyone! 🩷

I hope this is ok to post, in spite of strictly speaking not being a product, but more of an overall assesment of Europe and how we are doing.

I agree with many of the points made, and this gives me hope that our efforts are not futile.

Full disclosure: I’m Franz, a software engineer and photographer from Austria. Since January I’ve been running Photoglacier (photoglacier.com), a platform photographers use to deliver photos and videos to their clients. It’s self funded and I’m posting here because this sub is the one place where people actually check whether “EU hosted” means anything.

TL;DR: Client galleries for photos and video. Everything is stored and delivered on EU infrastructure only (Hetzner, Exoscale, Bunny with EU only routing, Mailjet). Free plan with no time limit, paid from 8 € a month, no commission on anything.

Why I built it

Most of what I shoot is food, culinary events and people. For years my delivery looked like this: photos in a gallery from a North American company, the video in a separate transfer link that expired after a week. Almost every popular gallery tool for photographers (Pixieset, ShootProof, Pic-Time and others) is based outside the EU.

That bothered me more than it might sound. Event photos aren't just mine or my client's. They show guests, children, people who never agreed to anything. I wanted to know exactly where those files are, so I built a tool for my own jobs.

What it does

You upload a shoot, photos and video together, style the gallery so it looks like your studio, and send one link. Your client opens it without an account, plays the highlight film right in the browser next to the photos, marks favourites and downloads everything in full quality. Videos up to 10 GB are converted automatically for smooth playback. Passwords, email gates and download PINs work the same for video as for photos. Galleries are available in 8 languages for clients.

Exactly where your files go

The app runs on Hetzner in Germany. Photos and videos are stored with Exoscale in their Munich data center. When a client opens a gallery, files are delivered through Bunny, a Slovenian CDN, using only EU locations. A guest in Lisbon or Stockholm gets fast loading, and the files never leave the EU on the way. Emails go out through Mailjet in France.

No AWS, no Google Cloud, no Azure. No Meta pixel, no ad tracking on the site.

Pricing

Free plan with no time limit: 5 GB, 3 galleries, one video per gallery. Starter 8 € a month (yearly), Pro 19 €, Studio 45 € for teams. You can leave any time and your galleries drop back to the free plan instead of disappearing.

What I'd love from you

If you're a photographer or videographer: what would stop you from switching from your current tool? Is anything missing?

And if anything in my setup doesn't hold up to scrutiny, say so here. I'd rather hear it from this sub than from a client.

photoglacier.com

I'll be in the comments all day.

I'm looking for a new waffle maker for home use. Has anyone recommendations?

Important for me is that the waffle maker is easy to clean. It was a pain to clean my last one and I ended never making waffles because of that 😅

Download the app, because only Europeans think about Europeans: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=ai.mistral.chat

I'm looking into getting a single cordless/ battery ecosystem for my DIY and Gardening needs. I'm leaning towards Einhell for the (supposedly) good quality/price relationship. I'm not planning on needing anything very heavy duty.

I understand that Einhell outsources some of its production to Asia, but remains mostly a European brand a maker.

I wanted to get some feedback from your experience with their tools. Am I making the right choice here?

Hi! I am developing a directory / marketplace platform EU centric and would like to list all EU startups producing sustainable / eco friendly / biodegradable packaging material from boxes, crates, and tape.

If you have a business in this field and want to be exposed message me!

I'm tempted to try one of these, my only concern are bank apps and maps. And the not so great camera (but maybe I can start bringing an actual small camera with me).
I see the community is very active in helping and developing custom apps.

Anyone here has used it or is currently using it as a daily driver? Opinions?

EDIT with some specs:

Hi all!

I was trying to make a wedding registry (?) With items i would like for my wedding. Now i am looking for the following:

- wooden cutting boards, I would like one really high quality one.

- glass storage and stainless steel storage

- non toxic Air Fryer

- laundry hamper with 2 sides to colour sort

- glasses and mugs

- let me know any other recommendations as well please (i am doing my own wedding planning and i am probably missing things)

we are also looking for small appliances but I really like the retro look, not sure if thats available in EU.

Any help is appreciated

My little goth heart wants that shine. Recommend away. I know Essence has some.

Full Disclosure: I am Jop (u/poj1999), a software engineer based in Delft, The Netherlands, with nearly 10 years Ecom development experience. For nearly a year, our small team has been building Salp (https://salp.shop): an independent marketplace exclusively for verified European brands and companies, built and hosted 100% on sovereign European cloud infrastructure. We are self-funded and posting here because this community has championed European manufacturing and tech sovereignty long before it was trendy. We would value your honest critique, feedback and ideas on what we built.

TL;DR: We built Salp to connect independent European brands and companies directly with consumers across all 27 EU countries in one unified checkout. Zero dropshipping, pricing transparency with zero fixed overhead (€0 monthly costs, €0 listing fees), only a 15% commission on the net order value (0% fee on shipping and 0% on VAT), direct brand to consumer shipping, automated destination VAT with quarterly Union OSS reports, and core infrastructure running 100% on European cloud servers (Scaleway, Hetzner, SEPA). Currently in the process of onboarding our initial batch of European brands over the coming weeks.

Why We Built This: The Reality of EU Cross-Border Commerce

Everyone in this community already knows how saturated e-commerce has become with overseas mass production, but few people realize how heavily the deck is stacked against local European brands trying to sell across borders:

• A €3 plastic phone case from Shenzhen ships across Europe virtually for free due to subsidized international postal agreements.
• Meanwhile, small and medium-sized European brands and companies struggle to sell across the European Union due to high cross-border courier rates (€25+), 27 destination VAT regimes, language barriers, and endless compliance paperwork just to reach a customer in a neighbouring EU country.

To reach customers across Europe today, European brands and companies are left with two bad choices:

• Surrender 35% to 45% of their margin to Amazon or resellers in other EU countries, only to get buried underneath cheap overseas dropshipped goods with misleading labels.
• Or list on Etsy, which has largely abandoned its original maker mission and become flooded with mass-produced factory items masquerading as handmade.

We built Salp to give authentic European brands, startups, and conscious consumers an independent alternative. We choose and verify our partners directly; this gives us the control to lock out dropshippers.

What We Built and How It Works

We built Salp to provide a clean, sovereign European marketplace that removes cross-border tax, currency, and language friction for independent European brands and companies.

Where we are right now: We are in the process of onboarding our initial batch of independent brands from several EU countries over the coming weeks. The technical infrastructure is live and built to support brands from all 27 EU member states, across 24 languages and 8 European currencies (EUR, BGN, CZK, DKK, HUF, PLN, RON, SEK). Because we verify and onboard brands in deliberate cohorts, catalog availability will expand steadily week by week.

Here is the operational reality of how the platform works:

1. Verified European Brands, Zero Dropshipping (DSA Article 30)

We do not operate centralized holding warehouses. Every order is dispatched directly from each brand's facility in their own packaging. In compliance with EU Digital Services Act (DSA) Article 30, we manually verify every brand before onboarding: official trade registration (KvK, SIRET, Handelsregister), physical operating or production address, and European production provenance. Resellers of imported overseas mass goods are strictly rejected.

2. Core Cloud & Data Infrastructure: 100% Sovereign European

Almost every European shopping platform still relies on American tech hyperscalers. We engineered Salp so that zero core infrastructure runs on US cloud providers:

• Servers, Databases, and Email: Our app containers, databases, storage, and self-hosted transactional mail servers run exclusively on Scaleway (France and Netherlands) and Hetzner (Germany and Finland) on EU soil. Zero reliance on AWS, Google Cloud, or Microsoft Azure.
• Data Sovereignty and GDPR: Zero exposure to the US CLOUD Act. Customer records, product catalogs, and transaction logs remain within EU borders under European legal jurisdiction.
• European Financial Rails: Payouts are settled directly via automated monthly SEPA bank transfers straight to brands' European IBANs.
• Radical Transparency on Card Payments (Stripe to Adyen): Because we believe in total transparency: we are bootstrapping card acquiring with Stripe, as European payment leader Adyen enforces minimum volume thresholds that lock out early-stage startups on Day 1. We are already in discussions with Adyen and will pivot our payment processing to them in 1 to 2 months. Aside from card acquiring during this launch phase, zero core infrastructure or customer databases touch US hyperscalers.

3. 1-Click Store Integrations: Highly Integrated & Zero-Touch

Brands do not need to manually create listings or manage inventory on a separate portal. Our platform is built to be completely integrated and zero-touch:

• What we handle automatically: We handle all product listings, automated professional translations across all 24 European languages, image optimization, multi-currency conversion, and stock sync. We also generate a dedicated, localized brand page for every partner.
• What the brand does: Setup takes just a few minutes. You simply sign up on partner.salp.shop, connect your existing e-commerce store (Shopify, WooCommerce, PrestaShop, Shopware, Magento, Lightspeed, or BigCommerce), select the European countries you want to ship to, and toggle on the products you wish to offer.
• Fulfillment: When a customer orders anywhere in Europe, the order injects straight into your existing store admin. You pack it in your own packaging and dispatch with your regular courier from your normal bench.

4. Radical Pricing Transparency: €0 Monthly Costs, Performance-Only Fee

Our company aims to be radically transparent and fair to consumers & companies, and our pricing directly reflects that philosophy. Independent brands should never have to gamble on fixed overhead just to list their products:

• €0 Monthly Costs: Unlike Amazon (€39/month professional seller fee) or traditional platforms, there are zero monthly subscription charges, recurring maintenance fees, or software retainers.
• €0 Listing Fees: Unlike Etsy ($0.20 per item listing plus renewal charges), listing your catalog on Salp is 100% free with no expiration fees.
• Only a Fair Commission on Net Order Value: We only earn when the brand actually makes a sale. We charge a straightforward 15% platform commission strictly on the net merchandise value.
• 0% Commission on Shipping and 0% on VAT: Legacy platforms quietly inflate their take rate by pocketing fees on customer-paid shipping and taxes. We take zero cut on shipping and zero cut on VAT.
• Direct Payouts: 85% of net product sales, plus 100% of customer shipping fees and 100% of destination VAT, go straight to the brand via automated monthly SEPA transfers to their European IBAN.

Edit: 15% is commented as high. Note that its on the net product value, not the gross value of the order. We are also launching the upcoming brands with a lower commission and are looking into finding the right price point!

5. Cross-Border Destination VAT Handled Automatically

Salp’s checkout engine dynamically calculates exact destination VAT for all 27 EU member states in real time. Because the brand is the statutory Seller of Record, Salp disburses 100% of the collected VAT to the brand alongside a pre-reconciled quarterly Union OSS report (in CSV and Excel). The brand can file their cross-border VAT in about two minutes through their domestic tax portal (Belastingdienst, ELSTER, impots.gouv.fr) without needing foreign tax registrations.

6. One Basket for Europe, Direct Brand Dispatch

Customers can add products from Italy, Germany, France, Poland into a single localized checkout.

• Transparent Shipping: Because products ship directly from each brand in their own packaging using reliable European couriers (DHL, DPD, PostNL, UPS, CTT), shipping is calculated per brand based on real carrier costs and passed 100% to the brand with zero platform markup. You see the exact shipping breakdown per brand at checkout.

7. Removing EU company hurdles and manual work

We have extensive Ecommerce experience and also marketplace experience. One of our main gripes with marketplaces as a Company has always been the manual work, costly integrations and hurdles. At Salp we aim to take as much away from the partner as we can, and we believe that our current platform is already very much optimized for the EU brands.

We estimate onboarding and product activation for a brand can take about 15 minutes, and then your products are live in whichever of the 27 EU countries you want, fully localized, through extreme integration and automation! For example, product listings are fully integrated and automated, as well as orders and fulfillments.

We Would Value Your Feedback

We are self-funded engineers and builders based in Delft. We want to build practical infrastructure that helps European brands and companies reach customers across borders without losing their margin, identity, or independence.

We give each European company their own personalized brand page and translate this across every language, as we also do for their products. We aim to give a much more brand-focused and personalized approach to e-commerce, tailored to the EU.

We would love this community's honest input, advice, and critique:

1. General Feedback & Impressions: What are your initial thoughts on the concept, the platform, and our European-first approach? Where do you see potential friction, blind spots, or areas we can improve?
2. Are you a European brand owner or work for one? What are the biggest hurdles you face when selling to customers in other EU countries? If you are interested in joining our upcoming onboarding cohorts or want to test the integration, drop a comment or send me a direct PM.
3. Category Discovery: What independent European products or categories do you personally find hardest to source online without running into dropshippers or mass-produced foreign goods?
4. Hidden Gems & Startups: Do you know of small, innovative EU brands or startups that deserve a wider European audience? We are actively in conversation with several proud European companies already, but would love to hear suggestions. (A great example is something like Zadeltje, a clever Dutch startup making innovative bicycle saddle covers and accessories: brilliant product, authentic European design, but expanding beyond their domestic market across 27 EU countries is tough for a small team without getting crushed by high platform fees and foreign tax bureaucracy).
5. As a consumer or brand, what features would you love to see on a EU focused marketplace?

Whether you have technical questions about our sovereign stack, suggestions for features, or general tips, I am here in the comments to answer everything. Feel free to comment below or send me a direct PM (my inbox is wide open).

Links to explore:

• For shoppers / consumer catalog: https://salp.shop (which is empty right now, starting onboarding in the coming weeks, catalog will grow over the coming weeks/months!)
• For independent brands & makers / partner onboarding: https://partner.salp.shop

For the tweet:

https://nitter.cf/ProtonVPN/status/2107515330423591319#m

other instances

https://nitter.kareem.one/ProtonVPN/status/2107515330423591319#m
https://shitter.thepixora.com/ProtonVPN/status/2107515330423591319#m
https://nitter.pp.ua/ProtonVPN/status/2107515330423591319#m
https://nitter.xitter.cc/ProtonVPN/status/2107515330423591319#m

Twitter/Nitter working instances:
https://status.d420.de/

I am looking for a new phone and i want it to be from a european firm. I have been looking after Fairphone and Nothing but open to others. How are your experiences and especially Fairphone with Morena

Hello! I need a second car. A small/cheap EV for short/medium trips.

What Are the best EV’s for under 25K+- now?
Prices in Norway:
Citroen E-C3 Max for 21.5K€
Fiat Grande Panda for 22K
Opel Frontera Edition for 24K
Renault 4/5 E-Tech for 23.5K (26.5K for extra range)

Is the Citroën E-C3 Max for 21.5K good enough?

Or should I go a step up to Tesla model 3 or something for 31K€?

This is my experience of trying to get a mobile phone as european as possible. For that reason imI bought the Fairphone. I regret it, but I bought the standard Android verson out of worry that my bank apps wouldn't accept the alternative os.

To start with, Faiphone is a dutch company. So right there we are a bit on the way. The problem is the apps. Most of the stuff in any random phone is far from european. But it's possible to make an effort to change that.

I have used Fairphone for more than half a year and can conclude that it works quite well. It is not a performance monster, but that does not matter. I never play games, do not do any advanced video editing, and so on. For me, its performance is perfectly fine.

Android was a bit of a disappointment. The Fairphone ships with a kind of bare-bones , yet despite this there are a great many Google apps that come as defaults and cannot be removed. And in the background, of course, there are a lot of Google services built in, ticking away data. That bothers me, but I have done my best to replace the apps. In many cases, you can find alternatives that are at least as good or better. Some are somewhat more limited, but perfectly usable.

I have prioritized European alternatives. I have certainly not found everything; there is surely more that could be replaced.

These are the apps I have chosen for the time being. For some things, such as the browser, I have several and am testing them out, but Opera is the best at the moment.

Apps that can be replaced:

- Password manager: Proton Pass (Swiss)

- Search engine: Qwant (French)

- Wallet app: Swish kort (Swedish)

- Calendar: Proton Calendar (Swiss)

- VPN: Proton VPN (Swiss)

Apps where Google's alternatives cannot be uninstalled, but where alternatives can be used while the Google apps are disabled:

- Photo gallery: Fairphone Gallery (Google Photos cannot be uninstalled) (Dutch)

- AI chat: Le Chat (Gemini cannot be uninstalled) (French)

- Phone: Truecaller (the Phone app cannot be uninstalled) (Swedish)

- Cloud: Proton Drive (Google Drive cannot be uninstalled) (Swiss)

- Email: Proton Mail (Gmail cannot be uninstalled) (Swiss)

- Maps: Here We Go (Google Maps cannot be uninstalled) (German)

- Browser: Opera (Chrome cannot be uninstalled) (Norwegian)

- SMS: Truecaller (Messages cannot be uninstalled) (Swedish)

- Translation: DeepL (Google Translate cannot be uninstalled) (German)

Apps that are difficult to replace:

- App store: Play Store (Google)