Can’t your union standardize this? Like, this feels like exactly what the EU is for, facilitating unified standards to increase trade and improve quality of life across Europe.
Oh, and please don’t copy us north Americans. Yeah the US, Canada, and Mexico (and japan for some insane reason though you still need an adapter because of the frequency if you’re in the half where it’s different) share an outlet type. But seriously, our polarized grounded plugs are fine enough but we have a lot of type A and yall can do better than that.
We have a standard it’s called Type-F aka Schuko. It’s cross compatible with the French plug and socket. Though a Danish three prong plug doesn’t fit in a Schuko socket but a Schuko plug does fit in a Danish socket. And in Italy it’s standard to install sockets that accept both Schuko and Type-L. Also type-C plugs aka Europlug (two prong, no grounding) are accepted in every European country except Ireland and UK.
The EU actually did regulate the voltage and standardized the acceptable tolerances for appliances, which is the difficult part. In the olden days, your French 220V appliance wasn’t necessarily guaranteed not to burn out if you put a British 240V through it.
I suspect that the cost of refitting every single house, office and appliance in several countries would be many orders of magnitude higher than the cost of everyone just buying their own travel adapter. It’s not like they’re that big a problem. Most hotels will lend you them for free, or have universal sockets.
Can’t your union standardize this? Like, this feels like exactly what the EU is for, facilitating unified standards to increase trade and improve quality of life across Europe.
Oh, and please don’t copy us north Americans. Yeah the US, Canada, and Mexico (and japan for some insane reason though you still need an adapter because of the frequency if you’re in the half where it’s different) share an outlet type. But seriously, our polarized grounded plugs are fine enough but we have a lot of type A and yall can do better than that.
We have a standard it’s called Type-F aka Schuko. It’s cross compatible with the French plug and socket. Though a Danish three prong plug doesn’t fit in a Schuko socket but a Schuko plug does fit in a Danish socket. And in Italy it’s standard to install sockets that accept both Schuko and Type-L. Also type-C plugs aka Europlug (two prong, no grounding) are accepted in every European country except Ireland and UK.
The EU actually did regulate the voltage and standardized the acceptable tolerances for appliances, which is the difficult part. In the olden days, your French 220V appliance wasn’t necessarily guaranteed not to burn out if you put a British 240V through it.
That makes sense and is awesome. Since you went through that effort it’s weird you have different plugs
I suspect that the cost of refitting every single house, office and appliance in several countries would be many orders of magnitude higher than the cost of everyone just buying their own travel adapter. It’s not like they’re that big a problem. Most hotels will lend you them for free, or have universal sockets.