On that note they should also finally stop using it. If every politician, institution and public broadcaster would stop using Twitter and start using mastodon it would easily gain enough momentum to replace it as the default platform in Europe.

Solar panels and batteries in a shit ton of homes because of energy prices and older government incentives

Yeah, the rise of balcony and roof solar modules here in Germany probably helps us in a similar way.

10000L rain water tanks because government regulations now require rainwater hookups for future toilers and washing machines plus water is expensive here

That on the other hand i don’t think is common and especially in cities i don’t think that’s a thing anywhere. So imo drinking water probably remains the most serious bottleneck, if it were ever compromised.

But don’t you still have some staple stuff like noodles, rice, frozen or canned foods and so on in your house? Combined with the fact that you might buy food in larger quantities (e.g. not just 1 apple, but 6 or maybe 1kg), i’d also imagine that most people have enough food for 3 days in their house.

The imo more interesting thing would be fresh water.

I was under the impression that this was one of their demands at some point, but it didn’t make it into the final compromise.

Von den zu berücksichtigenden Einnahmen aus Krediten ist der Betrag abzuziehen, um den die Verteidigungsausgaben, die Ausgaben des Bundes für den Zivil- und Bevölkerungsschutz sowie für die Nachrichtendienste, für den Schutz der informationstechnischen Systeme und für die Hilfe für völkerrechtswidrig angegriffene Staaten 1 vom Hundert im Verhältnis zum nominalen Bruttoinlandsprodukt übersteigen [emphasis mine]

Source (german), pdf warning. This is the official text.

Additionally it’s not even purely defense spending that they can exclude, but also some related costs. Making even more space in the regular budget for unrelated expenses.

You are right that low orbit satellites aren’t in a stable orbit and eventually fail in a matter of years. I think it very much depends on what the intended useage would be for a european constellation:

• How much coverage do we want? Global or just the continent+ a bit more?

• Would it just be for critical systems or are we also looking for economic independence?

• What about bandwith and latency, how much do those matter?

All that would influence how many satellites are neccesarry and which orbits would be suitable. And also to what degree cost efficiency would play a role.

I’m not quite that optimistic.

Yes, things are happening, but imo these are still mostly reactions to external pressures. There is no structural change or politicians that have the quality to properly lead.

As an example here in Germany we recently approved a huge amount of new debt for investments in infrastructure and weapons. But the leaked contract negotiations for the coalition of our next government includes tax gifts in the form of lower tax rates for eating out, ev subsidies for the car industry, and higher pension benefits for mothers payed out of the regular budget (while we already have a unsustainable pension system).

Also in the above mentioned decision to take on new debt we decided that defense spending above 1% of GDP doesn’t count towards the regular budget, but can be financed through debt separately. Which on the one hand might be nice, since right now we might invest more. But imo setting the limit at 1% kind of shows how much we actually value it. We could have set it higher and committed to sustained change, but this way leaves more room open in the regular budget for the gifts mentioned above.