The Dream or Nightmare of EU

EU is a fantasy, a specter that is haunting us and giving us more trouble than good. I have been saying this again and again with references to different EU-related incidents in my life. Here is the most recent one.

I have been using Internet services of my Swedish Bank for several years. To do that I have to have a small device which is generating codes to log in to the website. Since I lost this little gadget somewhere in Italy, upon my arrival to Stockholm I went straight to one of the bank offices to get a new one. This is not supposed to be anything complicated, just to pay 250 SEK, and that's it. Well, in my case it became a bit funny. My Swedish ID card had expired, and my bank didn't want to accept my Latvian passport, on the grounds that it does not count as a valid Swedish identification document. Valid Swedish identification document, as I got to know, is either an EU-passport or a Swedish ID card. The problem is that we in Latvia don't have EU-passports yet. So, in order to get this little device that I need to use services of my own bank I need to get a new Swedish ID card. That would take at least 3 weeks, the time I don't have at the moment.

And it is not only about convenience. Paying my bills through the phone costs, well, first of all phone-call itself, and then the bank is taking a fee for every bill paid. Through Internet it doesn't cost anything besides one single fee I pay for a year.

When I opened my bank account a few years ago, I didn't have a Swedish ID card. I could use my Latvian passport. What has happened now? It is the same passport I used back then, but now somehow it's become useless. Of course some would say that since it is a private bank it's their own business how they do with foreign passports. But state is restricting activities of private actors in many different ways. And why should they let a bank refuse to accept an internationally recognized, valid document?

Thank you, EU! Just give me more trouble, and be sure, I will make your existence not easy. It's a promise.