Why should you care about Irish hate crime legislation
After all, if you don’t live in Ireland it shouldn’t affect you, should it?
Let’s start with a simple question. You’re reading this post, so chances are you use the internet. When was the last time you were visiting a website on the internet and it asked you for your cookie preferences? You know this kind of thing:
The main reason given for the cookie preference box is because of the European Union’s GDPR regulations which apply if the website is hosted in the EU or if the users accessing the website are EU citizens or if the users accessing the website are resident in the EU.
So if you are not an EU citizen and you are not living in the EU, how come you have to deal with the cookie preferences? The reason for this is that it is very difficult to know if somebody accessing a website in say Australia is an EU citizen on vacation, and as the fines for non-compliance with GDPR can become significant.
Now, because most technology companies have their EU headquarters in Ireland, if you have to bring a complaint against a company under GDPR, you will most likely be bringing that complaint to the Irish Data Protection Commission.
At this point you might be wondering why most of the technology companies have their EU headquarters in Ireland.
I know what you’re thinking… it’s the Corporation Tax, isn’t it
Yes, Ireland has one of the lowest Corporate Tax rates and that is certainly a major contributory factor, but if it was all about the tax rates then all the technology companies would relocate to Hungary with it’s 9% rate being 3.5% lower than Ireland’s 12.5%
It could be that in Ireland we’re all native English speakers, even if we do use one or two words differently. For example somebody in Ireland may say “There’s a cup in the press” in place of “There’s a cup in the cupboard”.
But there is another important difference about Ireland and that difference is about legal systems. After Brexit, Ireland is the only country in the EU that uses the common-law legal system. The rest of the EU uses the civil law system.
From the perspective of, what are typically US based multinationals1, a country that is in the EU, uses the Euro, speaks English natively and has a legal system that is very similar to the US based common-law legal system becomes more attractive. Add in that most of the technology companies have picked Ireland too, and you get something like the network effect.
The main advantage that common-law systems have for corporations is predictability through precedence. In a civil law system, in broad brush strokes, the judge gets to interpret the legal codes and can interpret them in a different way from the last judge. In contrast under a common-law system, the judge is bound by previous rulings. This makes the court outcomes more predictable which lowers risk, and one thing big corporations do not like is risk.
Now I’m not suggesting that Ireland’s common law system is the only reason, but it is a contributing factor.
Thus if Ireland introduces Hate Speech legislation, as most of the technology companies have their EU headquarters here in Ireland, that is the legislation that they will have to comply with. If they don’t like our legislation they can of course move to a different EU country, but if they want to trade within the EU they will need a EU headquarters in the EU to comply with regulations such as GDPR, etc.
So the next time you’re trying to shove that cookie preferences pop-up out of your way browsing the Internet, maybe take a second or two to ponder if Ireland’s hate speech legislation will affect you!
All incorporated in the state of Delaware because of the legal and liability protection of established corporate law in that state.