Quote from Occam:
These issues, while undesirable and (I'd say) in need of remedy in the US, have little to do with the relative use of HFT in other countries. The notion that HFT is only about unfair manipulation is generally an excuse used to justify failure to compete in an ever-more competitive market, hence the disproportionate coverage on EliteTrader.
That said, quote stuffing and fragmentation are issues that really do need to be addressed, e.g. perhaps by charging a very small amount per placed order, although determining that charge could be a can of worms in itself as the price for this would have to be very small ($.001/order? less? more? no idea) to avoid significantly increasing the cost of trading highly liquid names such as AAPL. (Such a charge would be very bad if were paid to the government, as it would easily became a backdoor FTT (and would easily be increased and grind liquidity to a halt), so I'd say it would have to be income for the exchanges used to offset the existing maker/taker or taker/maker pricing structures. I think it would also be very bad if it applied to some traders but not to others.) Another suggestion is to have a minimum time per order, say 1 second, but I really don't know how long this should be, either, as I am not in the HFT business myself.
But anyways, there is actually a lot of HFT in Europe -- e.g., Dutch Optiver is not only one of the largest HFT firms in Europe, but also one of the most significant in the USA.
I think HFT should be expanded. I don't see the problem with lots of cancels. The fundamental issue in markets is reacting to information. Whether it's news or book structure or flow or what have you. Crippling some participants doesn't do you any good, and the market will just optimize itself around that and someone else will just complain.