If the German consortium is so big and influential worldwide, why bother with other journals like Elsevier? They might as well start their own open-access journal. Or isn't the Consortium that big/influential?
Because they only decided to band together in 2014, and didn't want to spend their time and money on creating something new (which might even be illegal, the government can't compete with private companies)
It's not in Germany. And the government companies that did have been sued all the time, and lost every time.
My city currently has the issue that we need new low-income and student housing, the private companies refuse to built it (not profitable enough), but say they'd immediately sue if the city would build on its own.
The resulting housing crisis has driven up rent for 2 decades now, but we can't do anything. It looks like they're slowly coming to an agreement now, with the city making a deal that they can build such housing, in small amounts that are unlikely to influence the market prices, if it's built in places where no private developer wants to build.
