That seems to be the biggest hurdle: e.g. quite a few EU-countries have paypment processors similar to PayPal but there’s so such solution for cross-border (although wero seems to be used is 3 countries and SEPA instant transfers are a thing).

There’s some push for linux, headed by the penguins, but no agreement on which distro and some even proposed us-based distros for some reason.

Etc.

Those gas pipes never stopped being used.

They have been preparing? You sure about that?

Way ahead of you on that…
https://www.goeuropean.org/
https://europeanmade.eu/
https://buy-european.net/
to name a few, plus blogs, lemmy comunities and mastodon accounts…

You answered yourself: ThinkPads. Beware of soldered RAM (and other "improvements) in newer models.