I'm pretty sure that is a more recent development, and that at least the Soviet Union and China weren't observers during the cold war. (But I haven't looked it up.)
One thing that is common about middle democracies is that prioritize a bureaucratic elite structure over an entrepreneurship culture, while both the US and China embrace entreprenuership wholeheartedly.
If they changed that they'd perhaps become world powers themselves.
One thing that is common about middle democracies is that prioritize a bureaucratic elite structure over an entrepreneurship culture
No, that's just the 2010s propaganda fed to you by people who assert that not letting them do whatever they want is "bureaucratic". These very same people are completely fine lobbying legislature for more moat when they benefit from it.
The difference between "middle democracies" or whatever that means and the US is just that politics aren't corrupted enough yet that they can buy whatever they want.
I did some admin work for the startup around 5 years ago and I have to say EU countries specially mine Sweden is far more clear. In USA you are basically hopeless without a lawyer. but I did a search and for clarity of rule I searched and this came up using AI:
World Bank’s broad “Regulatory Quality” measure supports that direction: Sweden scored 95.28/100 and the US 90.57/100 in its latest comparable 2023 data. I couldn't find EU wide score.
I wanted to help someone to get work visa and I thought it is like Sweden and you just fill a small form, oh boy! We hired a lawyer for just filling the US side application.
Heavily country-dependent, in practice. The UK lets you set up a company online cheaply, quickly, and filing is easy. Insurance is plentiful and sensible, as are business bank accounts. The law is mostly straight-forward. Setting up a German limited-liability company OTOH involves putting down some ghastly large sum as a guarantee.
But yes, Americans are told they have the freest speech and the freest markets, and don't seem to question either.
I live in one, it's definitely true. It doesn't mean entrepreneurship doesn't exist, but there is a lot of bureaucracy and the bureaucracy is iron law. They will go to any extreme to make reality align with the bureaucracy. For example if you build a building without permission, the police will come by with a bulldozer, demolish your building, dispose of the remains, and then bill you for it. Even if the building is hosting the world's first AGI, or whatever extremely important thing you can think of - there is no excuse for not complying with the bureaucracy. Whereas the US would allow you to keep it and maybe pay a fine.
but there is a lot of bureaucracy and the bureaucracy is iron law.
Yeah, an organized and powerful administration is the basis of rule-of-law system. The opposite isn't entrepreneurship, it's a state of widespread corruption where laws are toothless.
It doesn't benefit upstarts who want a fair environment to start a business, it benefits megacorps with their own militia of lawyers to bend the rules, and pockets deep enough to lobby for the removal of rules that can't be bent.
The optimal amount of crime is not zero. If someone does an illegal thing but it turns out to be good for society, it should be permitted, then legalized.
Think of AI copyright infringement. You know why the AI labs are in the USA and China and not in Europe.
You clearly don't pay attention to Canadian politics. Canada basically let McKinsey run their immigration policy[1][2] for 10 years and has now appointed the former CEO of McKinsey[3] to a business development role in government. I wouldn't say that Canada is just a satellite office of McKinsey, but it's getting closer.
Canada is corrupt as hell, just no one cares so it doesn't make international news.
Edit:
Oh yeah, forgot about the SNC-Lavalin debacle, where the ruling government tried to make the legal problems of their corporate buddies go away[4] by sneaking a new "slap on the wrist" law into an annual budget bill and then pressuring the prosecutor to apply it.
It's pretty clear the echo chamber you emerge from (protip - move to the US. I am 100% serious), but this is comical.
When your examples of Canada being "corrupt as hell" are such chickenshit nonsense, it betrays that you're just a partisan zealot that has literally zero sense of scale or reason.
McKinsey, a massive consulting firm, had a whole $32M in business with the government? Holy shit, basically the deep state! Sounds like the globalist infiltrated the government!
The SNC thing was embarrassing, but it was over its behaviour overseas (Libya, to be precise, where a dictator's family got wined and dined), and the government was concerned about a massive, major Canadian firm being crippled by domestic hand wringing.
When that is what you have to offer up for Canada being "corrupt as hell", in comparison to criminal shitholes like the US (which you think is much better, as you've explained elsewhere), wow. Back to shitty subreddits where your tiny group of laughable farces have your discussions about how dire things are.
I say it with absolute conviction that I desperately want every "Canada is broken" jackal like you to pack up and move South of the border.
It's interesting to me that people generally see Europe's regulations as interfering with entrepreneurship, while they see American decisions that give more power to multinational corporations at the expense of smaller companies as a normal part of a free market.
That's unfettered capitalism at work—"free" implies no bounds. Multinational corporations have never been more powerful now than at anytime in history.
And that hurts the free market. A free market should be transparent, have low barriers to entry, and not be dominated by monopolies or cartels. There's nothing free about American capitalism.
Your implied premise is that private companies cannot impede others' freedom, which isn't true. In unfettered capitalism, only the largest corporations have the power and money to be free.
Starting a company is not the hard part of staring a company in any country. Many many companies do exist in the EU. It might be annoying but it's obviously hardly insurmountable.
Yes, I saw one just recently where the poster made obviously false statements about starting a company in Germany.
(Before you downvote this comment, please note that I have started multiple companies in the EU. I'm speaking from personal experience, not from something I've read on Hacker News.)
You're getting downvoted now, but it's the Europeans who are running out of money for healthcare and public services (and voting for neo-fascist parties promising fixes that will never come).
European sentiment is totally out of touch with European reality. They'll post gleefully online about how much better their life is and then go back to their sardine flat where they can't afford to pay for heating, and it never ever occurs to them to reconsider any priors. They'll huff copium on Reddit about how bad American healthcare is, while waiting for years for desperately needed surgeries, paying far more for healthcare by way of taxes than any American does.
Are their ideas out of touch? No, it's reality that's wrong.
The US has depleted their missile stockpile and can no longer defend anybody. Countries in the Middle East are moving away from the US and forming their own alliances. Taiwan knows that the US cannot do anything to help them. South Korea also knows. The US has weaponized the US Dollar, forcing countries out of the SWIFT system if they don't do what they are told. As a result, the CHIPS system has become the alternative. China understands better how the economy works, with the Belt and Road Initiative. The US government doesn't understand how the economy works, and is run by a bunch of complete m orons.
I’m not sure I agree with “already won”, that’s an extreme position, but there are consequences to all the things s/he says. It may be a death of 1000 cuts, or it may hit a tipping point, but the us is certainly walking blindly down the “let China win” road.
As a joint us/uk citizen, even I would prefer to deal with China than the USA these days. Predictability is really useful in business, and narcissistic man child presidents aren’t predictable.
China will become the world's reserve currency by 2032.
China doesn’t want this for the same reason that some Americans currently in power don’t want the USD to be the world’s reserve currency - it comes with an export and trade cost.
There are also many structural and political reasons why the Yuan can’t play this role not least of which are transparency, the peg and monetary supply independence.
Reserve currency status entirely depends on whether the issuing authority has the ability to drop a munition (literally or figuratively) on the head of anyone who dares to counterfeit the currency.
China's military and soft influence are improving but until they get that good, USD will remain the reserve.
Because, imagine the scenario where the US simply counterfeits the renminbi. What is China's recourse? Spicy statements by Wang Yi in toothless international forums?
Folks can keep their heads in the sand for pretty long, as long as they look just at progressively smaller circle around them and ignore rest of reality.
The momentum China already gained, and gaining more every day is well beyond anything in the west. Plus if you consider the position they are rising from, its properly meteoric. Nobody knows future, but its rather easy to continue projection with current, or even a bit slower pace and within 1 or 2 decades, situation will be pretty clear from any objective perspective.
Above is purely technological/process progress. Add US making enemy of whole world in one brilliant move, something that is practically irreversible in upcoming decades, and situation is clear. Military (without ammo) alone won't give you much negotiating power. LLMs can be replicated elsewhere with rather little cost, and soon some small bleeding edge advantage will be largely meaningless for most practical tasks.
It doesn't even matter what near future brings, this is settled and no amount of denial from US or self-patting is changing that.
Many people avoid Chinese stocks like the plague because the system is still half communist and as a foreign investor you get some paper in a company on Cayman Island instead of real direct ownership. That keeps me from buying their stocks and I'm not the only one.
China understanding the economy appears to include them understanding that an economy consists of producing and trading goods and services, not a cancerous stock market. You can't invest in their stocks because that would be bad for their economy.
I am not OP and obviously "winning" reduces too many dimensions into one. But I will say that from my recent two visits to the country that I was pretty astonished by the speed at which they are building things. Cars, Buildings, Tech Hubs, Factories. You blink twice and a new tech company plops up somewhere making high end drones or humanoid robots or CNC machines or innovative 3d printers. It feels like there is an absolute abundance of electrical and mechanical engineers in that country and funding to match.
I am not making any comments on the politics of it all, but I have not seen this anywhere else in the world - perhaps it exists but I am not aware of it.
For some of us, it mimics late 19th century europe where the rate of innovation perhaps was only matched by the lack of regard for cost, safety or need.
I think we are closer to seeing the Chinese Hindenburg than Arpanet or Moon voyage or some other bewildering humanity joining initiative.
Its inarguable that the industrial revolution brought tons of wealth quickly to the UK. But one, having past it all, has to wonder if the child work force, insanely cramped victorian houses, constant deaths due to smog, polluted water etc could not have been entirely avoided by reducing "innovation" speed.
Is the existing suffering of the Chinese system worth the economic growth? For its own middle class, the answer is probably yes. But systemic conditions like limiting the universities places to top 30% students, means you have a permanent underclass that cannot join the white collar jobs.
Is that required to have a cheap, hardworking manufacturing and construction industries? Maybe. But reinventing a class system that has a few steps removed from slavery as an "economic miracle" and "neck breaking speed innovation" feels a bit icky when they could take 5 years longer and treat people better.
We are arguably close to post scarcity, and instead of building post-capitalism instruments (like libraries could be imagined as), we are just perfecting the economic conditions of capitalism which require an inordinate amount of cheap labour and state violence.
Billionaires are building bunkers instead of museums, they can see the end game of this system they benefit from and its not a good one. Like I can't understand whats the point of winning "the economy" if we end up in a post nuclear hellscape of ecological collapse, but number must go up I have been told.
I do not think it was necessary for it to be that bad for the industrial revolution to happen. Possibly displacing agricultural workers through the agricultural revolution and enclosures accelerated it?
It is certainly not necessary for economic development now. You probably cannot give people in less developed economies the same pay and working conditions, but you can provide the basics and relatively decent treatment.
Creativity, innovation, freedom?
10 guys in a room can't compete for long against hundreds of millions or billions pursuing their own separate interests. Sure, they can steal, but they can't create to the same degree if at all.
I recently read a survey of 14 promising new technologies: AI, EV's, drones, robots, batteries, et cetera. China was leading in 13/14, and is only 4 months behind on the 14th, AI.
Look around and visit any country, you'll see chinese made and sold goods inundating everymarket, build infrastructures.
It used to be chinese made goods sold by local or western companies. Nowadays bar a few exceptions these are chinese goods sold directly by chinese brands/companies.
Go do some research on China - it's economy is in the toilet and its leadership has destroyed much of it's success, foreign capital and companies have fled to India, Vietnam, Mexico, Indonesia.
Your lament of "Oh no China is the best in the world and only getting better!!!" is long long out of date.
With 2 billion people you’re absolute power. Internal market with middle class size of whole United States. No need for wallstreet and American style financial engineering. Producer of 80% goods for Europe. I mean buying something mainstream not made in China is barely possible. Technically there are some challenges like plane engines or lithography. But they’ll nail it. Trust me.
I mean..."close to true" is another way of saying "false". It could easily have been phrased in a way that was actually true and gotten plenty of upvotes instead.
That's rich considering it was France and the UK that threw Poland under the bus despite having a signed defense pact. The US just came in to clean up the mess.
WW2 ended with Yalta conference where Roosevelt agreed to Stalin's proposition of giving Poland to USSR's sphere of influence, making Poland (and rest of EE) their puppet state.
Churchil wanted to pressure Stalin to leave Poland (and at least parts of EE) independent and even considered "Operation Unthinkable".
At least that's what I think the guy above referenced.
That's pretty much what happened. Trouble was the stakes were already high, if Starlin didn't yield to a bluff (had one been pursued) it would have been an embarrassing backdown and a show of weakness on part of the allies.
"Bluff" because no one other than perhaps Stalin would have followed through—to essentially extend WWII (this time between former allies).
So pragmatism was the order of the day, thus Poland and EE were sacrificed.
If "70% of Canadian exports are to the US", that's probably why the US has so much leverage, and I can see why the Canadian government would like a change.
Hence the need for a rebalancing of trade partnerships.
I'd like to take a closer look at what exactly Canada is exporting to the US, and what exactly the EU is importing from elsewhere, to see if there's a match. I'd rather buy from Canada than from Russia. Or China. Or the US.
I’m sure China would, too. I wonder what’s harder: diverting that oil to the northwest passage, or diverting Persian Gulf oil around the strait of Hormuz?
You know how despite climate change being very real, in day to day discussions with other level headed people, they still very regularly say stuff like
"We ran the numbers for an EV, and right now gas is still cheaper, so we are holding off on the switch until it makes financial sense"
Canadian oil would need to be shipped halfway around the world. It would be more expensive. Price is always the top factor for everyone.
Fair point. What we really need of course is more renewables, and that is happening, but not fast enough, so we still need oil. And I'd rather get our oil in a way that doesn't fuel the Russian war machine, even if it does cost a bit more.
Polish export to US is about 3% of its total export and import - about 5% of Poland's total import. Not much to lose, honestly. We trade more with Czech Republic.
Polish export to EU is 74% of its total export and import is about 60% of its total import.
Economically - whatever's good for EU is good for Poland and US barely matters.
What about the importance of that trade. The US exports a lot of critical things that cannot be supplied from elsewhere. Everyone is heavily reliant on American technology.
The hardware is produced in Asia but American controlled. its still a dependency on being supplied by American companies.
"Only services" covers a lot of critically important things. Clouds services and payment systems, for example. Even just one American company like AWS could turn off a huge chunk of European economies.
Yes, but services are easier to replace than hardware. And control is something you have, and then you don't have if the country in which you operate decides otherwise (or US presidents throws another tantrum).
Companies use AWS because it is there and others used it, so they got ball rolling. It doesn't mean one couldn't replace it with another service, most probably more pricey one. If there would be some kind of war, then one doesn't need to have servers in US, and European ones are right there.
You can't easily replace e.g. lithium or other metals.
Fuel is problematic, but there are places that are closer that could sell them (middle east, if we ignore current Russian state of mind).
As for machinery, it is hard to guess what kind. Germany produces a lot of it, and I would guess China also.
Not sure about pharmaceuticals.
Generally US is not our greatest import partner, China is. And we have a big internal market also.
After decades of globalization, everyone is just extremely dependent on everyone.
I think hardware is a bit complicated by the way. A lot of hardware is also not US controlled. For instance ARM Holdings is British, Japanese, or global depending on how you look at it and quite a lot of vendors rely on ARM's reference designs. Europe also has a lot of important chip designers, but they are more focused on embedded systems and support chips, like NXP and ST Microelectronics.
"Only services" covers a lot of critically important things. Clouds services and payment systems, for example. Even just one American company like AWS could turn off a huge chunk of European economies.
Why European governments and increasingly companies are trying to move away to European alternatives. It all starts small, but e.g. a bunch of governments are already disentangling from Office. The sale of the maintainer of the Dutch DigiD infrastructure to a US company has been blocked (would have happened without any blockers a few years ago). Countries are reducing US arms purchases in favor of European alternatives.
It's like turning a mammoth tanker, but it is slowly happening.
Let's just hope we have critical mass before the right-wing populists take over, big tech has been intensively lobbying them in recent years [1]. So much 'for the people', like they always proclaim.
Arm is important, but for R & D. The impact of not having Arm will take a long time to be felt. The same for a lot of the others you mention. Not having a supply or Intel and AMD CPUs would be felt much faster and would be harder to find replacements for.
It's like turning a mammoth tanker, but it is slowly happening.
Is it really happening? As has been mentioned on HN multiple times the EU's age verification app will only run on American controlled devices. Some countries are moving some things away from US suppliers, buts its very much one step forward then two steps back.
Let's just hope we have critical mass before the right-wing populists take over, big tech has been intensively lobbying them in recent years
Unfortunately, not only them. As the article says the existing European Commission is already going in the direction big tech want, just not as far. The current British government (a historically left wing party) has also been cosying up to big tech. One of the organisations mentioned in your link has a lot of info on EU lobbying in general: https://corporateeurope.org/index%2Ephp/en/lobbying-the-eu
I’ve always been told don’t let perfect be the enemy of good, and the journey of 1000 miles starts with a single step.
The lesson here is that you can’t rely on the US anymore. Not for military protection, not for defence procurement, and not for trade or supply chain. That legacy has ended entirely by choice of the United States.
The problem has moved beyond monetary trade value and into existential risk.
Exports are really easy to move and replace, as has been proven again and again in the past two years. Turns out that imports can be far trickier and pose larger problems to an economy.
In 1960, 75% of Ireland's exports went to the UK, and 50% of its imports came from there. By 2000, it was 35% imports, 25% exports. Today it is 20% imports, 8% exports. There are a few things going on here, but a lot of it was EU membership giving Ireland options beyond its 'natural' trade partner (and then the big drop from 2000 to now was mostly Brexit).
Being in a situation where 70% of your exports go to one country is arguably pretty unhealthy; that is something that Canada would do well to work towards reducing, even _if_ the US administration wasn't openly hostile.
Trump is a symptom not the disease, when he's gone the people who supported him and voted for him still exist and another Trump-like figure is almost inevitable given they've basically ploughed and planted that field to grow the next one and who's to say NeoTrump isn't going to be smarter.
The other democracies can no longer count on the US as a stable ally the way we have in the past (whether that trust was misplaced is a matter of perspective).
Simply put, you did it twice, We can't rely on them not doing it again.
When Hitler was removed did another Hitler variant take control of Germany? No, Germany recovered from that dark period. The same will happen in the US. We will recover from this dark period. The comparison to Hitler is not baseless, btw. His own vice president once called Trump America's Hitler.
If you mean after facing bitter defeat, being broken into two nations, being controlled directly by foreign powers for years (and on one side decades), paying reparations, its upper political class and collaborators seized, jailed, trialed, and the free side being afraid of annexation by Russia, having nazism and any artifacts outlawed, then yes.
Yes, after all and more, no future Hitler has yet emerged.
Unless you see these things happening soon, then not really a good comparison.
No, because he was removed at gunpoint (no, not the one he pointed at himself). Unless and until that happens to a US President, you can expect more of the same.
It doesn't need to be a trump like figure. I would temper expectations that anything for Europe or Canada goes back to some status quo. It's more likely for Canada, but the US has changes domestically and with regards to other foreign nations in ways that necessitate different foreign relations even with close allies.
We can look at Biden. He's not a trump like figure by any stretch. He decided to continue some of Trump's foreign policy.
This has been brewing since George W Bush. Obama made a valiant attempt at normalising relations with Europe but I don't think any future US president has any hope of reversing this now.
I've never seen a pumpjack nor any hydrofracking equipment. I have seen a few capitalists but I can't be positive they were red-blooded ones (whatever that means).
The red blooded thing was tongue in cheek. Go visit California. Eat at In n Out. You may see a pumpjack next to the place you’re sitting enjoying your animal style fries. They’re pretty common. I don’t mind them really, but do find them to be equally / neutrally as a wind turbine in the area (also common sight in California), admittedly the wind turbine is sleeker and more modern, but the pumpjacks have more history.
Solar panels are even worse. Here in Poland they're covering entire fields in the countryside, I have no idea why they don't build them on parking lots or on factory roofs.
of course. Ive not met a person that doesn't like them, either. I love hiking and have travelled pretty wide across europe.
Solar panels are similarly lovely to see. I'd just as rather see them than a uniform field of corn or maize or somesuch thing. I can't understand the mindset that objects to such things? is it just a straight up childish nimby "I don't want ANYTHING to be built" or would you prefer natural gas+coal power plants ? or any other built structures for that matter (I think they are better than concrete buildings etc - they are white tree-like things, thin with smooth curved surfaces, or rows of curious purple and black panels swiveling to face the sun)
I'm sorry I came off a little hostile. I do find it hard to understand how people can be so opposed to such clearly necessary infrastructure on purely aesthetic grounds.
Compared to all the things that could be built, it seems like the aesthetic harm is so small (a six lane highway, an industrial plant, a train line, sewage processing plant, refuse pile, the list goes on and on) - all of these must be built in places too. I can't see how anyone can think themselves anything but lucky that they get wind turbines near them instead
Yes I have no problems with them looks-wise. They don't build them on parking lots/factory roofs because of efficiency. Good solar panels follow the sun, which isnt really a mechanism practical to setup in a parking lot. maintenance is also a lot easier if you have one field generating a gigawatt of power vs having to service 20 parking lots that generate a gigawatt of power. Also obviously the land itself is cheaper in the countryside. Renewables are operating on relatively thing margins profitability wise, so you really want to make the juice worth the squeeze (the main value being sovereignty from other countries as discussed in the thread)
The LNG won't come from Canada either. Trudeau notoriously said "there's no business case" for it, but the truth is they can't agree with how to actually get enough of it to the east coast to make a difference, and that's what blocks it. (In fairness the route does go through some very unique environments).
Canadian provinces have a far bigger ability to screw things up for the whole than countries do inside the EU, and people remotely familiar with the EU will understand what a strong statement that is.
The only "way" involves greasing the palms of every special interest group in the way until they have successfully accounted for the whole potential revenue of the intended enterprise, and that's what blocked everything repeatedly.
I'm in Quebec and very familiar with the exact territory this has applied to wrt getting resources out on the east coast, and unless someone was willing to rule by decree to bypass all those entrenched groups it's not happening, and we all know why such decrees would not happen as well.
They'll ship it out of Churchill. The only special interest groups are Indigenous and they rarely successfully hold up projects that are actually important.
Petro-states are destroying their trust as they try desperately to cling on to the power fossil fuels have given them. Thankfully this makes renewables even more attractive than just their lower cost.
The world was already moving on from US hegemony. China is already a super power, other economies are growing, and the west in general (i.e. all the countries mentioned here) are a shrinking proportion of the world economy (and population, or military strength).
You jest, but if you've ever seen a wounded animal fighting like mad for survival, I wouldn't be so confident that won't be the exact same things that's going to happen.
You don't have to look into the animal kingdom, history works too. No ruling empire has fallen silently and without conflict. Changing the world order always included an aggressive transfer of power
It was mostly peaceful in itself. There was a lot of conflict that followed in the wake of it as borders and power structures were settled. Just in South Asia we had the partition of India, the secession of Bangladesh from Pakistan, the Sri Lankan civil war, and various smaller separatist conflicts.
In the case of my country, USA, we are the ones wounding ourselves. We made the conscious choice to elect a government that prefers isolationism to economic competition, and which rejected near-peer military preparedness in favor of more deadlock wars with third world middle east countries. It’s not like we were somehow victimized by the EU.
The collapse of the USA as the world leader was already happening, but plenty of countries were under the impression the USA and the other western countries were working together to save the sinking ship.
The USA did plenty of offensive stuff before that (like a full campaign labeling the French as cowards for not supporting their baseless war in the middle east), but it took until Trump and his unhinged behaviour for the world to see how bad the situation really was.
Eh, on a long enough timeline we have seen this and been there before. US is the beacon of democracy and the free world until it is not, and then until it again is. Depending on who is speaking and about whom and when.
Most of these attention grabbing statements by politicians are usually about scoring political points at home. The only thing worthy of judgement are hard facts, and excruciating details, which are yet to materialize on this topic.
This was a kind of example, and not really the point of my comment.
Though to illustrate further, there are many examples one might find of US acting undemocratically even 40 years ago.
So, politicians will talk, governments will be in power, and the observers will discuss. My invitation was simply to discuss known facts not political rhetoric. And main facts are largely absent and unknown.
I thought Turkey or North Africa would be the next steps. Maybe Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan.
Not white enough for the EU. There is a lot of opposition to even Turkey, which is already in customs union, joining and talks are dead specifically because EU countries do not want immigration from Turkey.
That won't be a problem for long. The native Europeans are swinging to the authoritarian right, the newly naturalized are very selectively for liberal democracy - aka the parts that directly benefit them, not the parts that make it liberal, and the liberal democrats are straight out refusing to have kids.
So in 50 years Tukey will border authoritarian regime either way.
There are already quite a few Turks in the UK, but I don't remember Turkey being used as a specific scare story. (I voted Remain... Have to point this out continually.)
Either way, it's clear that UK migration levels have not been diminished by Brexit, and much of it is coming from outside the EU... So whatever one thinks of the issue it is bigger than Europe.
Many European countries already have substantial Turkish migration. Notably Germany but also visible in the UK, where they seem to have cornerned the market for barbering.
Turkey has been floated as a serious EU candidate for decades now. Most of it is not in Europe of course, and it has a large population. Turkey refuses to address its past with the Armenians, Kurds and Greeks which is a major concern.
The other question is what its border control is like at the eastern end.
There are already large numbers of Turks in western Europe, particularly Germany, so presumably some of them would vote for it.
There are already large numbers of Turks in western Europe, particularly Germany
Define large numbers. It's around 5% or even less in Germany which hosts the biggest Turkish community to the best of my knowledge, and way less in other European countries.
Bringing Turkey in imo might dissolve the Union, I don't see anyone trying it soon.
Turkey refuses to address its past with the Armenians, Kurds and Greeks which is a major concern.
It's also a dictatorship and its population is probably not in favor of liberal democracy - most (all?) Muslim countries aren't.
I think in recent times we realized that culture is still very important and just doing realpolitik alone does not work. Turkey and North Africa are way too foreign and bring more problem than benefits.
Je suis tellement heureux de constater que Carney bouge rapidement.
Au début des annonces des tarifs, plusieurs experts disaient que de se découpler des américains étaient impossible à court terme. Nos économies sont trop entrelacées pour changer de cap rapidement.
Je ne sais pas exactement ce que Carney a en tête , mais j’espère que ça va accélérer le découplage.
I wouldn't be surprised if Scotland eventually leaves UK and joins the EU. Part of the reason they voted to stay in the UK was so that they could remain in the EU, and then brexit happened
That can’t happen though because they’d be without a currency in the interim period and it’s also baked in to the EU’s treaties to make this difficult else places like Catalonia and the Basque Country would break away and join the EU, so there are barriers in place to make this less than quick or easy.
It would be rather foolish, but they can continue using the GBP. Or they can start using the Euro before joining. They wouldn't be able to mint their currency, but plenty of small (often island) nations use foreign currency already.
Scotland is already a separate country, technically speaking, so I don't think it's comparable with the Basque situation. Furthermore, with the UK leaving the EU, they've opened doors that non-EU members can't use to work around such issues.
The largest problem for an independent Scotland trying to join the EU would probably be that the EU doesn't just let anyone join. You need to have a strong enough economy and a grip on national debt to join.
I think if you keep researching one of the things that killed the referendum last time was the British government saying a hard no to continued use of the pound while scotland applied to the EU and joined the Euro. Now of course they could keep using the pound, but the amount of economic attacks against Scotland by the City of London and general lack of financial independence seems like it really would kill the idea dead. If Scotland thinks it gets a better deal from the EU than it gets as part of being in the UK then it should go for it but it would be an extremely expensive and fragile 10-15 years in that interim period. And not even full independence, it would be tantamount to saying “we hate the English so much we’d rather be governed from Belgium”.
They would then have a hard border with England, and would have to untangle their economy from the UK to some extent, which would be extremely disruptive. There will also be complex issues around who gets which citizenship, who would need work visas, a change of currency, etc.
It was known that there was likely to be a Brexit referendum at the time of the Scottish referendum: Cameron had promised one if the Conservatives won the 2015 election.
I'm proud to live in the EU because for all its faults we have one thing going for us, we seem to be the only large institution that countries still want to voluntarily join, and can voluntarily leave.
In a world in which the other great powers revive the Monroe Doctrine or threaten their magnitude smaller neighbors with annexation we're not doing so badly. There is an inherent pettiness, weakness and fake strength in autocracy and force and it's often why I think the EU receives so much disproportionate hate.
Yes, you can read all about how that came about, and how it's going.
Yes, it seems to have made no difference. economically - economy performing much the same as France and Germany. Lots of lives saved by the faster covid vaccine rollout which is a plus IMO.
You're projecting an American ideal. Not all nations are--nor want to be--America, and we're thankful for that.
You are missing my point. Not annexing anyone when its not an option because you cannot does not prove anything.
I have never even been to America - why would I project an American ideal?
"Annexing neighbour" is clearly a non-goal of the EU. One of the reason of its existence is to put an end to european countries invading each others all the time.
CUSMA is just a trade deal, not a full-on organization like the EU.
If we're doing a trade deal measuring contest, I will just point out that the EU has the world's largest free trade network, including Canada (already), South Korea, most of Latin America, India etc etc.
The EU feels like an incomplete experiment. Not strong enough to actually be a single market. But still able to create additional annoying regulations on top of nation level ones.
The EU needs to be truly Federal to succeed economically. That might create uniform regulations with more uniform regulations and actually make Europe competitive.
I am not sure, if I see the example of US as federation, it might work well for corporations only, but people have nothing, uniformity doesn't work because not all populations have the same needs/expectations
Its hard because its 27 different countries, but they are working on making it less hard. Many startups are made in Europe, but then bought up (often by Americans) or moves to USA when its time to expand outside the single countries boarders. Canada has the same problem.
Canada has made it pretty clear that they do not want to be part of the big country south of it, so they will have to find a way to create large companies that stays. Doing this together with a market of 450 million people seems like a good idea.
You can't deal with 27 different groups of people without dealing with 27 different groups of people or forcibly unifying them to become 1 group. I'm sure you agree the latter is bad.
Yes, and they have in some ways, and that's called the EU. They have not unified in every way. For example the French people have not agreed to start eating Surströmming, they do not want to start eating Surströmming, I don't know whether it's even legal there to possess it, and that decision should rightfully be up to them. If you want to sell your Surströmming in France you have to take France into account, you can't just assume your business will be the same everywhere in Europe, and that's not just limited to laws, but also all other facets of culture. For another basic example, you have to have a version of your packaging written in French. The EU is not going to mandate that English packaging is accepted in all countries, for very obvious reasons.
The EU needs to be truly Federal to succeed economically. That might create uniform regulations with more uniform regulations and actually make Europe competitive.
EU already has uniform regulations, what are you talking about? It's also the third largest economy in the world, as uncompetitive as it is.
No it does not. There's a lot of gold plating happening at the national level that goes beyond EU regulations. It's EU regulations + 27 national regulations in reality. The EU economies are still too different and the population too unwilling to have a truly US-style single market.
It's an improvement for the economy and that mainly benefits the shareholders. How you redistribute those gains more broadly is an open question. But keeping inefficiencies in place to protect workers at all costs is a losing strategy in the long term - see: Soviet Union.
Unsurprisingly, people in different parts of the world hold different values. Europe is generally more focused on actual people and how their lives live, than simply accumulation of wealth among the few. It is unsurprising that they focus on different things.
That's easier said than done when you are competing in a global economy. The US is actually getting more consistent here: It starts to become more isolationist (through the trade war and specifically tariffs) and as a result will have more leeway in choosing their own mix of workers rights, compensations, taxation, etc. Sidenote: Of course consumers will be worse off as a result.
The EU however is in this weird spot where they are pushing for a more integrated global economy (thanks to all kinds of trade deals) with fewer barriers while at the same time making their own companies less competitive with all these regulations and internal hurdles: There are examples where a German exporter had an easier time sending his stuff to New Zealand than France.
Thanks for replying to a comment I didn't make. It is clear that your mind is full of American exceptionalism, I'm done in this comment thread. Thanks for your contribution.
If going by GDP (which this claim usually does), the EU as a whole beats out China for second place by ~10%. When going by individual countries Germany alone is the third place behind China, though with a large gap between the two.
Consider: the US is a (somewhat) greenfield project, while the EU is a brownfield refactoring.
These sorts of refactorings take time, even more so if done by "committee". The good thing is that explicit interfaces have to be created thereby (hopefully) increasing adaptability and resilience over time.
The EU needs to be truly Federal to succeed economically. That might create uniform regulations with more uniform regulations and actually make Europe competitive.
I agree, but there are huge barriers to taking this step. You need a common identity to create a nation. Americans have one, so do other large nations. The EU does not.
"But still able to create additional annoying regulations on top of nation level ones."
It seems to me the EU is overburdened with trivial regulations (like regulating the maximum power consumption of domestic vacuum cleaners) rather than prioritizing core issues of its single market, manufacturing, trade, etc.
Trouble is small vested interests hold overly powerful sway over EU-wide policy. The example above is a case in point, individual member states should be able to set their own regulations independently if deemed warranted.
You're correct, annoying regulations are bloating the EU bureaucracy making it lethargic and uncompetitive.
individual member states should be able to set their own regulations independently if deemed warranted.
People proclaim this with such confidence, especially in the UK before the Brexit years I must say, and yet there are so many arguments against it.
First, accepting this goes against a core tenet of the single market, since the single market for vacuum cleaners is now split into 27 little markets. We thus need 27 regulatory bodies to each investigate, and then make a political decision, on the maximum power setting of domestic vacuum cleaners. Then, producers in China will have to make (up to) 27 different models of vacuum cleaners. This is certainly not going to be cheaper, completely destroys the famous Brussels effect [0], all for some token amount of "sovereignty".
Nations states can sovereignly decide to delegate this process of rule making to Brussels, and domestic vacuum cleaners are a perfectly mundane "case in point" to showcase the benefits of this process. The EU is far from a perfect union, but throwing these frankly naive arguments around will not help it much.
Nation states are also free, in practice, to ignore any regulation they don't like and implement their own. Hungary did this for a decade. They usually don't, because there is no benefit to ignoring the more widespread setting on maximum vacuum cleaner power.
Europe’s biggest problem, I think, is its lost mojo. There’s plenty of good ingredients, plenty of challenges too. It can still go either way. Hell, at this rate it might outperform simply because US and China blow up due to domestic problems.
The thing about mojo is that it’s super hard to predict. It might stay where it is and Europe’s share of global GDP might decline to nothing. Or it might rekindle out of nowhere due to some impulse.
Either way, middle democracies are a somewhat threatened species now, and from their individual PoV an imperfect union might be much better than efficiently staying on their own.
It’s effectively the same as what I mean - or a part of it. You fix this with either better "alignment” (ugh!) ie conviction of going in a particular direction, leading to a consensus. Or in turn, a conviction that the veto is bad and needs to be curbed for the overall benefit of everyone.
There are deeper structural problems when you look at the incentives inherent to government driven society.
While I do appreciate and even support the idea that the immense wealth available on planet earth should be more evenly distributed, and people should mostly be focused on raising families, deepening their philosophy, and perfecting their craft... (some societies in Europe are pretty laid back in terms of hyper-productivity culture)
Regulation is possible without paralyzing industry. Laws about the internet are possible without stifling freedom. Central planning is possible without crashing the economy so bad you end up with a regime change. It all comes down to execution and for the most part, it's been a series of failed experiments.
As much as I want a happy future for Canadians and Europeans, I just don't see the odds being super favourable.
Dunno. My impression is that with the EU, we pick its suboptimal parts and compare them to what they could be with optimal execution.
We don’t look either at the successful parts, not at the world where it is wholesale gone. My gut feeling is that EU members are, on the whole, much better off for being in than out. One natural experiment is the UK - opinions differ, but the drastic accumulation of problems coincides with Brexit timings.
I’m all for improving the EU! And for sure there are bad bits. But when your car AC is doing badly, you don’t write off the car. You try to fix the AC…
The EU shouldn't become the US. EU countries are sovereign, with the practical right to completely ignore what the EU tells them to do, and this is a good thing for now. If an EU country legalizes weed, federal troopers do not march in, arrest all the weed dispensary owners and march them to federal prison because those things don't exist.
Ok but you have to accept that means an EU country works with a hand tied behind its back.
In the US I can start a company and instantly have a market of 350M. Start a company in an EU country, then try to expand to another country, it’s a nightmare. That company will have a lower upper bound on market size.
The EU might be a success in coordinating on regional issues, but I don’t think it’s yet an asset to the European economy.
Do you propose forcing 27 groups of people to become 1 group just so it's easier to sell them things?
Culture in Europe is more on sustainable business rather than hypergrowth, but you can expand to other countries too. You just have to have a business strategy catering to all the groups you want to cater to.
I think it's good the supermarket chains in France and in Germany are mostly disjoint sets, it keeps competition around. Pan-EU Supermarket Inc would be bad.
I’m just telling you the tradeoffs you’ve chosen. You can’t be an economic superpower in the current regime.
Without your own “hypergrowth” you’ll always be dominated by the hypergrowth of competitors like the US and China. You’ll be in orbit of other powers instead of creating your own gravity.
To pivot a bit from the point above: I'm not sold on the core premise of the need for "hypergrowth." I think the American economy has been an incredible engine for productivity and I mostly agree that there's a lot of things that get in the way of the same in the EU and other countries. But I look around the U.S. and wonder what exactly the goal is if it's not actually giving everyone safer, more comfortable lives.
I don't think they are bad tradeoffs. I think there are problems that need to be fixed, and plenty of room for improvement, but the core principles are fine.
Do you know what else focuses on hypergrowth, in biology?
You guys are clueless. Just because you don't understand the org and why it isn't exactly like the US doesn't make your vague misplaced opinions valid.
What alternative is there? The Americans are not an option anymore. It seems sensible to me that we want to get very close to one major power, and more close to everything else. Diversification.
The EU needs to be truly Federal to succeed economically. That might create uniform regulations with more uniform regulations and actually make Europe competitive.
But also:
> The European Union has a nominal GDP of roughly $20 trillion, placing it closely on par with or slightly ahead of China ($19 trillion), but smaller than the United States ($30–$31 trillion)
I don't know about you but the same GDP as China sounds economically successful... or not?
It is and it isn't. Around 15-20 years ago, the EU economy was actually bigger than the US economy in total terms (not per capita). The issue is that the EU has stagnated, as has canada while the USA has been pulling away. Growth has been pretty terrible for both for a long time.
From Blackberry to a budding VFX industry and many other sustainable businesses to come out of Canada has always made it seem like a very EU-like philosophy. This will be great for fair trade.
From having worked extensively in it, the VFX industry, apart from being near to Hollywood in terms of time zone, is surely just a tax rebate competition. Which is actually very non-EU philosophy; member states cannot simply subsidise local industries from tax revenue - it is a single market, other members have to have equal access to your market as your local companies.
Of course there's plenty of ways around it. In the case of film production, if the script calls for the characters to be in a specific location - then it's now a cultural asset that the government can fund with rebates. The person writing the script is of course aware of this and the incentives available.
No idea what this actually means, if it means easier trade, I'm all for anything that reduces our dependency on the yanks, as long as we don't need to be involved in their regulatory or legal regimes. The Americans are no longer our friends, Salut, mes amis Européens. :)
Yeah, I'm curious about which ones are a problem. I could see there being some incompatibility, and the details are more interesting than sweeping statements.
Some regulations would have to be normalized and agreed upon between the countries for trade open up. Can't have different quality standards and ways of evaluating and declaring them.
Programmers keep thinking law is if/then, it's not, it's a set of instructions to judges, which may contain obvious errors or conflict with other instructions, which is why we allow humans to interpret them instead of computers.
Welcome to Canada where the regulations are in fact provincial.
Canadian provinces have a harder time trading with each other than countries in the EU, although thanks to the sales tax and package transit changes the EU is becoming competitive in this area.
One I have actually dealt with was VATMOSS. Especially when first introduced it had very low ceilings for registration and actually deterred small businesses from trading across borders.
I also think GDPR is too strict for small businesses and non-profits and not strict enough to deal with big businesses that trade data.
Having health with VATMOSS too my experience is that it was trivial to implement. Maybe your country fucked up the rollout? Here in Sweden I had zero issues.
Its not the country, its the implementation cost for small businesses. In particular the ceiling for registration was so low that even micro-businesses with minimal cross border sales had to comply.
Its would have been trivial for a big business, but it was not for small businesses.
Maybe just calibrated poorly. Small enough and IMO the only important rule is no sharing with others. That should always be strictly enforced. But why worry about how some small timer handles my personal data or if I can make various requests of him? The stakes are too small to matter.
...Those cookie banner things for a start!! heh. ;)
Mostly just wouldn't really work because Ottawa would have to somehow represent the provinces to the EU and the provinces and Ottawa don't work together in a way that would be compatible, I don't think anyone in Canada would want to change how Ottawa works with them. We may also end up in the same position again as we have with the Americans, nobody but us likes our supply management system[1]. GDPR is also something I think Canadians would struggle to get behind, our PIPEDA framework is quite good and I think most folks approve of it (except Quebec, who have their own framework). Taking the Euro would be a problem, etc etc, I think I could probably build quite a big list. btw, I respect the EU regulation, and that Europeans quite like it, I was just saying I don't think it would be practical for us to re-work the whole country to accommodate them, that's all.
You're on a tech-focused Silicon Valley based news forum. Most people here think if you're not carte blanche allowing your Ai companies unfettered hyperscale economy-threatening death spiral infrastructure investments for a nebulous end goal that benefits a small minority with undertones of civilizational collapse and mass unemployment then you're a over-regulatory nanny-state that is crushing innovation.
I have such fatigue from listening to the rhetoric and whining from US farmers when enough of their goods are dangerous for consumers and illegal in Canada and the EU.
It's all bad faith from the US trying to run over any market they don't control so they can weaponize control over food supply of another nation later.
I don't mind countries setting their own rules for the food they want to consume, and for sure the EU can be overly bureaucratic.
On the other hand, the US is the only country I've been to where I have purchased milk in a completely sealed plastic container, and it was rancid when I opened it. Upstate New York is proud of their local and organic produce, but they are selling rancid milk in stores like that's a normal thing. That was a shock as a visiting Australian.
I remember a delightful trip to Canada, where I ordered a hamburger, and they'd only let me have it well-done. I asked why, and the waitress says "The beef comes from the US", with a grimace...
Keep in mind, social media and western online dialogue is extremely US centric. If every country was a house, the US is where everyone meets to party. So every spec of dust spawns endless content for everyone to dig into. Nevermind that people who have the most time to spend on social media, dictate the narratives that are popular.
The reality is that the US better if you have money (like white collar salary man level) and (much) worse if you are an odds-and-ends gig economy type worker (like an influencer).
From the vantage point of a ~75% income bracket home, moving to Europe is almost purely downsides (conventionally, some people give up everything for their dream to live in a cold dank cave), whereas being in a <50% income bracket home, Europe seems like a utopia.
as long as we don't need to be involved in their regulatory or legal regimes
The only reason the trade is easy in EU (and with it non-EU partners) is these regulations. Countries that choose to stay outside but wanted access to our market (like Norway, Switzerland, etc.) - had to accept the regulations. So I highly doubt you'll get your wish.
Carney was asking for freedom of movement of goods, people and services, but without full monetary and legislative integration.
So, easier to sell stuff, easier to buy stuff, free to just travel to/from Canada/EU and work there with no extra paperwork, free to buy and sell service from Canada to EU and vice versa.
No Euro, no vote in EU, no ECJ, no payments into each others budget.
Tighter integration than UK, not as tight as Norway/Switzerland/Iceland.
Common defense was already agreed anyhow.
I can tell you this enjoys broad support in the EU public. Although, no joke, a lot of peoples first reaction is: "They need to compete in Eurovision first. Otherwise they should wait for Australia to join first."
Also, being a European Broadcasting Union (EBU) "Associate Member" is the name for the mechanism that allowed Australia, Canada and other countries to be admitted into Eurovision.
If you've been around the ESC scene, you know there's a lot of embassy involvement (parties in embassies are a thing), the scene is catnip for those interested in politics, the politically active, and to some extent politicians. Eurovision is also one mechanism for discussions of economic development. Hosting the contest is usually an excuse for upgrades to public infrastructure.
And there's Eurovision Asia starting in November. South Korea is an Associate Member of the EBU, for example.
Ahh, that one time the Belarussian delegation tried importing so much alcohol into [host country] to give away for free to everyone at the artist party, that it was all seized at the [host country] border and caused a minor diplomatic incident. The free chocolate branded with the artist's face made it in though. Fun times.
And that wasn't the year that Belarus sent "I Love Belarus" as their Eurovision song.
lol, this took longer to land with me than it should have, being the token "not in the target demographic" guy. And now I know more than I wanted to know about the AI scene ;)
But the concept has floated around for over a decade under several different project names - Asiavision, Our Sound, ABU Song Contest. Somehow "Eurovision Asia" is the one that got countries to sign on and participate. There's a stronger political statement in Asian countries participating in "Eurovision" than in "Our Sound". It surprises me, but 2026 has brought a lot of global cultural & political shifts.
The American version was "The American Song Contest", hosted by Snoop Dogg & Kelly Clarkson, with US states competing against each other. Most Americans don't even know it ever happened.
Russia has its own rival "Intervision Song Contest", which the US participates in. Something something global cultural shifts.
Does Canada's agricultural output follow EU's (quite strict) norms? Not sure if this falls under "legislative integration" but I'd say that it would be quite important to have settled. The same goes when it comes to Canada's work-related laws.
I want to know the person who grows the celery seeds.
I bought a box 37 years ago, a tiny little box, and I've been using it to season soups, almost weekly that whole time.
There can't be more than one guy that grows those seeds, for the entire planet! So my questions are, first who is this guy, and second is the in the EU?
Also, has anybody else noticed this?
And if you think buying his celery seed farm, don't. It's a very limiting market.
It's not an insurmountable problem if they don't have compatibility on standards
It'll just take time to reach an agreement both sides can accept and it's in some ways simpler than something like the EU-Mercosur agreement since one "side" is a unified country rather that been two trading bloc's negotiating.
It's fascinating watching the world re-align so quickly (by diplomatic/negotiation standards).
Does Canada's agricultural output follow EU's (quite strict) norms?
It might not be as strict anymore, as the EU-Mercosur Agreement seemingly ended up relaxing a bit on the strict norms and regulations. Many farmers were/are protesting this agreement exactly because the farmers in South America would compete against local farmers who are more strictly regulated.
So, seems we're a bit flexible on that front, when push comes to shove :)
In the past years it has become pretty clear that even the mainstream right wingers/neoliberals of the EU (ie. the EPP) appear to be ready and willing to drop or loosen all kinds of annoying ethical, environmental, and consumer protection regulations at a moment's notice if it helps large corporations (often US, not even EU) make more money.
"Single market (but food treated specially)" wouldn't be unprecedented; Switzerland was basically like this for a long time.
Working Time Directive may be more of a sticking point, though Canada doesn't seem _that_ far away from aligned with it anyway (big difference would be on paid time off, where Canada's way under the minimum).
Being an Associate Country (or Associate State) doesn't guarantee visa-free travel (ask how we know), yet I'm sure that Canadians will get it served on a silver platter.
>So, easier to sell stuff, easier to buy stuff, free to just travel to/from Canada/EU and work there with no extra paperwork, free to buy and sell service from Canada to EU and vice versa.
>No Euro, no vote in EU, no ECJ, no payments into each others budget.
This version of EU integration is more popular than EU itself in significant part of EU right now.
Well, the Brexit campaign was manipulated by a state actor (or rather: 'a criminal actor disguised as a state'). None of the alt-right nationalism is in the long-term benefits of the country. This is globalism, the end game. You either team up, thereby reducing your costs, or you get swallowed. Ask Ukraine, Tibet, Hong Kong how it worked out for them not belonging to a bigger team. So divide and conquer is a logical move for the opponent, and it happens to align with alt-right. There is also documented evidence of external influence in these. A medium such as Follow The Money has documented such in various of their articles.
Yanukovych was elected in 2010 promising "economic modernisation, greater economic ties with the EU, and military non-alignment." (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viktor_Yanukovych). His backsliding on those promises is what caused the Revolution of Dignity. I think the OP's statement is roughly accurate.
The whole political course of Ukraine in the last ~20 years is mostly about teaming up with EU and NATO, isn't it?
Not, on the NATO front at least, the part between NATO bending to Russian demands not to extend Membership Action Plans to Ukraine and Georgia in 2008 (followed immediately by the Russian invasion of Georgia)—when Ukraine abandoned pursuit of NATO membership—and the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2014, only after which did it resume pursuit of NATO membership.
The resumption is sometimes tied to the Revolution of Dignity preceding the Russian invasion, and even occasionally claimed to be a reason for the invasion, but the decision to abandon the neutrality position was well after and a response to the invasion rather than the other way around.
To "join" the EEA both sides/parties of it has to agree, so yes, members do have a say, it's beneficial (and should be) to both parties of the agreements.
For one this seems related to EU the umbrella organization, not Europe the continent, while I suppose the European Economic Area might be geographically limited to Europe the continent. Maybe something like the European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP) might be more applicative here.
It's actually going to raise questions as to why the EU are A-OK with this now when a possible interpretation of associate membership is it's what Cameron was trying to negotiate the UK into when complete inflexibility on the EU side triggered the Brexit referendum.
All depends on what an associate member is of course.
Cameron was trying to reduce the scope of EU integration with the UK (esp freedom of movement), with the threat he didn't want to use of a referendum, the EU said no (as the other commenter explained partly to disincentivize others, but also because they thought he was bluffing and people would never vote to leave), so the referendum was held.
I kind of made a point like this in the other thread - during Brexit it was a very hard No from the EU that they couldn’t negotiate on key points such as freedom of movement, and countries are either IN and have everything the EU comes with, or they’re out. Now, it seems, that Canada is being offered a favourable half-in arrangement simply because they’ve never before been involved. Seems pretty bizarre and arbitrary for the EU, but also totally standard for the EU because it’s bizarre and arbitrary.
Not sure why its so difficult for you to understand the obvious goal of taking a hardline stance on leaving the EU as a member state vs onboarding possible partnerships, members, etc. You're looking at this backwards.
That's wrong, he did get what he wanted before the referendum: "After the deal had been approved, Cameron described it as giving the United Kingdom "special status within the European Union" and immediately declared that both he and the UK Government would campaign for a "Remain" vote in the referendum within a "reformed European Union"."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2015%E2%80%932016_United_Kingd...
I think that the EU would be in worse shape today if the UK had followed most other members at the time and restricted freedom of movement to it for the countries that joined in 2004 and 2007. It would have been nice to have got some credit for that.
The UK already enjoyed a large amount of unique concessions as a full member. The rest of the EU was right not to give in. Also, game theoretically it's of course more important to not make leaving (or threatening to leave) the union seem too lucrative. No such problem in negotiating tighter integration with nonmembers (and in retrospect, many of the old WP countries should've joined as something like associate members at first…)
> Also, game theoretically it's of course more important to not make leaving (or threatening to leave) the union seem too lucrative.
Because you simply wouldn't be offered the option of just deescalating your full membership to an associate membership. If you want to leave, you leave fully, and then in time we can discuss what happens next. Also, obviously an associate membership shouldn't feel more desirable than full integration if you're eligible to both. Indeed from the UK's perspective it would be exactly the opposite to what they wanted: free labor and movement but no representation.
There is always the debate around "Europe of two speeds" - where there is a deeply integrated core of nations, maybe even going towards "United States of Europe" and the others tightly associated, but not fully integrated.
Of course the set of countries and level of integration depends on whom you ask
Maybe, and that might actually be okay from the EC’s pov. There’s a fairly old proposal for a ‘two speed EU’; a core that accelerates towards near-federalism with a more eurosceptic periphery.
Right. The oddity now is the euroscepticism is rooted in the countries previously considered the core.
I am of the view the UK should never have joined as a full member, and it would have been better to establish the two speed membership way back then, allowing France and Germany particularly to engage in further integration without mutual interference involving the UK.
This is the other part: if associate membership is a thing then won't half of the EU start thinking that's their future?
Presumably by "half of the EU" you mean (sometimes) euro-sceptic states like Hungary or Poland? Well, these are not in EU because some illuminati/lizard people tricked them into joining and now won't allow them to leave, like some of their politicians would like you to believe, but because they enjoy billions of subsidies per year.
There is a strong case that much of the eastern bloc were tricked into joining, by the UK, in order to weaken the Franco-German efforts for ever closer union.
I would like to make a slight correction: the hungarian public opinion was never, ever euro-sceptic. This was one of the major reason the previous government was voted out, because they didn't reflect the will of the people. Opinion polls regularly poll 70-80% of EU approval despite being decade-long propaganda trying to change peoples' minds, making Hungary de facto one of the most pro-EU countries in EU.
I don’t think Cameron did much serious negotiation on this front. He resigned the evening of the referendum results.
It was a deliberate choice by his successors to pursue a hard Brexit. A softer Brexit was always possible and likely would have been more acceptable to the EU, as it would have had less financial impact and disruption to trade.
The referendum was triggered by him making a bad political calculation that he would win it and could squash the aisle of his party that was pushing his idea. This was never truly due to a failed negotiation. The hardliners in his party wanted entirely out either way.
You've got it wrong: "After the deal had been approved, Cameron described it as giving the United Kingdom "special status within the European Union" and immediately declared that both he and the UK Government would campaign for a "Remain" vote in the referendum within a "reformed European Union"."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2015%E2%80%932016_United_Kingd...
There's no planet on which Cameron's visit that time was regarded by anyone on any side as anything other than a failure. Cameron was simply putting a face on it.
It has pissed off the EU (understandably), pissed off his own supporters, and pissed off his enemies.
This is was about immigration. I don’t understand why people are still in denial about this. I am pretty sure it would have happened anyway regardless of what economic concessions UK would have got. It’s worth to note that the immigration is still an issue in the UK and the EU and I think more EU members will leave because of this.
Exactly. And, let's face it, democracy. Either the people in the UK wanted freedom of movement or they didn't, and they voted on that basis.
People don't exactly feel they agreed to the Boriswave either, and now when I am back visiting the UK it's noticeably the most racist it's ever been, by a very significant distance.
I'm in Canada now and Canada has the same dynamics going on.
I think this is what will kill it in Canada too. There’s maybe only a million Canadian citizens who would be interested in the idea of freedom of movement to Europe. There’s probably 10-20 million Canadian citizens who would be a hard “absolutely no way” to opening their borders to 250 million random Europeans in return.
The referendum was entirely the UK's choice and had nothing to do with the EU. It offered more concessions than the UK deserved (having already held numerous opt-outs) and they still called the vote.
One of the effects of Brexit is that EU popular solidarity has noticeably improved while the UK has gone in the opposite direction. That says a lot about Brexit.
I mean, not really, since the UK was trying to renegotiate an existing deal (which they profited from for decades) towards a deal that would favor the UK more than the EU and would trigger an entire blow-back of other member-states wanting to renegotiate on their EU responsibilities without losing the advantages that this deal brought, whereas the deal with Canada is a new deal where the EU gains better trading and less dependence on the US and Canada gains better trading and more security if their next door neighbor falls apart even further.
The UK renegotiation was a net loss for the EU, this Canada deal is a deal where both parties gain something.
Also, the Brexit referendum was a campaign promise of David Cameron that was going to trigger if his conservative party won the 2015 general election. Sure, the relationship between EU and UK had strained over the years, but trying to pin this on the inflexibility of the EU feels a bit misdirected.
Also, the Brexit referendum was a campaign promise of David Cameron that was going to trigger if his conservative party won the 2015 general election
That is iff the renegotiations with Brussels failed, which they did.
The UK renegotiation was a net loss for the EU, this Canada deal is a deal where both parties gain something.
V. hard to see what Canada gets out of it. All the roadblocks to Canadian trade with the EU today (especially around resources) are internal to Canada and have nothing at all to do with EU status.
All the roadblocks to Canadian trade with the EU today (especially around resources) are internal to Canada and have nothing at all to do with EU status.
Presumably under the proposed thing Canada would largely adopt EU regulations. This would make trade (particularly for small businesses) _far_ easier. See the UK for how difficult this can become if you're not in alignment; it's survivable for huge companies (though even some of them had trouble; for instance Marks and Spencers' stores in Ireland literally went empty for a while because they were insufficiently prepared), but if you're a small business importing a bunch of components from Europe and making a thing which is largely sold to Europe, there's a _massive_ difference in bureaucratic overhead between being in and out.
Even many Norwegian SMEs don't see direct sales to Europe as worth the overhead, and Norway's in the EEA, as close to the EU as you can get without actually being in it.
Presumably under the proposed thing Canada would largely adopt EU regulations.
Canadian provinces do not agree with each other about trade regulations. They will not surrender this to the federal government, and they certainly won't to the EU.
[The Conservatives promised a referendum] iff the renegotiations with Brussels failed, which they did.
No. The Conservative party promised an EU membership referendum by 2017 in its 2015 manifesto. That was not conditional on a failure of renegotiations. Nor, indeed, did David Cameron even concede that the renegotiations had failed, so that can’t possibly have been his stated reason for calling the referendum.
My policy is to hold a renegotiation and then a referendum. That is what we promised in the manifesto and then to abide by what the British public say.
So you can see that there was never any suggestion that the referendum would be called or not called depending on the outcome of the renegotiations.
It's not actually reporting on the substance in any meaningful detail, and no one is, for the relatively simple reason that once it happens every special interest group in Canada will find something to go nuts about.
Why is the EU obligated to treat every country the same way? Canada presents different economic opportunities and challenges than the UK. Or, if you want to say it was due to politics, who was bashing who?
The explanation is easy: Canada is not on the European continent. The EU can only extend full membership to countries on the continent, so Canada needs a special arrangement. And because there's a whole ocean serving as a reason for this special treatment, it's easy to argue that it won't extend to countries who can become full members.
The UK wanted it the opposite way. They wanted full access to the EU market but forbid the movement of people because they wanted to get rid of the Poles. The EU would never agree to that and rightly so.
Cameron did get what he wanted before the referendum: "After the deal had been approved, Cameron described it as giving the United Kingdom "special status within the European Union" and immediately declared that both he and the UK Government would campaign for a "Remain" vote in the referendum within a "reformed European Union"."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2015%E2%80%932016_United_Kingd...
That is a rather fantastical and revisionist version of why the Brexit referendum was called - which had more to do with a misguided attempt to put the crazy wing of the Conservative Party to bed rather than anything to do with the EU, where the UK had the best deal imaginable already.
Nevertheless when put to British voters 50% of them decided that best possible deal still wasn’t in their interests. And that 50% who voted No was more people than even voted in the EU elections (to elect MEPs) before that. So the EU was very much fine with their democratic process seeming like an irrelevance, while at the same time the Brexit vote was actually an example of a democratic process working as it should. One can argue about craziness or otherwise, but there were at least 17 million crazies at the time and if there was a referendum to rejoin the EU would likely be a different 17 million crazies voting No again.
>> "it's what Cameron was trying to negotiate the UK into when complete inflexibility on the EU side triggered the Brexit referendum."
"Negotiate" ... is that what you call it?
David Cameron (and team) were the most inept bunch of wankers this country has had the misfortune of being represented by in living memory (in terms of medium/long-term real impact).
We had better terms than anyone in the EU and we still fucked it up.
Cameron was trying to negotiate the UK into when complete inflexibility on the EU side triggered the Brexit referendum.
You are assigning too much responsibility to the EU here and none to the other actors responsible for Brexit. It borders on propaganda, but I do not want to assume ill intent.
And Cameron, didnt he say he would guide UK no matter the result and then resigned when Brexit won?
Brexit was obviously going to happen a good decade before the referendum, the tension was so blatant. This idea people were conned into voting leave is just utter nonsense - they'd been chomping at the bit for the opportunity for years.
Now the UK has managed to ramp up the tension dramatically, but without some easy foreign political bogeyman to blame. It's not going to end well either, but it's not clear exactly what the endgame is. This is why the Greens, Reform and Restore are suddenly things.
Technlogy? That would likely result in a US market crash the likes of which has never been seen before. Look at what percentage of the stock market is the magnificent 7. Now imagine what would happen to that if US tech giants were no longer allowed to sell their products/services in the EU. The market is fragile as it is with the AI bubble going on.
Trade? That cuts both ways, and the US economy and cost-of-living crisis doesn't give them lots of wriggle room.
Products? China will be all to happy to step into whatever market is thus competition-free, not to mention the impact this would have on US businesses.
To enable free movement of goods and services the EU insists that the goods and services are produced in an identical regulatory environment.
Doesn't seem to be true anymore, at least in every case. See the EU-Mercosur agreement for one recent exception to this, the goods we're now importing from South America don't have the same regulatory environment by far, to many of our local farmers.
A lot of this is about resource access, and that can't be magically conjured. You can have all the industry and business you want to put on paper, but this is a tangible concern for Europe where they require these things from a stable and trusted nation with a similar regulatory and political environment.
This trade matter is likely going to require a new type of agreement that has some special privileges not extended in any other case for both parties.
Depends what they mean by ‘full’, really. I expect the EC would be happy enough to let them opt out of the euro, say. But maybe not the working time directive.
I think free movement of people doesn’t imply Schengen Zone style borders - I thought this was mostly an economic lever that people can move and work in another country by default, not a human right where a country cannot exclude chosen people (known criminals, etc) and track all crossings. I think of it as another country giving me a visa is opt-out for that country, not opt-in.
The CE rules are relatively sane and followed commonly right? At least I see a lot of CE-stamped goods in Australia… so I always assumed that was the case.
All that Schengen does is dismantle border checkpoints. As a German, I can freely move to any EU country for any purpose - transit, tourism and work - no matter if, say, I were a convict or whatever.
There are expulsions and entry bans even under Schengen, but these are incredibly rare things to happen as the freedom of movement is considered to be a cornerstone of EU values.
Not all of the EU is in schengen, but we do have freedom of movement. Ireland for example is not in Schengen and never will be because of our travel arrangements with the UK.
Also, to be able to sell stuff, you gotta comply with the CE rules one way or another, there is no free card here.
Yes but there's a big difference between "only import electronics that aren't fire hazards" and "you have to pay custom & excise on anything you import".
Australia has managed a 2nd and a 4th from 11 entrants. Our voting participation is quite low though, as the voting windows are usually at awkward AEST times and the main Australian broadcast of the contest is delayed until our primetime.
These countries choose voluntarily to hold ties with the UK, and each other, and some accept the UK's monarch as nominal head of state, but don't be mistaken; they are all fully independent countries. Some are republics, some are kingdoms with their own monarch. They value each other's friendship, shared values and heritage, but they're not beholden to the UK or each other.
No - it means that Charles III is an independent monarch for two separate nations.
The monarchy is 99% ceremonial in Canada but it's important to note that the Canadian Crown isn't the UK Crown... Canada is not a dependent of the UK in anyway, simply the person that wears the Crowns is the same person.
the Crown has had both a shared and a separate character: the sovereign's role as monarch of Canada has been distinct from their position as monarch of any other realm,[n 4][16][65][66][67] including the United Kingdom.[n 6][69][70][71][72] Only Canadian federal ministers of the Crown may advise the sovereign on any and all matters of the Canadian state,[n 7][70][73][74][75][76][77] of which the sovereign, when not in Canada, is kept abreast by weekly communications with the federal viceroy.[78] The monarchy thus ceased to be an exclusively British institution and, in Canada, became a Canadian,[40][79][80][81] or "domesticated",[82] establishment, though it is still often denoted as "British" in both legal and common language,[40] for reasons historical, political, and of convenience.
I guess if going in the UK gets tough the royals could move somewhere else to reign. Sigismund was king of Sweden and Poland, though he couldn't maintain both. Maybe we'd need some drama with usurpers and uncles and so on to keep the populace entertained. Without the civil war part...
It's not just theoretical -- IIUC, if Charles, William and George get hit by the same bus, Charlotte would become Queen of the UK while Louis would become King of Canada.
I'm sure that in that scenario Canada would quickly update their primogeniture laws to give Charlotte primacy over her younger brother, but at the moment the primogeniture laws of the two countries are different.
The monarchy is essentially ceremonial in the UK too - the position gives the monarch a platform for advocating for inoffensive things like the environment, and the pomp of state visits is perhaps sometimes useful, but the monarch really has no wield-able political power despite technically being the boss and inviting the winner of elections to run the country.
As an ex-Brit I was always pro-monarchy, enjoying the pageantry and historical continuity, although the current crop of royals don't have much going for them. Perhaps William will turn out OK.
It has to be like Norway/Switzerland/Iceland or more to get any free movements of goods and services. Level of access goes hand in hand with integration in term of regulation, etc.
"Associate member" actually sounds like TIGHTER integration than Norway/Switzerland/Iceland, which are not members at all. Switzerland is not even in the EEA. It is a very bad term, actually as Canada cannot be an EU member (it isn't in Europe) and if they don't want or can't join the EEA then that leaves a Switzerland-like deal, which is purely bilateral.
It's the law and it should be very strictly enforced because otherwise it'd open the door for the Middle East and North Africa... But I don't think Canada would want to join the EU, it's anti-Trump bluster.
Canada does not want to join the E.U. as a full member and that is not what is being offered.
Canada very much is not “blustering” when it comes to Trump. A big majority of Canadians see sovereignty and less reliance on the US as a massive issue. Canada has embraced China in a way that was unthinkable 5 years ago in a deal intended to hedge against the US. The Canadian Conservative Party lost an election it was thought to have a guaranteed win from and has continued losing seats since then in large part due to their half hearted response to Trump.
I'll go back to my first comment above: What is an "associate member"? We don't know because it's a concept that does not exist but the very name suggests something stronger and tighter than anything that exists with non-members that have very close ties (Norway, Switzerland, Iceland).
Hence I think it is safe to say that this is a lot of bluster, or ar least hyperbole, considering what Canada and the EU might really want and the long and complicated treaty process to define and create an "associate member" status.
Middle eastern or North African countries can’t join because the member states don’t want them to join and they need unanimous agreement. See Turkeys failed bid for example. Even a country with positive general public appeal like Ukraine is very unlikely to join in the next 10 years
Yes, unanimous agreement is required once a country has applied, as part of the process of accepting the application.
However Article 49 of the European Union states: "Any European State which respects the values referred to in Article 2 and is committed to promoting
them may apply to become a member of the Union".
So Middle Eastern and North African countries (and Canada) cannot apply in the first place.
I think Turkey is in the grey area that allows some wriggle room as it spans both Europe and Asia.
Turkey, only a tiny part of which is geographically in Europe, is a candidate (though talks are suspended in practice until, at least, Erdogan is out of power), and Cyprus is geographically in Asia/Middle East, not Europe. The rules could certainly be loosened further with agreement.
But also, yes, Canada probably does not want to be a full member, at least in the near-term; they want some sort of alignment not amounting to full membership. I wouldn't be totally amazed if we look back on this as the start of the (long-suggested) two speed EU system.
When several EU countries are already struggling with large Indian Subcontinent communities that don't integrate (and dodge taxes and food-processing regs--Indians where I am have their own large underground cash-only food economy among themselves), opening up flow of people from Canada's mobile classes which has seen vast demographic change seems like it would only exacerbate the problem.
Which countries are these? There's a large population of Indian immigrants in Ireland, who seem to be integrating fine and are not notably doing much tax dodging (they would largely work in high-skill PAYE jobs, where tax dodging is virtually impossible).
I am assuming you are somewhere in Europe and given your apparent dislike for Indians, let's look at an alternative narrative. As a Canadian of East Indian origin, I can tell you that if these individuals are Canadian citizens, they are very unlikely to leave Canada for Europe. If they are not Canadian citizens, the point is moot anyway. In fact, I would expect more European citizens of South Asian origin to move to Canada, where English is spoken, integration is generally easier and salaries are far higher. So, breathe easy.
Hey, Celine Dion won Eurovision already. We just need to get Switzerland to retroactively let her win stand for Canada :)
If it gets a free trade and freedom of movement system in place, I don't think anyone is going to object in Canada much. Unless they try to open up fisheries, which would get them a bunch of Maritime (and Quebec?) objections...
Easier to fly to Europe from our privatized airports! Sounds great!
The funny thing is that we got this, instead of tangible and needed deregulation within Canada. Another announcement, instead of actual shovels in the ground and making life better for Canadians.
The main negative of the EU is people can migrate through it to get to your country, like the UK's small boats crisis. Canada, being so far from the EU, doesn't have that unique disadvantage. Which is good news for Canada if this does end up working.
What actually _is_ the deal? Nobody in this thread seems to have any idea what the specifics are, which matters a lot. It sounds like we're still at the "very early talks" stage? Less integration than even Norway (EEA)?
This requires likely an alignment of trade and product standards, so could still be demanding legally to get over the line. But the foundations are similar.
Maybe Canada could just join EFTA, that would be easier.
The UK left and wasn't even able to make proper deals for exiting the EU, their own Brexit caught them by surprise and it was total chaos for a long time. They could now try to get closer integration with the EU but there doesn't seem to be much will for it in the UK.
Although, no joke, a lot of peoples first reaction is: "They need to compete in Eurovision first. Otherwise they should wait for Australia to join first."
What? First time I hear of this. Honestly, Eurovision doesn't really have anything to do with the EU. We all know the main sponsor is from a non-EU country whose participation is much more controversial than Canada anyway.
Canada's Bill C-22 Would Force Encryption Backdoors
Signal, Windscribe, and NordVPN say they'll pull out of Canada before building surveillance infrastructure. The biggest threat to encrypted communications in a Western democracy since Australia's 2018 law.
And yet NordVPN and Signal both continue to work in Australia (I don't know who/what Windscribe are), so all other things aside, I suspect this is a hollow threat.
They have not asked yet or companies (Fastmail for example) just provide access and keep quiet.
Australia passes world’s first law authorizing encryption backdoors
The law authorizes police to compel companies to create a security vulnerability, often called a backdoor, that would give investigators access to an individual’s communication without that person’s knowledge. It marks a major milestone in the so-called “crypto wars” over the public’s ability to “go dark” via the powerful encryption available on commercial devices.
This is only part of the question though, the other question is is it actually good for the EU to continue growing and becoming more heterogenous indefinitely, which to me isn't at all clear.
You could make a good case that the EU is still trying to deal with issues from the 2004 expansion for example. Doesn't mean it was a bad idea, but it's not cost free
If a company wants to sell in the EU, they should comply with EU rules. The market and the regulations are closely linked, you won't get one without the other.
I think Canada might have an opportunity to help Europe at least reason a bit about regulations.
For the most part I am thankful that the EU regulates things strictly. As long as I am the consumer of what is regulated and not the maker. Because while the regulation is well meaning, it is not always effective or efficient. And sometimes it achieves absolutely no positive results.
And yet, I am generally for regulating a lot of things.
For instance the cookie-popup-horseshit is failed regulation that came about mainly because regulators were squeamish about real solutions that would have required constant judgement calls. Instead of posing an existential risk to companies that run roughshod over our privacy, they created impotent regulation that is a dual failure: it protects exactly nobody and it wastes everyone's time multiple times over.
Companies that do bad things should face existential risks. It is the only mechanism that works. Fines only work for small players. For large players it is surprisingly often a calculation where the numbers dictate you DO bad things because the downside risk is mostly quantifiable and financially acceptable.
Yes, sanctioning companies guilty of egregious violations of privacy would have been noisy, but it would have been the right thing to do. And it would have been cheaper and more effective than what we have today.
A lot of replies confidently explaining ‘what this actually means’ in some detail despite the article saying things like:
[Canada would be] EU's first "associate member"
…
[Von der Leyen] did not give specific details on how any Canadian membership would work, but listed manufacturing, technology, AI, defence, energy, critical minerals and economic security as key areas for cooperation.
…
But "associate membership" of the EU does not currently exist and the process, if agreed, could take years.
CETA (free trade) already exists with the EU. What is happening here is mostly symbolism and diplomacy. And maybe it will lead to the last hold out EU member states fully ratifying CETA (French farmers famously difficult).
Many people (including Carney himself) are presenting this as a fundamental and recent pivot.
But the opening moves of this happened a long time ago. CETA was negotiated by Chrystia Freeland and the now-often-maligned Trudeau gov't.
(also Trudeau also had a honeymoon phase for the first two to three years of his term...)
Canada has Coke and Pepsi flavours of gov't. The differences between the two parties comes down to stupid culture wars stuff and perhaps emphasis on which sectors should dominate the economy, but they don't fundamentally differ.
Carney just eviscerated all environmental laws and climate change initiatives -- which were already pathetically weak -- and cons back in my home province of Alberta are still apoplectic about how persecuted they are. It's all team sport theatre. Dangerously close to US style dysfunction.
Translation: I don't care if it was Harper or Trudeau who "initiated" CETA.
I'm afraid you're mistaking our lunatic leader with "us". Understandable, but this step will be wholly unnecessary as soon as December when his power will be checked (largely). I lean right, more libertarian small government type, so you're not hearing this from a blowhard on the American left. His foreign policy, the way he's treated friends has been wanton and immensely damaging, and a whole lot of us want this corrected.
The majority of US voters like the guy. He represents the country, like it or not. Most of his voters still agree with all the stuff he's doing, and the opposition seems intent on sabotaging themselves as much as possible so he will likely win again this year.
Trump won the popular vote once, not consistently, against an understudy candidate who was pushed on stage at the last minute. Also, opinions have shifted since that time as people have noticed how unhinged Trump is.
Voting for someone and liking someone aren't synonyms. You claimed one thing, now you're saying something else.
In 2024, if the Dems just had a normal primary they would have won. But they consistently lied to people about what they were seeing with their own eyes (Biden's obvious lack of mental acuity), which people find really insulting, and then forced in a weak candidate.
To clarify, since this is the Internet and people make lots of assumptions: I voted against Trump three times, plus I voted against him in my state's open GOP primary, which he lost.
That's all copium. Harris was a perfectly average Democratic candidate and an improvement over Biden.
Yes, if they'd run Bernie they probably would've won, but there was zero chance the Democrat party would ever run a far-left presidential candidate - it goes against all their interests. It's like saying the Republicans should've run Chuck Schumer.
As another of your, ah, problematic presidents once said:
"There's an old saying in Tennessee — I know it's in Texas, probably in Tennessee — that says, fool me once, shame on — shame on you. Fool me — you can't get fooled again."
Like, if the US had just elected ol' minihands once, that would be one thing. But it did it _twice_. Ultimately, even if he's comprehensively put back in his box, there is an issue of long-term trust.
At this point, Pandora's Box has been opened; it has been established that the US president can just act like a crazy dictator and... none of the mechanisms which are supposed to prevent that actually really function. Even if the US elects the most normal, sensible, rule-of-law-focused president imaginable in 2028, Canada will still have to look to 2032. I'm not sure that anything short of constitutional change would really restore trust, and the US is set up such that changing the constitution is virtually impossible.
Eased travel and trade, but not full membership voting rights, etc. So basically, an extensive trade and economics agreement, with options to intensify relationships later on.
This is a sinking ship trying to lash unwitting tenders to it to try to keep it afloat while it rams an iceberg. Canada does not need that kind of trouble.
Just want to chip in: I love you "yanks", not so much your politics and your imperialistic tendencies, but nearly all Americans I met were nothing but kind (coast to coast, left or right).
Every "yank" I know is also pretty great. The problem is a political system that has entrenched an advantage for a party that would otherwise be consistently in the minority, reducing the ability of the center to moderate policy.
Canadians are right to be skeptical that the next presidency will be significantly better than the current one. A serious amount of goodwill has been burned and I think the average view up north is that it's time to build a very solid backup plan.
It doesn't even fix things if the next POTUS is the exact opposite. The world has been shown what we are capable of doing. Any four-year stretch could be governed by a joke hired to "own the libs".
Caligula's horse can't be elected solely because horses don't live past 35.
I was surprised to learn that Canada doesn't even have free trade across their own provenances. A big benefit of the United States is that it's essentially a very large free trade zone across 50 states.
If Canada wanted to facilitate trade, I would imagine they would figure it out internally. So my guess is that this is just giving up some political autonomy for some unknown reason, maybe to stick it to the US?
The biggest trade barriers between Canadian provinces are labor licensing laws. The biggest trade barriers between American states are labor licensing laws.
The second biggest trade barriers between Canada provinces are liquor regulations. The second biggest trade barriers between American states are likely car emission laws.
Not comparable at all. The US is one market unless you have a compelling reason to protect your state market. Canada is 10 separate markets with provincial agreements between them - all protecting themselves. Easiest example is Quebec.
The US is the opt-in system where the States regulate everything not specifically allocated to the federation and Canada is the opt-out system where the federal government regulates everything not specifically allocated to the provinces.
Of course it's more complicated -- the US's inter-state commerce clause has been broadly interpreted by the courts.
The problem is the differences are asymmetric. Canadian labour mobility is a lot more impactful when the pool of skilled labour is just overall smaller.
Doctors can move pretty much freely between 44 American states. Doctors can't do that in Canada, and here we need more specific kinds of doctors in rural populations and there is absolutely no reason to not have a harmonized licensing regime.
We also have non-uniform regulation on stuff like the manufacture of construction goods (for example door sizing) which can cause a big drag in trade. This might be harder to fix but it exists and is not comparable to the US market.
The US also doesn't have free trade following the same criteria, labeling requirements differ by state, licensing regimes are different, the same kind of challenges that exist in Canada
What is a provenance WRT Canada? :-) But it is true, our provinces have trade barriers internally that is an ongoing source of dispute. There has been movement since the USA started falling apart to remove them. The dumbest one was that hay bales had to be re-arranged on the AB/BC border.
We say as Europeans while interacting daily with USA engineers and other people here on HN - a site ran by Silicon Valley investors - while we usually talk about USA-made software. I personally do not hold every American accountable for the actions of their government.
On day-to-day interactions with my coworkers, I had no problem working with Americans.
At the same time, a lot of them voted in favor of foreign policies that I very strongly disagree with.
Both can be true at the same time, and the former doesn't make me forget the latter. Especially when their president continues to voice threats against the sovereignty of my country.
Thanks - you are right and have the much more mature perspective. Many want to further drive a wedge between the US and Europe, presumably they live in Moscow and Beijing and Tehran.
The current regime is due 2028. For most of their history Canada and USA had cordial relations. This looks like a reactionary measure rather than a long term strategic one. Europe is in decline and facing political irrelevance, not the type of partner you want to have particularly if your border neighbor is one of the two current global super powers. It’s yet to see if the UE’s economic reforms will pay off, even of they do, is still decades away, with no cheap energy and having to invest in their own defense. You don’t want to hang out with the losers. Put your emotions aside, be patient with the current US government and get ready for post 2028.
Yeah speaking of history. Let’s pretend that the US and Canada have never been in conflict before. We literally went to war, had multiple territorial disputes, plans of invasions, tariffs and trade wars, not to mention all the disagreements in foreign policy including Vietnam, Cuba and Iraq. None of this has prevented the two countries to have one of the most peaceful and cooperative relationships between two sovereign nations in modern history.
Trust has been broken. The US has lost its shine and hard-earned reputation. Most of the trust was that a person like Trump would never have been elected in the first place.
Can't unelect Trump. The damage has been done, and is ongoing.
“Also in September 2023, France and Germany proposed a restructuring of the membership of the EU to allow the UK to rejoin as an associate member, rather than a full member. Associate membership would include membership of the European single market but not the EU customs union, in exchange for participation in the European Court of Justice and making contributions to the EU budget.”
I get that the trend is being accelerated with Donald Trump being an aggressive asshole for no reason, but Canadians pretending like they're anything but American is very weird.
There are multiple levels of European integration [1]. Fun fact: Canada already borders the EU. There's an island called Saint Pierre and Miquelon, which is only ~12 miles from Newfoundland. These islands became a massive smuggling hub for alcohol during Prohibition.
Here are some guiding principles of EU integration:
1. To have a say in EU rules generally requires being a full member. To some extent you can negotiate your entry into whatever level you desire but this has to be mutual agreement and can be difficult to change later without essentially threatening to leave;
2. Conditions generally need to be reciprocal. If you want freedom of movement in the EU then you have freedom of movement from other European states. This was a real sticking point in the Brexit negotiations and the EU doesn't play with reciprocal freedoms; and
3. Any sort of free trade with the EU will mean adopting EU regulations to be within the EU customs union. I don't see this flying with Canada because despite current trade hostilities with the US, the US is and will remain the primary trading partner of Canada. Adopting EU regulations might make US trade more difficult;
Also, the US might have legitimate cause to object. If Canada and US have free trade and Canada and the EU has free trade then that's opting the US into EU regulation essentially.
In some ways this is similar to the strained situation invented for Northern Ireland.
Obviously, Canada won't be joining Schengen or the Euro. Canada already has visa-free travel to the EU.
Canada still has a housing crisis and increased migration from the EU is likely a political non-starter even though those things aren't really related and literally nobody is going to tackle the true cause of the housing crisis (just like in every developed country). As an aside, the true cause is hoarding combined with tax advantages and a political goal of raising house prices.
In short, I don't know that this means anything because I don't think anything can substantively change with the Canada-EU relationship.
This message has been brought to you by the Minister of The Truth of the Government of Canada. /// Ce message a été émis par le Ministre de La Vérité du Gouvernement du Canada.
Thank you for directing your hate at the specified target. /// Merci d'aiguiller votre haine à la cible sus mentionnée.
Von Der Leyen has a stellar track record of successes in both internal and external EU affairs. She is an inexhaustible well of good ideas and great policies. When such suggestion comes from her I am sure it is great idea for both Canada and EU.
Mercosur, sanctions against Russia and Belarus, defence of France after the AUKUS fiasco, an intent to cut down reliance on natural gas, an ethics commission following the Qatari corruption scandal, the European green deal, European defence plans, she's done plenty of good.
She's also done plenty of bad things on the political theatre, but it's not like everything she does is destined to be a failure.
War in Ukraine is still waging, can't comment, war in Iran showed the brilliance of importing LNG, ethics commission will find no wrongdoing, stupid idea, vaporware ...
Maybe this is a naive statement, but it seems like full membership including open borders between Canada and other EU states and adoption of the Euro would also be beneficial to everyone involved.
The UK should continue to be embarrassed and ashamed to leave such an incredible institution, although at this point we can say that they clearly don’t deserve the EU anyway.
Yes but someone will need to step in and adjudicate once everyone in Europe has enough of living in the United States of Germany and there’s another war over it.
Leyen babbles a lot. I have absolutely nothing at all against Canada and EU getting closer, but please don't dance when Leyen whistles - that leads to nothing but uselessness. She should have never been in politics to begin with - the absolutely worst person for the job.
If I’m Canada I look for a trade agreement rather than associate membership - no reason to put your eggs in one basket.
As an American, I continue to be sad and tired that our current president is somehow allowed to unilaterally destroy a very successful and thriving trade partner via arbitrary tariffs that have already been ruled illegal and while it doesn’t make a damned bit of difference I’m sorry about it.
Don't be. Trump is a necessary and welcome wake up call. We Canadians needed Trump's shock of reality.
The truth is that, for more than a century, the main trait of being Canadian was simply not being American and not trusting Americans.
In 1775 George Washington ordered the invasion of southern Quebec and we resisted. After the American revolution we received an huge influx of Loyalists, the Americans that didn't want to be part of the U.S.; we say the American Revolution created 2 countries: yours and ours. In 1812 Americans raised war against us, as a continuation of the Napoleonic wars. Although we were still a British colony, we fought back, invaded Washington DC and set the White House on fire. In 1890, the McKinley Tariffs were meant to subjugate us, the same way Trump wants to do now [1]. They backfired, made us stronger.
But in the 80's the Reagan-Mulroney trade agreement fooled us. We became too reliant, friendly and confident to the Americans. It was a dangerous illusion. The Comanche, Apache and Navajo have learned too late that you can't trust Americans. Luckily for us, Trump reminded us that lesson on time, before it would be too late.
The Comanche, Apache and Navajo have learned too late that you can't trust Americans
The Haudenosaunee Confederacy probably learned this the strongest. And more even than the Loyalists help build this country. Or I'm more conscious of this as I live in a place where Joseph Brant's (Thayendanegea) name is all over the place.
But they -- and Britain's other indigenous "allies" in the US interior -- also learned the hard way that the British couldn't be trusted either. The Treaty of Ghent ended the war of 1812 but on terms that let the Americans commit genocide against the native populations to the west of them ; which the British were formerly allied with.
And while the Iroquois were granted all extensive lands along the Grand river as reward for helping fight the Americans in 1784 (Haldimand proclamation) -- they subsequently had that chipped away at for generations and it's just a tiny postage stamp of what it used to be.
Canada's Bill C-22 Would Force Encryption Backdoors
Signal, Windscribe, and NordVPN say they'll pull out of Canada before building surveillance infrastructure. The biggest threat to encrypted communications in a Western democracy since Australia's 2018 law.
Both of these things can be true (and things we as Canadians have to aggressively oppose) but at the same time, it was the US that pioneered such gems as:
the PATRIOT act, Stellar Wind, PRISM & Section 702 (FAA), Upstream Collection & AT&T Splitter Rooms (Room 641A), Bulk Telephony Metadata (Section 215, the Post-9/11 NYPD Demographics Unit, the Data Broker Loophole (Commercial Surveillance Purchase). Oh god, I could go on all day.
Or did/does things like extraordinary rendition to Guantanamo, or the illegal rendition of Canadian citizen Maher Arar to a Syrian torture facility while he was traveling through the US, or even just taking tourists phones and looking at the anti-Trump memes they've shared and detaining them.
Any "libertarian" American pointing fingers at Europe and Canada as somehow more repressive is living in an ideological echo chamber. The targets are (sometimes) different but every "western democracy" set up oppressive regimes post-9/11 that should outrage anybody.
Both "left" and "right" in the US are living in a delusional world if they think their constitution is worth jack shit as any kind of protection in the 21st century.
It seems every country in the world has such regimes, either publicly or in the background. You can bet no Chinese or Russian system comes without backdoors, plenty of US systems have been revealed to have backdoors, etc.
I disagree with this, but it's still somehow not an aspect uniquely horrible about EU or Canadian policy making, so not sure why this would be relevant here.
There is a strand of US politics which has tried to characterize Canada as uniquely authoritarian ever since the Ottawa protests. And it's been used increasingly as justification for external partisan "interventions"
It's a bit wishy-washy; they're just saying "we're better off working together" not actually doing something.
I can't imaging Canada would be looking to align its standards and laws with the EU. Don't get me wrong, the EU does a lot of things that make it both safer and better, but it makes things more expensive to make, and that only works when there isn't a wild-west next-door-neighbour. It's hard to compete when your biggest and nearest export market has looser labour and product regulations than you.
Of course Canada can do more trade with the EU without broad regulatory alignment, it just seems weird you'd need to announce it.
I’m hopeful that closer ties with Europe could give Canadians a chance to learn from European agriculture and food culture.
Canada needs a new perspective in how we produce and sell food here. I’d love to see us move away from a food system dominated by crappy US-style highly engineered, ultra-processed products and toward a much greater variety of fresh and minimally processed foods, stronger regional production, and a richer everyday food culture.
I would welcome EU grocery chains and food producers to shake things up here and bring some sanity back to Canadian food culture.
They would probably argue “European nation” is cultural and not geographic. Morocco is officially Muslim and not a full democracy, the EU isn’t ready for that I don’t think.
Full membership isn't Association Membership. The article you reference mentions that the EU condemned Morocco for human rights abuses in 2023. So perhaps Morocco should clean that up before feeling anything about this.
This would be Canada getting down leveled to the minor leagues. Yes there are a few issues with the US, but Canada is vastly better off playing on the world stage under the wings of the US than it would be as the EU’s “associate member.” The next phase of history is going the be China and the US and then everyone else scrambling for scraps.
And won't the dems just undo all this tariff nonsense anyway? Or is Canada acting like a bitter ex after a breakup who vows to take their seething to the grave no matter what
The US is a completely broken country, and simply switching governments will not change that. Without a complete and utter change in how that entire country operates -- including dissolution -- no country should ever normalize relations with it again.
The US is by far the world's most dangerous rogue nation. It is a terroristic nation. It is a bully. It not only elected a rapist self-dealing criminal imbecile to president, it elected him again, seeking a round two after the utter debacle the first term was, and the disastrous results are exactly what everyone could predict, but you know...this is who America is now.
And a big reason Canada is moving on is that it's pretty clear that the US is a country in spectacular decline, and it is China's century now. Which is maybe why the US is electing disgusting garbage like Trump -- and he's certainly not alone, and there are various garbage "football coach" type creeps filling the entire US political class -- lamenting the position they once held, now going down the Russian/Putin path where they'll accelerate the crash just to reminisce about a past that mostly never existed.
EDIT: I should add that agreements with the US are worthless, and this has been amply demonstrated. As Carney noted, the US' signature is written in pencil, and even agreements signed by this very president mean nothing, and will be dishonoured at the earliest convenience. In recent trade negotiations, where Canada almost made a horrible mistake of accepting ridiculous terms to maintain the status quo as much as possible (sidenote: Canada absolutely must withdraw from USMCA, a Trump-signed and negotiated agreement that the US is in utter defiance of), they asked "so when we sign this, you'll then honour it?", and the US side couldn't even commit to that. They knew that it could be days before the rapist toddler had a twitter tantrum after one of the kleptocrats whispered in his ear and imposed new barriers, tariffs, etc. Like, what is even the point of negotiating with such a farce? A lawless cabal led by just the absolute worst human trash.
I don't know. How did writing the farcical nonsense about Canada being "down-levelled" make you feel? Must have felt like you're clutching onto a delusion?
Don't worry, America still has the cartoonishly pathetic "Board of Peace" (though the Arab despots might not be as eager now that the US got completely humiliated by some isolated rogue theocracy), and your close allies Argentina and El Salvador.
Somewhat sad, but also full of opportunities. For instance, in the EU a lot of things are set in motion that used to be taboo, like moving away from US tech, moving away from US weapons, stronger European military integration. Stronger ties with Canada, rebuilding ties with the UK.
Canada isn't an abused spouse that's supposed to sit around and wait while their partner magically undoes all of its threats and (economic) violence. "Undoing" the tariffs in a few years won't magically fix the intense economic damage they've caused to Canadian citizens. The US government being forced to pay hundreds of millions of the illegal tariff money back to corporations didn't magically bring prices back down. The US has completely ruined its reputation in the eyes of most Canadians to the point where nearly every single person I know refuses to travel to the US and many refuse to purchase US goods.
There is no guarantee the Democrats are going to reverse the tariffs. And even if they do, the Republicans after that can just undo the undoing, and then do worse.
If you're still looking at this through the lens of party politics, you're missing the big picture. Most of US power comes not from its military, but its economic system. And that depends on trust and reliability. Both "sides" have been engaged in a project to scuttle that as hard and fast as they can since the end of the Cold War.
Both sides demonstrate that the United States can be consistently relied upon to break every deal they make, be it relating to international relations and borders, economics and debt, trade, military protection, and supply of arms.
Bush Sr and Clinton both broke the assurances made to Gorbachev that made the relatively peaceful dismantling of the Soviet Union possible by marching NATO eastward and carving up fresh borders in the Balkans.
Clinton, Bush Jr, and even Biden were still talking about free trade agreements, less than a decade before we see an international tariff regime spring up, and the United States reserves subsidy carve-outs in every deal they make with other countries who they expect to open their markets.
US spending has been out of control for decades no matter who controls the White House or Congress, and is only getting worse. They're relying on the inertia of its massive economy to bear the inflationary burden by printing money. The biggest export of the US economy, Treasury Bonds - that is, debt - is now seen as unreliable, and other countries are dumping them like burning garbage. Indeed, the United States has already started defaulting on such loans to a growing number of nations, only they get to call it "sanctions" when they don't repay their loans. The rest of the world looks on in horror as they realise how much of their wealth is tied up in this make-believe that the United States can renege on or bully creditors into not divesting on a whim. This explains the skyrocketing price of gold.
Speaking of those creditors, a lot of them are gulf states. As in, Persian Gulf. They used to sell oil and buy Treasuries as investments. But since nearly every US base in the Persian Gulf has been effectively destroyed, every gulf state that participated in the war crimes against Iran has been punished into submission for that involvement. Resumption of hostilities like we saw in the opening month would see the infrastructure that those nations rely on to continue to function as countries destroyed within hours. Absent desalination and oil export facilities, those countries would just cease to exist as significant polities. The de facto government in Yemen (referred to perversely as the "rebels", while the legitimate government sits in Riyadh, capital of the country that has been bombing Yemen for 15 years or so) just delivered Saudi Arabia a major military defeat, while the President refused to help. Saudi Arabia, land of black gold, unable to export from either the Strait or the Red Sea, with one of the biggest oil pipelines in the world now burning, is being forced to borrow money! The United States, so called most powerful military the world has known, dares not send a large naval vessel within about 1000 km of the Strait of Hormuz, and two aircraft carriers have been forced to limp away. Meanwhile, trade through the Red Sea has also been strangled off. All of the US allies under the protection of Pax Americana have been humbled by a country that has been getting "strangled" in some form or another for the past 70 years by a superpower.
And after all that the US military is out of interceptor missiles. They can't spare any for West Asia or Ukraine, right when everyone wants them. They wasted thousands of million dollar missiles on thousand dollar drones, and cannot make more at a rate that matters.
If you think it's just tariffs and some hurt feelings, you haven't been paying attention.
Newsom is on the record stating he wouldn't undo all of the tariffs if he becomes president in 2028. And he's a leading Democratic candidate for the position.
US governance has become so unreliable, destructive and inane, with little prospect of reverting back to what is once was, given the US’ internal political and societal landscape, that being under its “wings” now constitutes a major risk for any of its allies. Canada is correct to diversify.
I hear you, but the US is hardly the only country on the planet that’s had a few disruptive elections, including the EU BTW. Making generational decisions over one presidential cycle is rather short sighted.
It’s been going on since 2016, which by the end of the current term will already be roughly half a generation. And what has been destroyed in the first half of this term alone will take longer than that to rebuild.
While there are troubling developments in EU countries as well, there is also the converse (e.g. Hungary), and the EU parliamentary systems are significantly more resilient than the US two-party presidential system.
And if Trump had just faded into obscurity after 2021 we probably wouldn't see this kind of realignment, but the fact he got reelected makes it look much less like a fluke and more like an USA that's increasingly unreliable on the international stage
Imposing tariffs one day and TACOing out a few days later and infinitum is not reliable. There is no 4D chess going on, only incompetency and self-enrichment.
The US is on the path of Russia since the end of the iron curtain, moving to a kleptocracy ruled by (tech br)olichargs.
The electoral + two-party system makes it nearly impossible to break out of this.
I hear you, but the US is hardly the only country on the planet that’s had a few disruptive elections
When it's Hungary it's funny, because it doesn't matter, when it's the US it's not, because it fucks up the entire world's order. It really is not that hard to understand the problem
I'm sorry, but this comment feels insufferable. I feel so much eye roll from reading it. USA is not "major leagues" by the measures that the rest of the world cares to size itself up by.
If there's an apt non-baseball metaphor, it's perhaps that USA is a circus we are compelled to pay attention to for now. We'd rather just not
What in the world is this train of thought? Do you not understand that the American President has directly threatened Canadian sovereignty multiple times over the last 2 years, even if under the auspices of “trolling” or “jokes”? In addition to that, the President is seeking direct control over Canadian trade relationships, control over its natural resources and all while attempting to destroy its industrial output.
This ignorance makes it very clear that the American voting populace does not take positive relations with erstwhile allies seriously. Increased trade integration may not be the ideal situation for Canada, but nothing about the situation is ideal. At least we won’t be subjugating ourselves to hostile hegemons like China and the USA.
American exceptionalism is astonishing to see in the wild.
The next phase of history is China's, and broadly Asia's. Everyone on the planet, but Americans, can see this. It is indisputable.
Everyone else is finding a place within that new reality, and no one else wants to play along with American delusions that they're going to hold onto their place and everyone else are their supplicants.
At this stage, the US should be begging every like-minded nation to be friends. Instead you elected a grotesque embarrassment farce that coddles up to two-bit clowns like Milei, while endlessly attacking allies. ROFL.
Enjoy the coming crash.
Yeah, we don't want to be under the "umbrella" of a terroristic idiocracy menace. You can become the worldwide pariah on your own, without our offering of legitimacy for your terrible behaviour.
You think the wings of the US are a larger league than the EU?
The EU has built the world's largest trade zone, from Mercosur to South Korea, Japan and India to Canada.
I believe they are currently outmaneuvering the rest of the world by quietly binding everyone to themselves while the US, Russia and China are caught up in their saber rattling.
The US and China are fighting a 20th century contest of hard power. The EU is the only 21st century superpower of soft power.
Almost a decade on and most Canadians don't seem to realize we already have CETA (free trade) with the EU. It's not fully fully ratified but it's there. It's why our grocery stores have been slowly filling with European products we never had before (Yay!)
For example: It's already cheaper for me -- as a consumer -- to import sporting goods (skis, etc) from the EU than it is from the US. (And often less shipping hassle too, oddly).
And yet distributor arrangements often still funnel everything through the US, first as "North American distributor" models. Incurring shipping and sometimes even tariff overhead. (Looking at you Scarpa, North America. You suck.)
Even if all of this is symbolic, it may at least shift perceptions on our side of the Atlantic so Canadian businesses at least start looking to Europe more seriously as both importers and exporters.
People often forget our country was built on an east west shipping and transport axis with the St Lawrence (and later the Pacific) as outflow, to supply Europe (mainly Britain). It was only later that north-south trade became more important economically.
Shipping manufactured goods across the Atlantic to European customers may end up cheaper for them than shipping from China in some circumstances.
I'm maybe also a bit biased, I currently work for a European employer.
id love to just move to somewhere in the eu and be able to freely work there. thats how it should be in every country btw. until then, it seems like more performance, which carney has seemingly mastered.
Dairy is highly protected in Canada. For better or for worse.
Exceptions were made for cheeses though. They've dropped significantly in (relative) price and varieties of imports have improved significantly in the last 10 years. Even the most white-bread grocery stores tend to stock a selection of decent European cheeses now.
i eat a certain cheese almost every day and i feel like im being molested very time i stock up. i get your general point, but the dairy cartel reigns supreme.
it's funny because we had someone running for PM in 2017 who was the only person who said they'd fix it and he was branded a racist right-winger.
I've started making my own cheese (with the new 6% milk we have in the grocery stores here in Ontario now). 4 litres of $10 6% milk gives me a huge pile of halloumi or similar that lasts the week. Protein / nutrition wise works out to be about 2/3rds the price of equivalent chicken and like 1/3rd the price of beef. About an hour and a half of rather enjoyable labour.
I have mixed feelings about the dairy cartel. I am in favour of reform of some kind to eliminate the quota system but I also don't want a flood of American milk into the Canadian market.
This is new in the Ontario market this year. It was lobbied for by the South Asian / Desi community as they like to make their own paneer and yogurt. It comes in the same 1.33L milk bags, it just costs a bit more, depending on the grocery store.
It took a while but most of the local grocery stores around me are now stocking it.
Telling that you would use the verb 'take' rather than 'offer'. But these days, it seems the USA has trouble 'taking' anything besides Venezuelan moustaches.
As far as an offer goes, polls find that almost third of the UK now regards the USA as a threat rather than an ally.
I have no idea how we do it, but I think we should somehow ban the expansion of all the existing unions (EU, CIS, NATO, whatever else we got). The overall worldwide tension is pretty high, but now
- US goes after South America and Greenland
- EU goes after Canada and Georgia (country), which is just ridiculous in terms of geography
- Russia invades Ukraine and goes after Eastern Europe and Middle-East to some extent
- China does its expansion too
Even though some of these actions are just political nonsense, it still increases the overall level of escalation. This is not what the world needs right now
Trade agreements and unions — yes, please; yet another political or military union expansion — please, God, no. I understand that EU is a mix of both, but also do think that this is a purely political game against Trump
I’m an American, and I don’t see it as a purely political game against Trump—my country has dramatically shifted its position toward its allies from reliable partner for 80 years to aggressive antagonist both in trade and military. And it’s not just a rogue president—a full third of the US electorate supports these actions.
It makes sense to me that these countries would want to build new trade and security alliances with countries who have similar interests and who face similar threats.
The alternative to these defensive military pacts is that Russia or the US or whomever can literally invade and annex countries piecemeal to expand their power. If we can’t effectively ban that, then it doesn’t make sense to me to ban the only thing that deters it today.
You dont really see a difference between US wanting to take over SA and Greenland militarily and Canada and Georgia wanting closer ties to the EU voluntarily?
You sound like Puting fan boys arguing about NATO expansion, NATO does not expand. countries voluntarily ask to join them, because the alternative is being destroyed
The EU itself is becoming increasingly integrated with the free movement, common currency, aligned education system etc etc, but these things take a lot of time, not the least identity-wise. For sure, my children feel more European than I did growing up in what was then a non-member state.
So outright membership is likely not the route for overseas friends, but it seems we are inexorably moving towards a closer cooperation between a group of democratic countries outside the sphere of non-democratic China and ever more erratic US. Hopefully this will be an association which is less dependent on one single member than the western world has been under US lead.
It seems very likely the EU, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and the UK would be part of this. Japan and Korea are still very US-dependent but given the lack of enthusiasm the US is showing its former allies, this may change quickly. I also expect growing cooperation with some of the south-American countries.
The world is definitely under realignment politically.
The president of the European Commission has backed proposals for Canada to become the EU's first "associate member".
Article 238 of the original Treaty of Rome, which is now article 217 TFEU, provides for the EU (or its precursors) to enter into "association agreements" with non-member states, e.g. Turkey has one of them. Many current EU members (e.g. Greece) had them before becoming members.
A lot of 1970s/1980s sources referred to these states as "associate members of the EEC" – but it seems like everyone has forgotten that.
It seems the nuance here would be between association agreement and an associate member which presumably is more integrated. E.g. EU candidate countries are joining many technical meetings and are invited to listen in to some Council meetings, can express views on important legislation, etc. I could imagine a similar status for Canada, but without the candidate label and neither the financial benefits or legal obligations to work towards regulatory alignment.
Europe definitely needs to find replacements for the USA as a trusted partner. The US now supports Russia in its war against Ukraine, imposes random tariffs, pressures European companies over DEI (I'm not particularly woke myself, but I think equal opportunities regardless of race, for example, is a good idea), and makes threats against Greenland, Canada and Iceland. It also puts pressure on free speech and EU digital rules: the US imposed visa bans on former EU Commissioner Thierry Breton, an architect of the Digital Services Act, and four anti-disinformation activists, and I believe it also had his Microsoft email disabled. Add to that climate denial, the war on science, threats to leave NATO, antivax etc. I believe many countries will unfortunately turn to China, since even China is more predictable than the US.
The sad part is that the US could very well have had made such a trade and companionship deal with Canada themselves. Or even a better one, should they wanted to.
They used to have an excellent relationship with Canada, the UK, with the EU and with other civilized and democratic parts of the world. Until Trump started to undermine everything. And have selfish and unfair demands against everyone.
Now the US has a "comradeship" with Venezuela, Russia and North Korea.
I know that the above is perhaps an exaggeration. But the fact that the US now has worse relationships with almost all the civilized, democratic parts of the world and is bowing down to dictators and authoritarians does not come from external factors. It is all self-inflicted. Including the Iran war and its consequences.
Not sure what it really means but Mark Carney is turning out to be one of the the most consequential prime ministers of Canada.
He has an exceptionally poor hand of cards to play but is maximizing any opportunity. Very creditable leadership - even for those who don't agree with everything he does.
I do think this is a lesson for political parties all over the world. You can be pragmatic.
Trump is not emperor for life, fortunately. He'll be gone in a couple of years. With any luck the upcoming midterms will significantly limit his powers. America will recover from this dark period. Other countries have had dark periods too, like Germany, and recovered.
The trouble for its global partners, especially in the Western Alliance, is that even if the attitude in the White House does change in 2029, no-one will ever be able to trust a repeat isn't 4 years away. US dominance has depended on its reliability as a partner - and that's gone.
This is the same EU who once reduced the Canadian trade minister to (literal) tears, and made her denounce the (accurate) fact that, and I quote, "Europe is not capable of signing a trade deal". Notably, the EU has never ratified the Canada FTA and everyone's just sort of pretending it did for convenience's sake.
Nice symbolism, but this is merely being used as leverage in Canada's negotiation with the US. "See, we have other options!"
Worth adding that Europe is far more protectionist than the US, so this is economically farcical. Symbolism trumping reality. Sort of like when celebrities were saying they'd move from the US to Europe in the aftermath of the Dobbs ruling... only to find out abortion law is far, far more restrictive in almost all of Europe than California or New York.
Meanwhile the EU itself is about two years away from being run by the AfD + Le Pen freak show.
In some ways it's fitting though, the chaos and infighting of the EU mirrors the structure of our own confederation.
Provinces in Canada have strong powers and much of the same back and forth trade and regional politico-economic bickering as what happens between EU member states. Much more so than US states.
As a Canadian, this feels like hopping on board a sinking ship. EU and Canada have both severely underperformed for the last 10 years. I hope encouraging more trade can help.
At one point, 20 years back, I was joking that The Netherlands should quit the EU and join the USA as the 51st state. Lot less appealing in the current political climate, but for technology it'd be great. My point was that the constitution of the US is based on ideas, and the country could be open to any territory, independent of location, whereas all of Europe's countries are based on more on historical artifacts.
Funny that the opposite approach is now considered with Canada. I can see it though.
Good! My dream is an alliance with Canada and Australia, a truce with China, the dismantling of Russia (Siberia goes to China), and the isolation of USA.
China has a reasonable claim to Outer Manchuria, which includes Vladivostok; the treaties giving it up were signed under duress. But that's a far cry from all of Siberia. Siberia has not been treated well by the Russian or Soviet empires, but many non-Han territories have also been treated poorly by Chinese Empire.
With all the EU glazing, and given this is HN, can we start some kind of Gattaca like identity exchange program please?
Let's pair off by height, hair colour and sex. You can take my EU passport and I'll take your US passport. You too can enjoy smothering regulation- uh, I meant mothering regulation. For you see, Europe is a place that cares about people.
This is definitely a great deal for you. Europe is just like every vacation you have had here, that's definitely totally representative of the overall experience. You know all the things European teenagers on Reddit say about how great Europe is? All true.
Look, yes, it's a stagnant continent that's on the eve of a neo-fascist turn, but that's just because we care about the little guy or whatever. Unlike Americans we're not obsessed with money and profits, sometimes it's about uh... blood and soil, apparently, judging by recent election results. Don't worry about this. Think about pretty castles or something. Orange man bad! Just don't look up any European leaders or election results.
Never you mind that millions of Europeans live in America and that doesn't happen in reverse. Don't think too hard about why that might be. Think instead about trains! You love em, we got em. Choo choo. Haha, you love trains. You should swap with me. Sometimes they even run! Ignore the tent cities around train stations, those are just because it's illegal to build housing. Because we care about protecting our neighbourhoods. You know, from people that might want to live in them.
You don't want to start a business. That's not for people like you and me. It's for our betters, the people who started businesses two hundred years ago and can afford to navigate the maze they've put behind them preventing anyone else from starting a business ever again. No, what you want is a generous minimum wage for all the minimum wage work that you'll do. Well, I mean, probably not. It's very hard to actually get minimum wage work, don't check the unemployment rates. No, what you want is to put your feet up and relax in the sun. We don't have much sun, but you know, in principle.
Yep siree bob, Europe sure is great. Is it the future? God probably
Never you mind that millions of Europeans live in America and that doesn't happen in reverse
America may have been founded by Europeans, but nowadays most immigrants are from countries like Mexico, India and China. You won't find any European country in the top 10.
There are about 5 million Americans living abroad, lead again by Mexico.
There are millions of people who were born in Europe and currently live in the United States, mainly of working age. There are a comparatively much smaller number of Americans living in Europe, a significant portion of which are well-off retirees (well-off by European standards). This is a fairly typical migration pattern for two places at different levels of economic development. A larger group of economic migrants move to the richer region in search of a better life, while a much smaller group of retirees move to the poorer region in an effort to boost their spending power.
As an European I hope this leads to some concrete outcomes and will not just be a couple of statements by both sides.
Also it's a great test for the EU. If all the EU countries can still actually agree on anything so novel. If we couldn't all agree on obvious stuff like support for Ukraine (famously Hungary had issues).
Even if things are very positive on the surface there are often small groups that get affected negatively. We can see this on the recent example of the EU-Mercosur agreement. It was supposed to to "unite a free market of 700mln people", but for example farmers in my country (Poland) protested it an I think they got a lot of concessions. (We have to remain food-self sufficient in case of war, so I'm not against their ideas per se). The deal is supposedly done, but I'm still not seeing bananas from South America in our supermarkets (don't laugh, this was one of the main points anti EU people raised back in 2005).
Ideally I'd like to see free market eventually expanded to free movement of people between EU/Canada but I have no idea how difficult aligning the legal systems might be.
As to contributions, it's not membership so things can maybe be worked out. As to the UK being able to get similar deal. I don't really get the idea to "punish the UK for exiting" they shot themselves in the foot sufficiently anyway (as well as us), but Canada has way more natural resources which may be a great benefit to our common market. So they have better "cards" to quote a certain Donald.
For example the whole farce that is EUs green initiative could actually make sense if we had a place to procure resources from in a more ecologically sound way. As opposed to what we do with China, we basically killed 90% of local industry, but we still get finished goods from countries that burn huge amounts of coal and manufacture those things in ways that would be never allowed here.
Of course that we E immensely expensive to set up, but we have 2 trillion $ in investment looking for a new home and there is a good argument to make this should be invested in a place that honours rule of law, democracy, human rights (inclusive of right to healthcare) and so on.
Yeah no, run from this dumpster fire, the EU from inside is a disaster, an organization from the Germany for the German interest, and a buffer zone for the US.
Good, if the middle power democracies don't align/work together they are going to get torn apart in the struggle between the US and China.
Non-aligned movement 2: electric boogaloo
They're very clearly aligned
Not really with the US anymore.
Anyway, I think you missed this reference: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-Aligned_Movement
Does it really count as non-aligned if the observer states are very much aligned?
The point was non alignment with the two superpowers.
Both Russia and China are observer states within the non-aligned movement.
I'm pretty sure that is a more recent development, and that at least the Soviet Union and China weren't observers during the cold war. (But I haven't looked it up.)
There are over 30 US military bases in EU member states, so I would classify that as alignment with the US.
As of today, with current affairs and the unpredictable element in chief, you may never know how long.
One thing that is common about middle democracies is that prioritize a bureaucratic elite structure over an entrepreneurship culture, while both the US and China embrace entreprenuership wholeheartedly.
If they changed that they'd perhaps become world powers themselves.
The CCP retains too much power over businesses and business leaders for me to consider them to "embrace entrepreneurship wholeheartedly."
Because the US isn't exactly on the same path, right?
On the same path and on the same point of the path are two very different things.
Didn’t China force Meta to unwind Manus? In no way is China embracing entrepreneurs wholeheartedly.
The US has something called CFIUS. This is normal statecraft
I believe Manus was a Chinese company.
But Meta isn’t
The US _also_ embraces rent-seeking, regulatory capture, and the externalization of social and environmental costs as entrepreneurship.
No, that's just the 2010s propaganda fed to you by people who assert that not letting them do whatever they want is "bureaucratic". These very same people are completely fine lobbying legislature for more moat when they benefit from it.
The difference between "middle democracies" or whatever that means and the US is just that politics aren't corrupted enough yet that they can buy whatever they want.
I did some admin work for the startup around 5 years ago and I have to say EU countries specially mine Sweden is far more clear. In USA you are basically hopeless without a lawyer. but I did a search and for clarity of rule I searched and this came up using AI:
World Bank’s broad “Regulatory Quality” measure supports that direction: Sweden scored 95.28/100 and the US 90.57/100 in its latest comparable 2023 data. I couldn't find EU wide score.
I wanted to help someone to get work visa and I thought it is like Sweden and you just fill a small form, oh boy! We hired a lawyer for just filling the US side application.
Heavily country-dependent, in practice. The UK lets you set up a company online cheaply, quickly, and filing is easy. Insurance is plentiful and sensible, as are business bank accounts. The law is mostly straight-forward. Setting up a German limited-liability company OTOH involves putting down some ghastly large sum as a guarantee.
But yes, Americans are told they have the freest speech and the freest markets, and don't seem to question either.
I live in one, it's definitely true. It doesn't mean entrepreneurship doesn't exist, but there is a lot of bureaucracy and the bureaucracy is iron law. They will go to any extreme to make reality align with the bureaucracy. For example if you build a building without permission, the police will come by with a bulldozer, demolish your building, dispose of the remains, and then bill you for it. Even if the building is hosting the world's first AGI, or whatever extremely important thing you can think of - there is no excuse for not complying with the bureaucracy. Whereas the US would allow you to keep it and maybe pay a fine.
Yeah, an organized and powerful administration is the basis of rule-of-law system. The opposite isn't entrepreneurship, it's a state of widespread corruption where laws are toothless.
It doesn't benefit upstarts who want a fair environment to start a business, it benefits megacorps with their own militia of lawyers to bend the rules, and pockets deep enough to lobby for the removal of rules that can't be bent.
The optimal amount of crime is not zero. If someone does an illegal thing but it turns out to be good for society, it should be permitted, then legalized.
Think of AI copyright infringement. You know why the AI labs are in the USA and China and not in Europe.
You clearly don't pay attention to Canadian politics. Canada basically let McKinsey run their immigration policy[1][2] for 10 years and has now appointed the former CEO of McKinsey[3] to a business development role in government. I wouldn't say that Canada is just a satellite office of McKinsey, but it's getting closer.
Canada is corrupt as hell, just no one cares so it doesn't make international news.
Edit:
Oh yeah, forgot about the SNC-Lavalin debacle, where the ruling government tried to make the legal problems of their corporate buddies go away[4] by sneaking a new "slap on the wrist" law into an annual budget bill and then pressuring the prosecutor to apply it.
[1] https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/mckinsey-immigration-consul...
[2] https://thewalrus.ca/shadow-government/
[3] https://www.pm.gc.ca/en/news/news-releases/2026/08/31/prime-...
[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SNC-Lavalin_affair
So is Europe. It's just not at the point the US reached, yet.
It's pretty clear the echo chamber you emerge from (protip - move to the US. I am 100% serious), but this is comical.
When your examples of Canada being "corrupt as hell" are such chickenshit nonsense, it betrays that you're just a partisan zealot that has literally zero sense of scale or reason.
McKinsey, a massive consulting firm, had a whole $32M in business with the government? Holy shit, basically the deep state! Sounds like the globalist infiltrated the government!
The SNC thing was embarrassing, but it was over its behaviour overseas (Libya, to be precise, where a dictator's family got wined and dined), and the government was concerned about a massive, major Canadian firm being crippled by domestic hand wringing.
When that is what you have to offer up for Canada being "corrupt as hell", in comparison to criminal shitholes like the US (which you think is much better, as you've explained elsewhere), wow. Back to shitty subreddits where your tiny group of laughable farces have your discussions about how dire things are.
I say it with absolute conviction that I desperately want every "Canada is broken" jackal like you to pack up and move South of the border.
It's interesting to me that people generally see Europe's regulations as interfering with entrepreneurship, while they see American decisions that give more power to multinational corporations at the expense of smaller companies as a normal part of a free market.
"…as a normal part of a free market."
That's unfettered capitalism at work—"free" implies no bounds. Multinational corporations have never been more powerful now than at anytime in history.
And that hurts the free market. A free market should be transparent, have low barriers to entry, and not be dominated by monopolies or cartels. There's nothing free about American capitalism.
No bounds for whom?
Your implied premise is that private companies cannot impede others' freedom, which isn't true. In unfettered capitalism, only the largest corporations have the power and money to be free.
well you see, maybe one day they'll be the CEO of that multi-trillion dollar company, so it's better to err on the side of capitalism. /s
Don't you see that the same bureaucracy that adds friction to entrepreneurship also serves the purpose of protecting the incumbents?
It is odious to start a company in the EU. There are many accounts of this on HN itself.
Starting a company is not the hard part of staring a company in any country. Many many companies do exist in the EU. It might be annoying but it's obviously hardly insurmountable.
This is false.
Yes, I saw one just recently where the poster made obviously false statements about starting a company in Germany.
(Before you downvote this comment, please note that I have started multiple companies in the EU. I'm speaking from personal experience, not from something I've read on Hacker News.)
Onerous?
This is just wrong. The US prioritizes billionaires over entrepreneurs.
"If they changed that they'd perhaps become world powers themselves."
If they were to change some within the citizenry would stand to gain at the expense of others. Inequality would increase.
Seems—for now—middle democracies aren't prepared to pay the high price of social upheaval such a policy would create.
You're getting downvoted now, but it's the Europeans who are running out of money for healthcare and public services (and voting for neo-fascist parties promising fixes that will never come).
European sentiment is totally out of touch with European reality. They'll post gleefully online about how much better their life is and then go back to their sardine flat where they can't afford to pay for heating, and it never ever occurs to them to reconsider any priors. They'll huff copium on Reddit about how bad American healthcare is, while waiting for years for desperately needed surgeries, paying far more for healthcare by way of taxes than any American does.
Are their ideas out of touch? No, it's reality that's wrong.
American government deficits are far larger than European or Canadian deficits. It's not the Europeans who are running out of money.
This is blatantly false. Americans spend 18% of GDP on healthcare, while most European countries are around 10%.
There is no struggle, China has already won.
In what way has "China already won"?
The US has depleted their missile stockpile and can no longer defend anybody. Countries in the Middle East are moving away from the US and forming their own alliances. Taiwan knows that the US cannot do anything to help them. South Korea also knows. The US has weaponized the US Dollar, forcing countries out of the SWIFT system if they don't do what they are told. As a result, the CHIPS system has become the alternative. China understands better how the economy works, with the Belt and Road Initiative. The US government doesn't understand how the economy works, and is run by a bunch of complete m orons.
You've said a bunch of things that don't really equate to "China already won".
I’m not sure I agree with “already won”, that’s an extreme position, but there are consequences to all the things s/he says. It may be a death of 1000 cuts, or it may hit a tipping point, but the us is certainly walking blindly down the “let China win” road.
As a joint us/uk citizen, even I would prefer to deal with China than the USA these days. Predictability is really useful in business, and narcissistic man child presidents aren’t predictable.
There is no path for victory for the US, where it remains the world's reserve currency. China will become the world's reserve currency by 2032.
You are simply in denial. Everything that I wrote points to China winning.
China doesn’t want this for the same reason that some Americans currently in power don’t want the USD to be the world’s reserve currency - it comes with an export and trade cost.
There are also many structural and political reasons why the Yuan can’t play this role not least of which are transparency, the peg and monetary supply independence.
This has to be the funniest thing I’ve read for a while. China still has two exchange rates.
So did the US (into gold), once, at a time when it was already the world reserve currency.
Reserve currency status entirely depends on whether the issuing authority has the ability to drop a munition (literally or figuratively) on the head of anyone who dares to counterfeit the currency.
China's military and soft influence are improving but until they get that good, USD will remain the reserve.
Because, imagine the scenario where the US simply counterfeits the renminbi. What is China's recourse? Spicy statements by Wang Yi in toothless international forums?
Folks can keep their heads in the sand for pretty long, as long as they look just at progressively smaller circle around them and ignore rest of reality.
The momentum China already gained, and gaining more every day is well beyond anything in the west. Plus if you consider the position they are rising from, its properly meteoric. Nobody knows future, but its rather easy to continue projection with current, or even a bit slower pace and within 1 or 2 decades, situation will be pretty clear from any objective perspective.
Above is purely technological/process progress. Add US making enemy of whole world in one brilliant move, something that is practically irreversible in upcoming decades, and situation is clear. Military (without ammo) alone won't give you much negotiating power. LLMs can be replicated elsewhere with rather little cost, and soon some small bleeding edge advantage will be largely meaningless for most practical tasks.
It doesn't even matter what near future brings, this is settled and no amount of denial from US or self-patting is changing that.
It’s meant in the sense similar to “omae wa mou shindeiru” (“you’re already dead”), i.e. that defeat has already become unavoidable.
Every single point you've made is either straight up untrue or comes with caveats. I hate to quote Trump but, in light of Brandolini's law: "Wrong."
Many people avoid Chinese stocks like the plague because the system is still half communist and as a foreign investor you get some paper in a company on Cayman Island instead of real direct ownership. That keeps me from buying their stocks and I'm not the only one.
China understanding the economy appears to include them understanding that an economy consists of producing and trading goods and services, not a cancerous stock market. You can't invest in their stocks because that would be bad for their economy.
I am not OP and obviously "winning" reduces too many dimensions into one. But I will say that from my recent two visits to the country that I was pretty astonished by the speed at which they are building things. Cars, Buildings, Tech Hubs, Factories. You blink twice and a new tech company plops up somewhere making high end drones or humanoid robots or CNC machines or innovative 3d printers. It feels like there is an absolute abundance of electrical and mechanical engineers in that country and funding to match. I am not making any comments on the politics of it all, but I have not seen this anywhere else in the world - perhaps it exists but I am not aware of it.
For some of us, it mimics late 19th century europe where the rate of innovation perhaps was only matched by the lack of regard for cost, safety or need.
I think we are closer to seeing the Chinese Hindenburg than Arpanet or Moon voyage or some other bewildering humanity joining initiative.
Its inarguable that the industrial revolution brought tons of wealth quickly to the UK. But one, having past it all, has to wonder if the child work force, insanely cramped victorian houses, constant deaths due to smog, polluted water etc could not have been entirely avoided by reducing "innovation" speed.
Is the existing suffering of the Chinese system worth the economic growth? For its own middle class, the answer is probably yes. But systemic conditions like limiting the universities places to top 30% students, means you have a permanent underclass that cannot join the white collar jobs.
Is that required to have a cheap, hardworking manufacturing and construction industries? Maybe. But reinventing a class system that has a few steps removed from slavery as an "economic miracle" and "neck breaking speed innovation" feels a bit icky when they could take 5 years longer and treat people better.
We are arguably close to post scarcity, and instead of building post-capitalism instruments (like libraries could be imagined as), we are just perfecting the economic conditions of capitalism which require an inordinate amount of cheap labour and state violence.
Billionaires are building bunkers instead of museums, they can see the end game of this system they benefit from and its not a good one. Like I can't understand whats the point of winning "the economy" if we end up in a post nuclear hellscape of ecological collapse, but number must go up I have been told.
I do not think it was necessary for it to be that bad for the industrial revolution to happen. Possibly displacing agricultural workers through the agricultural revolution and enclosures accelerated it?
It is certainly not necessary for economic development now. You probably cannot give people in less developed economies the same pay and working conditions, but you can provide the basics and relatively decent treatment.
Agreed, but on other dimensions China is still 150 years behind the West. It’s important to keep this progress in perspective.
Go on, on which dimensions is China 150 years behind the West?
Creativity, innovation, freedom? 10 guys in a room can't compete for long against hundreds of millions or billions pursuing their own separate interests. Sure, they can steal, but they can't create to the same degree if at all.
Why is all the newest and best technology from China, outside a few specific fields?
I recently read a survey of 14 promising new technologies: AI, EV's, drones, robots, batteries, et cetera. China was leading in 13/14, and is only 4 months behind on the 14th, AI.
Because, unlike the other superpower, they don't seem to be losing?
The USA is repeatedly punching itself in the face over and over though, so it's not a fair fight.
Their culture prioritises economic outputs not entitlements.
Look around and visit any country, you'll see chinese made and sold goods inundating everymarket, build infrastructures.
It used to be chinese made goods sold by local or western companies. Nowadays bar a few exceptions these are chinese goods sold directly by chinese brands/companies.
And many of those products are not only good they're becoming good in ways nowhere else can do.
We should keep open to the option that they might both loose.
Go do some research on China - it's economy is in the toilet and its leadership has destroyed much of it's success, foreign capital and companies have fled to India, Vietnam, Mexico, Indonesia.
Your lament of "Oh no China is the best in the world and only getting better!!!" is long long out of date.
With 2 billion people you’re absolute power. Internal market with middle class size of whole United States. No need for wallstreet and American style financial engineering. Producer of 80% goods for Europe. I mean buying something mainstream not made in China is barely possible. Technically there are some challenges like plane engines or lithography. But they’ll nail it. Trust me.
Their population is 1.4 billion and falling.
This is being heavily downvoted, but it's dangerously close to true.
In ten years the downvoters will not only agree with this, but have moved on to "and that's a good thing".
I mean..."close to true" is another way of saying "false". It could easily have been phrased in a way that was actually true and gotten plenty of upvotes instead.
Imagine if China said that about the US in 1950.
70% of Canadian exports are to the US. 6% to the EU. Why would e.g. Poland want to enter a trade war with the US on Canada's behalf?
Because Trump is trade warring everyone.
The middle democracies will do better fighting together and not deal with US individually.
Isn't the point that there already is one?
Because the US is likely to ally with Russia over Poland.
Because the US is going to throw Poland under the bus without even considering once if it yields a short-term benefit.
Under the bus again, I might add
That's rich considering it was France and the UK that threw Poland under the bus despite having a signed defense pact. The US just came in to clean up the mess.
I don't think they're talking about WWII.
WW2 ended with Yalta conference where Roosevelt agreed to Stalin's proposition of giving Poland to USSR's sphere of influence, making Poland (and rest of EE) their puppet state.
Churchil wanted to pressure Stalin to leave Poland (and at least parts of EE) independent and even considered "Operation Unthinkable".
At least that's what I think the guy above referenced.
That's pretty much what happened. Trouble was the stakes were already high, if Starlin didn't yield to a bluff (had one been pursued) it would have been an embarrassing backdown and a show of weakness on part of the allies.
"Bluff" because no one other than perhaps Stalin would have followed through—to essentially extend WWII (this time between former allies).
So pragmatism was the order of the day, thus Poland and EE were sacrificed.
If Stewie punched me, It doesn't mean Quagmire didnt.
I am under impression that some other nation was involved in cleaning up. If you can even call it cleaning up.
So the assumption is trading with Canada = trade war with US? Canada is abused pretty hard it seems...
If "70% of Canadian exports are to the US", that's probably why the US has so much leverage, and I can see why the Canadian government would like a change. Hence the need for a rebalancing of trade partnerships.
Wouldn't being strongly aligned with the EU give Canada a lot more leverage in trade discussions with the US?
No
Imagine they were in the EU. The EU could leverage the trade bazooka in the current tariff war.
Even if Canada doesn't join the EU, there is a lot of mutual benefit from an economic and military defense pact (beyond NATO, which is nearly dead).
I’m not sure what the EU has to trade, except Volkswagens and BMWs which are 10% car and 90% pension costs.
You know that the EU has a large trade surplus of goods with the US?
I'd like to take a closer look at what exactly Canada is exporting to the US, and what exactly the EU is importing from elsewhere, to see if there's a match. I'd rather buy from Canada than from Russia. Or China. Or the US.
I bought a dbrand case from Canada last week. Even the packaging is funnier (in a comical way) than US products.
Sorry, my brain is fried by a cold :).
The important categories are oil and potash. Consumer actions might not influence those much.
How much oil is Europe still importing from Russia? I'd rather have Canadian.
I’m sure China would, too. I wonder what’s harder: diverting that oil to the northwest passage, or diverting Persian Gulf oil around the strait of Hormuz?
You know how despite climate change being very real, in day to day discussions with other level headed people, they still very regularly say stuff like
"We ran the numbers for an EV, and right now gas is still cheaper, so we are holding off on the switch until it makes financial sense"
Canadian oil would need to be shipped halfway around the world. It would be more expensive. Price is always the top factor for everyone.
Fair point. What we really need of course is more renewables, and that is happening, but not fast enough, so we still need oil. And I'd rather get our oil in a way that doesn't fuel the Russian war machine, even if it does cost a bit more.
Deals right now are intended to increase the trades between Canada and reducing those with the US, in little improvement steps.
If in 10 years the ratio moves from 70/6 to 50/26, the situation will be vastly different.
The options are not black and white
It's not that they want to enter a trade war with Trump, it's that there's large room for growth in trade between Canada and Poland (your example).
Since Trump is hostile to trade with both parties there's an opportunity to replace lost US trade that's probably not coming back.
Trump has weakened himself and his allies where as mutual trade between Canada and the EU makes both stronger.
Polish export to US is about 3% of its total export and import - about 5% of Poland's total import. Not much to lose, honestly. We trade more with Czech Republic.
Polish export to EU is 74% of its total export and import is about 60% of its total import.
Economically - whatever's good for EU is good for Poland and US barely matters.
What about the importance of that trade. The US exports a lot of critical things that cannot be supplied from elsewhere. Everyone is heavily reliant on American technology.
Like what specifically? Only services come to mind. Any hardware is produced in Asia, in fabs that use equipment from Netherlands.
The hardware is produced in Asia but American controlled. its still a dependency on being supplied by American companies.
"Only services" covers a lot of critically important things. Clouds services and payment systems, for example. Even just one American company like AWS could turn off a huge chunk of European economies.
That is just tech. What about fuel? machinery. https://www.consilium.europa.eu/en/infographics/eu-us-trade/
Yes, but services are easier to replace than hardware. And control is something you have, and then you don't have if the country in which you operate decides otherwise (or US presidents throws another tantrum).
Companies use AWS because it is there and others used it, so they got ball rolling. It doesn't mean one couldn't replace it with another service, most probably more pricey one. If there would be some kind of war, then one doesn't need to have servers in US, and European ones are right there.
You can't easily replace e.g. lithium or other metals.
Fuel is problematic, but there are places that are closer that could sell them (middle east, if we ignore current Russian state of mind).
As for machinery, it is hard to guess what kind. Germany produces a lot of it, and I would guess China also.
Not sure about pharmaceuticals.
Generally US is not our greatest import partner, China is. And we have a big internal market also.
After decades of globalization, everyone is just extremely dependent on everyone.
I think hardware is a bit complicated by the way. A lot of hardware is also not US controlled. For instance ARM Holdings is British, Japanese, or global depending on how you look at it and quite a lot of vendors rely on ARM's reference designs. Europe also has a lot of important chip designers, but they are more focused on embedded systems and support chips, like NXP and ST Microelectronics.
"Only services" covers a lot of critically important things. Clouds services and payment systems, for example. Even just one American company like AWS could turn off a huge chunk of European economies.
Why European governments and increasingly companies are trying to move away to European alternatives. It all starts small, but e.g. a bunch of governments are already disentangling from Office. The sale of the maintainer of the Dutch DigiD infrastructure to a US company has been blocked (would have happened without any blockers a few years ago). Countries are reducing US arms purchases in favor of European alternatives.
It's like turning a mammoth tanker, but it is slowly happening.
Let's just hope we have critical mass before the right-wing populists take over, big tech has been intensively lobbying them in recent years [1]. So much 'for the people', like they always proclaim.
[1] https://www.brusselstimes.com/1916422/us-tech-giants-allying...
Arm is important, but for R & D. The impact of not having Arm will take a long time to be felt. The same for a lot of the others you mention. Not having a supply or Intel and AMD CPUs would be felt much faster and would be harder to find replacements for.
Is it really happening? As has been mentioned on HN multiple times the EU's age verification app will only run on American controlled devices. Some countries are moving some things away from US suppliers, buts its very much one step forward then two steps back.
Unfortunately, not only them. As the article says the existing European Commission is already going in the direction big tech want, just not as far. The current British government (a historically left wing party) has also been cosying up to big tech. One of the organisations mentioned in your link has a lot of info on EU lobbying in general: https://corporateeurope.org/index%2Ephp/en/lobbying-the-eu
So the implication is continue doing that?
I’ve always been told don’t let perfect be the enemy of good, and the journey of 1000 miles starts with a single step.
The lesson here is that you can’t rely on the US anymore. Not for military protection, not for defence procurement, and not for trade or supply chain. That legacy has ended entirely by choice of the United States.
The problem has moved beyond monetary trade value and into existential risk.
Funny, to justify Brexit numbers like these were meaningless
Because the US is wreaking havoc world wide. The US cannot be trusted anymore.
Better remove the bandaid now then wait until you are screwed.
People now see China as the reliable partner. This will be a multigenerational change.
Exports are really easy to move and replace, as has been proven again and again in the past two years. Turns out that imports can be far trickier and pose larger problems to an economy.
In 1960, 75% of Ireland's exports went to the UK, and 50% of its imports came from there. By 2000, it was 35% imports, 25% exports. Today it is 20% imports, 8% exports. There are a few things going on here, but a lot of it was EU membership giving Ireland options beyond its 'natural' trade partner (and then the big drop from 2000 to now was mostly Brexit).
Being in a situation where 70% of your exports go to one country is arguably pretty unhealthy; that is something that Canada would do well to work towards reducing, even _if_ the US administration wasn't openly hostile.
Errrrr...... this has nothing to do with the struggle between USA and China.
It is 100% about Trump.
Trump is a symptom not the disease, when he's gone the people who supported him and voted for him still exist and another Trump-like figure is almost inevitable given they've basically ploughed and planted that field to grow the next one and who's to say NeoTrump isn't going to be smarter.
The other democracies can no longer count on the US as a stable ally the way we have in the past (whether that trust was misplaced is a matter of perspective).
Simply put, you did it twice, We can't rely on them not doing it again.
That and nobody believes that if the Democrats get back in the driver’s seat that they will correct all the disgusting things Trump did.
Americans voted for that clown regime twice.
They cannot and should not be trusted anymore.
IMO it’s the 2 party system in the US that make it more vulnerable for things like this to happen
When Hitler was removed did another Hitler variant take control of Germany? No, Germany recovered from that dark period. The same will happen in the US. We will recover from this dark period. The comparison to Hitler is not baseless, btw. His own vice president once called Trump America's Hitler.
If you mean after facing bitter defeat, being broken into two nations, being controlled directly by foreign powers for years (and on one side decades), paying reparations, its upper political class and collaborators seized, jailed, trialed, and the free side being afraid of annexation by Russia, having nazism and any artifacts outlawed, then yes.
Yes, after all and more, no future Hitler has yet emerged.
Unless you see these things happening soon, then not really a good comparison.
I don't think even the most hardened bsky communist seriously expects the outgoing administration to be literally taken out and shot.
Canada was able to convict Peter Nygard, and Trump might not have completed the Epstein coverup yet.
No, because he was removed at gunpoint (no, not the one he pointed at himself). Unless and until that happens to a US President, you can expect more of the same.
It doesn't need to be a trump like figure. I would temper expectations that anything for Europe or Canada goes back to some status quo. It's more likely for Canada, but the US has changes domestically and with regards to other foreign nations in ways that necessitate different foreign relations even with close allies.
We can look at Biden. He's not a trump like figure by any stretch. He decided to continue some of Trump's foreign policy.
Trump is absolutely a malicious imbecile, but the US is a country that willingly voted him in twice.
Removing Trump doesn't remove fundamental issues with the US
This has been brewing since George W Bush. Obama made a valiant attempt at normalising relations with Europe but I don't think any future US president has any hope of reversing this now.
Europe was skeptical ever since 'nam and at the latest Bush Sr's Iraq adventure.
Since the wars in Iraq, sure. Vietnam was the US inheriting Europe’s mess.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-qdvm6h8WKg
We don’t do trade with Trump. We don’t get attacked by Trump.
It has very little to do with Trump. When he leaves, this shift isn't going away.
Nearly 60% of EU LNG imports come from the USA. If Trump doesn't like Canada to cuddle with the EU, then it won't happen.
This is all a big pain in the back.
Good thing EU is investing heavily in renewables then.
Those wind turbines are destroying the scenery, though.
Exactly. I prefer seeing pumpjacks and hydrofracking equipment, just like all red blooded capitalists.
I've never seen a pumpjack nor any hydrofracking equipment. I have seen a few capitalists but I can't be positive they were red-blooded ones (whatever that means).
The red blooded thing was tongue in cheek. Go visit California. Eat at In n Out. You may see a pumpjack next to the place you’re sitting enjoying your animal style fries. They’re pretty common. I don’t mind them really, but do find them to be equally / neutrally as a wind turbine in the area (also common sight in California), admittedly the wind turbine is sleeker and more modern, but the pumpjacks have more history.
only if you're weird and think they dont look lovely?
Why, do you like them?
Solar panels are even worse. Here in Poland they're covering entire fields in the countryside, I have no idea why they don't build them on parking lots or on factory roofs.
of course. Ive not met a person that doesn't like them, either. I love hiking and have travelled pretty wide across europe.
Solar panels are similarly lovely to see. I'd just as rather see them than a uniform field of corn or maize or somesuch thing. I can't understand the mindset that objects to such things? is it just a straight up childish nimby "I don't want ANYTHING to be built" or would you prefer natural gas+coal power plants ? or any other built structures for that matter (I think they are better than concrete buildings etc - they are white tree-like things, thin with smooth curved surfaces, or rows of curious purple and black panels swiveling to face the sun)
I mean... Different people have different opinions.
I would prefer nuclear
I'm sorry I came off a little hostile. I do find it hard to understand how people can be so opposed to such clearly necessary infrastructure on purely aesthetic grounds.
Compared to all the things that could be built, it seems like the aesthetic harm is so small (a six lane highway, an industrial plant, a train line, sewage processing plant, refuse pile, the list goes on and on) - all of these must be built in places too. I can't see how anyone can think themselves anything but lucky that they get wind turbines near them instead
Yes I have no problems with them looks-wise. They don't build them on parking lots/factory roofs because of efficiency. Good solar panels follow the sun, which isnt really a mechanism practical to setup in a parking lot. maintenance is also a lot easier if you have one field generating a gigawatt of power vs having to service 20 parking lots that generate a gigawatt of power. Also obviously the land itself is cheaper in the countryside. Renewables are operating on relatively thing margins profitability wise, so you really want to make the juice worth the squeeze (the main value being sovereignty from other countries as discussed in the thread)
Not as much as 4°C temperature increase will do.
Canada has a proven, safe reactor technology[1] and Uranium to spare. This is a good synergy.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CANDU_reactor
The LNG won't come from Canada either. Trudeau notoriously said "there's no business case" for it, but the truth is they can't agree with how to actually get enough of it to the east coast to make a difference, and that's what blocks it. (In fairness the route does go through some very unique environments).
Canadian provinces have a far bigger ability to screw things up for the whole than countries do inside the EU, and people remotely familiar with the EU will understand what a strong statement that is.
If by screw things up you mean retain some level of governance then yes... Canada is a confederation, not a federation.
Canada is definitionally a federation.
Where there's a will, there's a way. There hasn't been a will until now.
The only "way" involves greasing the palms of every special interest group in the way until they have successfully accounted for the whole potential revenue of the intended enterprise, and that's what blocked everything repeatedly.
I'm in Quebec and very familiar with the exact territory this has applied to wrt getting resources out on the east coast, and unless someone was willing to rule by decree to bypass all those entrenched groups it's not happening, and we all know why such decrees would not happen as well.
They'll ship it out of Churchill. The only special interest groups are Indigenous and they rarely successfully hold up projects that are actually important.
Petro-states are destroying their trust as they try desperately to cling on to the power fossil fuels have given them. Thankfully this makes renewables even more attractive than just their lower cost.
Australia is also seeking a closer alliance with EU and Canada. The world is moving on to a post Us-hegemony era.
All it took was Trump & Republicans
The world was already moving on from US hegemony. China is already a super power, other economies are growing, and the west in general (i.e. all the countries mentioned here) are a shrinking proportion of the world economy (and population, or military strength).
Not if we kick off WW3 as a last ditch attempt to hold on to the old order ;)
You jest, but if you've ever seen a wounded animal fighting like mad for survival, I wouldn't be so confident that won't be the exact same things that's going to happen.
You don't have to look into the animal kingdom, history works too. No ruling empire has fallen silently and without conflict. Changing the world order always included an aggressive transfer of power
The British Empire dismantling wasn't exactly peaceful, but it could have been much worse. Next to India, everything else becomes a rounding error.
It was mostly peaceful in itself. There was a lot of conflict that followed in the wake of it as borders and power structures were settled. Just in South Asia we had the partition of India, the secession of Bangladesh from Pakistan, the Sri Lankan civil war, and various smaller separatist conflicts.
In the case of my country, USA, we are the ones wounding ourselves. We made the conscious choice to elect a government that prefers isolationism to economic competition, and which rejected near-peer military preparedness in favor of more deadlock wars with third world middle east countries. It’s not like we were somehow victimized by the EU.
This unfortunately tends to happen, declining empires usually cause a lot of destruction in history on their way out.
The collapse of the USA as the world leader was already happening, but plenty of countries were under the impression the USA and the other western countries were working together to save the sinking ship.
The USA did plenty of offensive stuff before that (like a full campaign labeling the French as cowards for not supporting their baseless war in the middle east), but it took until Trump and his unhinged behaviour for the world to see how bad the situation really was.
Meanwhile Poland's share of trade with China is growing over that with Germany: https://notesfrompoland.com/2026/09/16/china-overtakes-germa...
The pivot away from Germany / France is starting and will not stop.
All it took was Merkel and sucking up to Russia.
Good news. This world needs more cooperation and friendship.
It's not about friendship but money.
There is a friendly trusting common values part to this too.
It's more about predictability.
America's become erratic and untrustworthy. America's made a deliberate choice make its reputation worse.
Eh, on a long enough timeline we have seen this and been there before. US is the beacon of democracy and the free world until it is not, and then until it again is. Depending on who is speaking and about whom and when.
Most of these attention grabbing statements by politicians are usually about scoring political points at home. The only thing worthy of judgement are hard facts, and excruciating details, which are yet to materialize on this topic.
"US is the beacon of democracy"
40 years ago I probably would have agreed with this statement - these days, not at all.
This was a kind of example, and not really the point of my comment.
Though to illustrate further, there are many examples one might find of US acting undemocratically even 40 years ago.
So, politicians will talk, governments will be in power, and the observers will discuss. My invitation was simply to discuss known facts not political rhetoric. And main facts are largely absent and unknown.
Friendship is about values?
Why not both?
The true treasure is the friendship we made along the way.
Define what "friendship" means here and how that differs from "economic or political interests", please?
It means shared values and a willingness to hold long-term commitments.
You may not be interested in politics, but politics is interested in you!
Nations don't have friends, they have interests.
Previous discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49723424 (49 points 2 hours ago, 120 comments)
The EU is running out of Europe. I thought Turkey or North Africa would be the next steps. Maybe Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan.
Not white enough for the EU. There is a lot of opposition to even Turkey, which is already in customs union, joining and talks are dead specifically because EU countries do not want immigration from Turkey.
Sure, but Turkey is also an authoritarian autocracy, which I think might be a bit of a problem for the EU.
That won't be a problem for long. The native Europeans are swinging to the authoritarian right, the newly naturalized are very selectively for liberal democracy - aka the parts that directly benefit them, not the parts that make it liberal, and the liberal democrats are straight out refusing to have kids.
So in 50 years Tukey will border authoritarian regime either way.
Turkey has been a candidate member since forever, but instead of addressing the many problems they need to fix before entry, they're making it worse.
Fear that Turkey would be "imminently" joining the EU was one of the scare stories used by the Brexit campaign in the UK.
There are already quite a few Turks in the UK, but I don't remember Turkey being used as a specific scare story. (I voted Remain... Have to point this out continually.)
Either way, it's clear that UK migration levels have not been diminished by Brexit, and much of it is coming from outside the EU... So whatever one thinks of the issue it is bigger than Europe.
Dominic Cummings said that the Turkey immigration scare tactic was an important factor in the Brexit result:
https://bylinetimes.com/2021/08/12/cummings-brexit-confessio...
The warnings before Brexit were that it would increase immigration - and look what happened!
Edit: The Turkey stuff was on Cummings blog - don't know if its still there.
No, just too corrupt for the EU.
More like not culturally aligned enough.
Many European countries already have substantial Turkish migration. Notably Germany but also visible in the UK, where they seem to have cornerned the market for barbering.
EU is looking for strong democracies, while none of your suggestions are
The EU covers just over 40% of the area of Europe.
Another 40% is in Russia, good luck with that
Oh yeah, that's gonna be hella popular with the voters.
Turkey has been floated as a serious EU candidate for decades now. Most of it is not in Europe of course, and it has a large population. Turkey refuses to address its past with the Armenians, Kurds and Greeks which is a major concern.
The other question is what its border control is like at the eastern end.
There are already large numbers of Turks in western Europe, particularly Germany, so presumably some of them would vote for it.
Define large numbers. It's around 5% or even less in Germany which hosts the biggest Turkish community to the best of my knowledge, and way less in other European countries. Bringing Turkey in imo might dissolve the Union, I don't see anyone trying it soon.
It's also a dictatorship and its population is probably not in favor of liberal democracy - most (all?) Muslim countries aren't.
I think in recent times we realized that culture is still very important and just doing realpolitik alone does not work. Turkey and North Africa are way too foreign and bring more problem than benefits.
Bienvenue les amis.
Oui, j'ai hâte que l'on partage d'avantage avec l'Europe que les É-U...
Bonjour du Québec.
Salut ben fort d'Autriche ! On joue tous ensemble. Cheers to closer ties, Freunde.
Je suis tellement heureux de constater que Carney bouge rapidement.
Au début des annonces des tarifs, plusieurs experts disaient que de se découpler des américains étaient impossible à court terme. Nos économies sont trop entrelacées pour changer de cap rapidement.
Je ne sais pas exactement ce que Carney a en tête , mais j’espère que ça va accélérer le découplage.
51st state? Pfff. How about 28th EU country!
Eurovision was just the beginning
Is this the path to a Bizarro World future where the Commonwealth realms become associate members of the EU to slowly unBrexit?
I don't hate the idea
I wouldn't be surprised if Scotland eventually leaves UK and joins the EU. Part of the reason they voted to stay in the UK was so that they could remain in the EU, and then brexit happened
That can’t happen though because they’d be without a currency in the interim period and it’s also baked in to the EU’s treaties to make this difficult else places like Catalonia and the Basque Country would break away and join the EU, so there are barriers in place to make this less than quick or easy.
It would be rather foolish, but they can continue using the GBP. Or they can start using the Euro before joining. They wouldn't be able to mint their currency, but plenty of small (often island) nations use foreign currency already.
Scotland is already a separate country, technically speaking, so I don't think it's comparable with the Basque situation. Furthermore, with the UK leaving the EU, they've opened doors that non-EU members can't use to work around such issues.
I don't think it'll happen soon, but the desire for independence does seem to be there to a significant extent already: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2026/09/13/irish-scots-...
The largest problem for an independent Scotland trying to join the EU would probably be that the EU doesn't just let anyone join. You need to have a strong enough economy and a grip on national debt to join.
I think if you keep researching one of the things that killed the referendum last time was the British government saying a hard no to continued use of the pound while scotland applied to the EU and joined the Euro. Now of course they could keep using the pound, but the amount of economic attacks against Scotland by the City of London and general lack of financial independence seems like it really would kill the idea dead. If Scotland thinks it gets a better deal from the EU than it gets as part of being in the UK then it should go for it but it would be an extremely expensive and fragile 10-15 years in that interim period. And not even full independence, it would be tantamount to saying “we hate the English so much we’d rather be governed from Belgium”.
They would then have a hard border with England, and would have to untangle their economy from the UK to some extent, which would be extremely disruptive. There will also be complex issues around who gets which citizenship, who would need work visas, a change of currency, etc.
It was known that there was likely to be a Brexit referendum at the time of the Scottish referendum: Cameron had promised one if the Conservatives won the 2015 election.
I'm proud to live in the EU because for all its faults we have one thing going for us, we seem to be the only large institution that countries still want to voluntarily join, and can voluntarily leave.
In a world in which the other great powers revive the Monroe Doctrine or threaten their magnitude smaller neighbors with annexation we're not doing so badly. There is an inherent pettiness, weakness and fake strength in autocracy and force and it's often why I think the EU receives so much disproportionate hate.
The UK left, Iceland just voted not to join.
The EU does not have a military to annex any neighbours with. Individual states do, but non are really great powers any more.
Yes, you can read all about how that came about, and how it's going.
You're projecting an American ideal. Not all nations are--nor want to be--America, and we're thankful for that.
Yes, it seems to have made no difference. economically - economy performing much the same as France and Germany. Lots of lives saved by the faster covid vaccine rollout which is a plus IMO.
You are missing my point. Not annexing anyone when its not an option because you cannot does not prove anything.
I have never even been to America - why would I project an American ideal?
edit: removed, didn’t properly read the context
No, of course not. I really do not understand how you interpreted what I said as saying taht.
Can people please read what I said in the context of the comment i replied to!
Sorry, corrected
Brexit has caused an estimated ~6-8% per capita loss of output: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cyv0m164m84o
"Annexing neighbour" is clearly a non-goal of the EU. One of the reason of its existence is to put an end to european countries invading each others all the time.
Do you really think the USA could annex anything but (maybe) Cuba, after seeing how the Iran war is playing out?
Iceland said no because they are afraid of overfishing in their water.
It isn't an unreasonable fear, especially given their dependance on that food source. Their "No" was perfectly reasonnable from what I can see.
Britain's "Leave" campain was drowning in lies, exageration, and british-empire nostalgia.
Those two situations are very different.
Really? Because there's this organisation called CUSMA that nations can voluntarily leave (the US) and some want to stay in (Canada).
It's economy is larger than the EU btw.
CUSMA is just a trade deal, not a full-on organization like the EU.
If we're doing a trade deal measuring contest, I will just point out that the EU has the world's largest free trade network, including Canada (already), South Korea, most of Latin America, India etc etc.
Could retroactively mean Earth Union. Let the good ones like Korea and Japan also join.
Yieppieeee!!! Love you Canada! :waves from Italy
I’m not sure this is a good thing for Canada.
The EU feels like an incomplete experiment. Not strong enough to actually be a single market. But still able to create additional annoying regulations on top of nation level ones.
The EU needs to be truly Federal to succeed economically. That might create uniform regulations with more uniform regulations and actually make Europe competitive.
I am not sure, if I see the example of US as federation, it might work well for corporations only, but people have nothing, uniformity doesn't work because not all populations have the same needs/expectations
Maybe, but it’s way too difficult to do business in the EU.
Not because I think regulations are bad. But regulations need to be well designed with clears lines on what the Federal / State are allowed to do.
Its hard because its 27 different countries, but they are working on making it less hard. Many startups are made in Europe, but then bought up (often by Americans) or moves to USA when its time to expand outside the single countries boarders. Canada has the same problem.
Canada has made it pretty clear that they do not want to be part of the big country south of it, so they will have to find a way to create large companies that stays. Doing this together with a market of 450 million people seems like a good idea.
They are working in it: https://www.eu-inc.org/
I have no clue whether that will be a success, but at least they have recognised that problem as well.
Been doing it for decades. Not a billionaire and not interested in becoming one; in the US I would've been one. But never had issues.
You can't deal with 27 different groups of people without dealing with 27 different groups of people or forcibly unifying them to become 1 group. I'm sure you agree the latter is bad.
That’s obviously reductive. They don’t have to be forced. They could mutually agree to unify more strongly
Yes, and they have in some ways, and that's called the EU. They have not unified in every way. For example the French people have not agreed to start eating Surströmming, they do not want to start eating Surströmming, I don't know whether it's even legal there to possess it, and that decision should rightfully be up to them. If you want to sell your Surströmming in France you have to take France into account, you can't just assume your business will be the same everywhere in Europe, and that's not just limited to laws, but also all other facets of culture. For another basic example, you have to have a version of your packaging written in French. The EU is not going to mandate that English packaging is accepted in all countries, for very obvious reasons.
What does this mean, concretely? What do the people not have? Who are those people? What would they have in the EU?
There is this odd fatalistic attitude about the US in this thread that seems divorced from the reality I’ve experienced in my travels.
universal healthcare, paid time off just to cite two
work/life balance?
EU already has uniform regulations, what are you talking about? It's also the third largest economy in the world, as uncompetitive as it is.
The EU is not a fiscal union. It is also not yet a single capital market.
No it does not. There's a lot of gold plating happening at the national level that goes beyond EU regulations. It's EU regulations + 27 national regulations in reality. The EU economies are still too different and the population too unwilling to have a truly US-style single market.
You seems to be arguing that a U.S. style single-market would be an improvement.
But for whom, people or companies?
It's an improvement for the economy and that mainly benefits the shareholders. How you redistribute those gains more broadly is an open question. But keeping inefficiencies in place to protect workers at all costs is a losing strategy in the long term - see: Soviet Union.
Unsurprisingly, people in different parts of the world hold different values. Europe is generally more focused on actual people and how their lives live, than simply accumulation of wealth among the few. It is unsurprising that they focus on different things.
That's easier said than done when you are competing in a global economy. The US is actually getting more consistent here: It starts to become more isolationist (through the trade war and specifically tariffs) and as a result will have more leeway in choosing their own mix of workers rights, compensations, taxation, etc. Sidenote: Of course consumers will be worse off as a result.
The EU however is in this weird spot where they are pushing for a more integrated global economy (thanks to all kinds of trade deals) with fewer barriers while at the same time making their own companies less competitive with all these regulations and internal hurdles: There are examples where a German exporter had an easier time sending his stuff to New Zealand than France.
Thanks for replying to a comment I didn't make. It is clear that your mind is full of American exceptionalism, I'm done in this comment thread. Thanks for your contribution.
What exactly is the difference between that and 50 states having their own regulations?
The absence of a central bank.
If going by GDP (which this claim usually does), the EU as a whole beats out China for second place by ~10%. When going by individual countries Germany alone is the third place behind China, though with a large gap between the two.
Consider: the US is a (somewhat) greenfield project, while the EU is a brownfield refactoring.
These sorts of refactorings take time, even more so if done by "committee". The good thing is that explicit interfaces have to be created thereby (hopefully) increasing adaptability and resilience over time.
The US was greenfield 2 centuries ago. It currently has a lot more technical (political?) debt than the EU. Some reforms are long overdue.
I want this one to succeed, but refactors often fail and revert to the original code structure :)
I agree, but there are huge barriers to taking this step. You need a common identity to create a nation. Americans have one, so do other large nations. The EU does not.
"But still able to create additional annoying regulations on top of nation level ones."
It seems to me the EU is overburdened with trivial regulations (like regulating the maximum power consumption of domestic vacuum cleaners) rather than prioritizing core issues of its single market, manufacturing, trade, etc.
Trouble is small vested interests hold overly powerful sway over EU-wide policy. The example above is a case in point, individual member states should be able to set their own regulations independently if deemed warranted.
You're correct, annoying regulations are bloating the EU bureaucracy making it lethargic and uncompetitive.
People proclaim this with such confidence, especially in the UK before the Brexit years I must say, and yet there are so many arguments against it.
First, accepting this goes against a core tenet of the single market, since the single market for vacuum cleaners is now split into 27 little markets. We thus need 27 regulatory bodies to each investigate, and then make a political decision, on the maximum power setting of domestic vacuum cleaners. Then, producers in China will have to make (up to) 27 different models of vacuum cleaners. This is certainly not going to be cheaper, completely destroys the famous Brussels effect [0], all for some token amount of "sovereignty".
Nations states can sovereignly decide to delegate this process of rule making to Brussels, and domestic vacuum cleaners are a perfectly mundane "case in point" to showcase the benefits of this process. The EU is far from a perfect union, but throwing these frankly naive arguments around will not help it much.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brussels_effect
Nation states are also free, in practice, to ignore any regulation they don't like and implement their own. Hungary did this for a decade. They usually don't, because there is no benefit to ignoring the more widespread setting on maximum vacuum cleaner power.
The EU is an ongoing experiment as well.
Europe’s biggest problem, I think, is its lost mojo. There’s plenty of good ingredients, plenty of challenges too. It can still go either way. Hell, at this rate it might outperform simply because US and China blow up due to domestic problems.
The thing about mojo is that it’s super hard to predict. It might stay where it is and Europe’s share of global GDP might decline to nothing. Or it might rekindle out of nowhere due to some impulse.
Either way, middle democracies are a somewhat threatened species now, and from their individual PoV an imperfect union might be much better than efficiently staying on their own.
Europe's biggest problem is that every decision can be vetoed by one of the member states. Which in practice means that the EU has very little power.
No, not every decision made in Europe can be vetoed by any EU member state. Only EU decisions can be vetoed by EU member states.
This was implicit :(
Not really! People think everything is about the EU, but that's like an American thinking everything is a UN decision.
It’s effectively the same as what I mean - or a part of it. You fix this with either better "alignment” (ugh!) ie conviction of going in a particular direction, leading to a consensus. Or in turn, a conviction that the veto is bad and needs to be curbed for the overall benefit of everyone.
There are deeper structural problems when you look at the incentives inherent to government driven society.
While I do appreciate and even support the idea that the immense wealth available on planet earth should be more evenly distributed, and people should mostly be focused on raising families, deepening their philosophy, and perfecting their craft... (some societies in Europe are pretty laid back in terms of hyper-productivity culture)
Regulation is possible without paralyzing industry. Laws about the internet are possible without stifling freedom. Central planning is possible without crashing the economy so bad you end up with a regime change. It all comes down to execution and for the most part, it's been a series of failed experiments.
As much as I want a happy future for Canadians and Europeans, I just don't see the odds being super favourable.
Dunno. My impression is that with the EU, we pick its suboptimal parts and compare them to what they could be with optimal execution.
We don’t look either at the successful parts, not at the world where it is wholesale gone. My gut feeling is that EU members are, on the whole, much better off for being in than out. One natural experiment is the UK - opinions differ, but the drastic accumulation of problems coincides with Brexit timings.
I’m all for improving the EU! And for sure there are bad bits. But when your car AC is doing badly, you don’t write off the car. You try to fix the AC…
The EU shouldn't become the US. EU countries are sovereign, with the practical right to completely ignore what the EU tells them to do, and this is a good thing for now. If an EU country legalizes weed, federal troopers do not march in, arrest all the weed dispensary owners and march them to federal prison because those things don't exist.
Ok but you have to accept that means an EU country works with a hand tied behind its back.
In the US I can start a company and instantly have a market of 350M. Start a company in an EU country, then try to expand to another country, it’s a nightmare. That company will have a lower upper bound on market size.
The EU might be a success in coordinating on regional issues, but I don’t think it’s yet an asset to the European economy.
Do you propose forcing 27 groups of people to become 1 group just so it's easier to sell them things?
Culture in Europe is more on sustainable business rather than hypergrowth, but you can expand to other countries too. You just have to have a business strategy catering to all the groups you want to cater to.
I think it's good the supermarket chains in France and in Germany are mostly disjoint sets, it keeps competition around. Pan-EU Supermarket Inc would be bad.
I’m just telling you the tradeoffs you’ve chosen. You can’t be an economic superpower in the current regime.
Without your own “hypergrowth” you’ll always be dominated by the hypergrowth of competitors like the US and China. You’ll be in orbit of other powers instead of creating your own gravity.
Where am I wrong?
To pivot a bit from the point above: I'm not sold on the core premise of the need for "hypergrowth." I think the American economy has been an incredible engine for productivity and I mostly agree that there's a lot of things that get in the way of the same in the EU and other countries. But I look around the U.S. and wonder what exactly the goal is if it's not actually giving everyone safer, more comfortable lives.
I don't think they are bad tradeoffs. I think there are problems that need to be fixed, and plenty of room for improvement, but the core principles are fine.
Do you know what else focuses on hypergrowth, in biology?
You guys are clueless. Just because you don't understand the org and why it isn't exactly like the US doesn't make your vague misplaced opinions valid.
What alternative is there? The Americans are not an option anymore. It seems sensible to me that we want to get very close to one major power, and more close to everything else. Diversification.
But also: > The European Union has a nominal GDP of roughly $20 trillion, placing it closely on par with or slightly ahead of China ($19 trillion), but smaller than the United States ($30–$31 trillion)
I don't know about you but the same GDP as China sounds economically successful... or not?
It is and it isn't. Around 15-20 years ago, the EU economy was actually bigger than the US economy in total terms (not per capita). The issue is that the EU has stagnated, as has canada while the USA has been pulling away. Growth has been pretty terrible for both for a long time.
From Blackberry to a budding VFX industry and many other sustainable businesses to come out of Canada has always made it seem like a very EU-like philosophy. This will be great for fair trade.
Blackberry is a sustainable business?
Blackberry might not be, but RIM are still around, QNX is still in use.
From Glenn Gould to Wayne Gretzky, from ATI to AdLib and Matrox we've always loved Canadian "exports" here in the EU. Let's work together!
You might want to look into Gretzky's political beliefs before "importing" him.
From having worked extensively in it, the VFX industry, apart from being near to Hollywood in terms of time zone, is surely just a tax rebate competition. Which is actually very non-EU philosophy; member states cannot simply subsidise local industries from tax revenue - it is a single market, other members have to have equal access to your market as your local companies.
Of course there's plenty of ways around it. In the case of film production, if the script calls for the characters to be in a specific location - then it's now a cultural asset that the government can fund with rebates. The person writing the script is of course aware of this and the incentives available.
No idea what this actually means, if it means easier trade, I'm all for anything that reduces our dependency on the yanks, as long as we don't need to be involved in their regulatory or legal regimes. The Americans are no longer our friends, Salut, mes amis Européens. :)
EU has such a bad name in these circles. As a EU citizen, I cherish these same regimes.
Yeah, I'm curious about which ones are a problem. I could see there being some incompatibility, and the details are more interesting than sweeping statements.
Some regulations would have to be normalized and agreed upon between the countries for trade open up. Can't have different quality standards and ways of evaluating and declaring them.
PPWR is an obvious one. Its such a dysfunctional law that they actually told people to ignore it.
Programmers keep thinking law is if/then, it's not, it's a set of instructions to judges, which may contain obvious errors or conflict with other instructions, which is why we allow humans to interpret them instead of computers.
Welcome to Canada where the regulations are in fact provincial.
Canadian provinces have a harder time trading with each other than countries in the EU, although thanks to the sales tax and package transit changes the EU is becoming competitive in this area.
Provincial trade barriers basically only exist in two areas: liquor and labor licensing.
One I have actually dealt with was VATMOSS. Especially when first introduced it had very low ceilings for registration and actually deterred small businesses from trading across borders.
I also think GDPR is too strict for small businesses and non-profits and not strict enough to deal with big businesses that trade data.
Having health with VATMOSS too my experience is that it was trivial to implement. Maybe your country fucked up the rollout? Here in Sweden I had zero issues.
Its not the country, its the implementation cost for small businesses. In particular the ceiling for registration was so low that even micro-businesses with minimal cross border sales had to comply.
Its would have been trivial for a big business, but it was not for small businesses.
Maybe just calibrated poorly. Small enough and IMO the only important rule is no sharing with others. That should always be strictly enforced. But why worry about how some small timer handles my personal data or if I can make various requests of him? The stakes are too small to matter.
...Those cookie banner things for a start!! heh. ;)
Mostly just wouldn't really work because Ottawa would have to somehow represent the provinces to the EU and the provinces and Ottawa don't work together in a way that would be compatible, I don't think anyone in Canada would want to change how Ottawa works with them. We may also end up in the same position again as we have with the Americans, nobody but us likes our supply management system[1]. GDPR is also something I think Canadians would struggle to get behind, our PIPEDA framework is quite good and I think most folks approve of it (except Quebec, who have their own framework). Taking the Euro would be a problem, etc etc, I think I could probably build quite a big list. btw, I respect the EU regulation, and that Europeans quite like it, I was just saying I don't think it would be practical for us to re-work the whole country to accommodate them, that's all.
[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dairy_and_poultry_supply_manag...
You're on a tech-focused Silicon Valley based news forum. Most people here think if you're not carte blanche allowing your Ai companies unfettered hyperscale economy-threatening death spiral infrastructure investments for a nebulous end goal that benefits a small minority with undertones of civilizational collapse and mass unemployment then you're a over-regulatory nanny-state that is crushing innovation.
Yup. Oh no, my meat isn't pumped full of hormones and vacuums aren't allowed to be hearing-damagingly loud. The horror..
Also re: OP, yes if you want to sell stuff in the EU, you will need to adhere to the same rules as EU companies.
I have such fatigue from listening to the rhetoric and whining from US farmers when enough of their goods are dangerous for consumers and illegal in Canada and the EU.
It's all bad faith from the US trying to run over any market they don't control so they can weaponize control over food supply of another nation later.
I don't mind countries setting their own rules for the food they want to consume, and for sure the EU can be overly bureaucratic.
On the other hand, the US is the only country I've been to where I have purchased milk in a completely sealed plastic container, and it was rancid when I opened it. Upstate New York is proud of their local and organic produce, but they are selling rancid milk in stores like that's a normal thing. That was a shock as a visiting Australian.
I've lived in the U.S. for 40 years in 8 different states and twice as many cities. Never once have I experienced this.
Oh no, my Haribos aren't full of artificial colours.
I remember a delightful trip to Canada, where I ordered a hamburger, and they'd only let me have it well-done. I asked why, and the waitress says "The beef comes from the US", with a grimace...
How dare the EU try to preserve competitive open markets. We can’t have capitalism in the leveragist serfdom economy!
As a Swede I have a bunch of grievances with the EU but when I look at the US I can't help but feel how lucky I am to live on this side of the pond.
I am British, pro-Brexit, and still prefer France to the US as a neighbour. I would have always said that - its not just Trump.
Exactly. The EU has plenty of faults, but I don't see anything better. Improving on the EU is better than abandoning it.
Keep in mind, social media and western online dialogue is extremely US centric. If every country was a house, the US is where everyone meets to party. So every spec of dust spawns endless content for everyone to dig into. Nevermind that people who have the most time to spend on social media, dictate the narratives that are popular.
The reality is that the US better if you have money (like white collar salary man level) and (much) worse if you are an odds-and-ends gig economy type worker (like an influencer).
From the vantage point of a ~75% income bracket home, moving to Europe is almost purely downsides (conventionally, some people give up everything for their dream to live in a cold dank cave), whereas being in a <50% income bracket home, Europe seems like a utopia.
The only reason the trade is easy in EU (and with it non-EU partners) is these regulations. Countries that choose to stay outside but wanted access to our market (like Norway, Switzerland, etc.) - had to accept the regulations. So I highly doubt you'll get your wish.
Carney was asking for freedom of movement of goods, people and services, but without full monetary and legislative integration.
So, easier to sell stuff, easier to buy stuff, free to just travel to/from Canada/EU and work there with no extra paperwork, free to buy and sell service from Canada to EU and vice versa.
No Euro, no vote in EU, no ECJ, no payments into each others budget.
Tighter integration than UK, not as tight as Norway/Switzerland/Iceland.
Common defense was already agreed anyhow.
I can tell you this enjoys broad support in the EU public. Although, no joke, a lot of peoples first reaction is: "They need to compete in Eurovision first. Otherwise they should wait for Australia to join first."
Canada will be competing in Eurovision 2027 in May. :)
Also, being a European Broadcasting Union (EBU) "Associate Member" is the name for the mechanism that allowed Australia, Canada and other countries to be admitted into Eurovision.
If you've been around the ESC scene, you know there's a lot of embassy involvement (parties in embassies are a thing), the scene is catnip for those interested in politics, the politically active, and to some extent politicians. Eurovision is also one mechanism for discussions of economic development. Hosting the contest is usually an excuse for upgrades to public infrastructure.
And there's Eurovision Asia starting in November. South Korea is an Associate Member of the EBU, for example.
https://www.ebu.ch/news/2026/03/bangkok-to-host-first-ever-e...
This is a euphemism on par with attending parties in parts of the SFO AI community.
Having been around both, the ESC isn't nearly as drug-fueled as the other, for better or worse.
Only if you don't count alcohol
Ahh, that one time the Belarussian delegation tried importing so much alcohol into [host country] to give away for free to everyone at the artist party, that it was all seized at the [host country] border and caused a minor diplomatic incident. The free chocolate branded with the artist's face made it in though. Fun times.
And that wasn't the year that Belarus sent "I Love Belarus" as their Eurovision song.
lol, this took longer to land with me than it should have, being the token "not in the target demographic" guy. And now I know more than I wanted to know about the AI scene ;)
_Terrible_ naming.
You'd think so, and I intuitively agree.
But the concept has floated around for over a decade under several different project names - Asiavision, Our Sound, ABU Song Contest. Somehow "Eurovision Asia" is the one that got countries to sign on and participate. There's a stronger political statement in Asian countries participating in "Eurovision" than in "Our Sound". It surprises me, but 2026 has brought a lot of global cultural & political shifts.
The American version was "The American Song Contest", hosted by Snoop Dogg & Kelly Clarkson, with US states competing against each other. Most Americans don't even know it ever happened.
Russia has its own rival "Intervision Song Contest", which the US participates in. Something something global cultural shifts.
Freedom of movement with the EU and no border with the USA hm....
Does Canada's agricultural output follow EU's (quite strict) norms? Not sure if this falls under "legislative integration" but I'd say that it would be quite important to have settled. The same goes when it comes to Canada's work-related laws.
Which output specifically? To take one example, the Dijon mustard coming out of France is mostly from Canadian mustard seeds:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dijon_mustard#2022_shortage_in...
I want to know the person who grows the celery seeds.
I bought a box 37 years ago, a tiny little box, and I've been using it to season soups, almost weekly that whole time.
There can't be more than one guy that grows those seeds, for the entire planet! So my questions are, first who is this guy, and second is the in the EU?
Also, has anybody else noticed this?
And if you think buying his celery seed farm, don't. It's a very limiting market.
It's not an insurmountable problem if they don't have compatibility on standards
It'll just take time to reach an agreement both sides can accept and it's in some ways simpler than something like the EU-Mercosur agreement since one "side" is a unified country rather that been two trading bloc's negotiating.
It's fascinating watching the world re-align so quickly (by diplomatic/negotiation standards).
EU signed a free trade agreement with Canada but its never been ratified
It might not be as strict anymore, as the EU-Mercosur Agreement seemingly ended up relaxing a bit on the strict norms and regulations. Many farmers were/are protesting this agreement exactly because the farmers in South America would compete against local farmers who are more strictly regulated.
So, seems we're a bit flexible on that front, when push comes to shove :)
In the past years it has become pretty clear that even the mainstream right wingers/neoliberals of the EU (ie. the EPP) appear to be ready and willing to drop or loosen all kinds of annoying ethical, environmental, and consumer protection regulations at a moment's notice if it helps large corporations (often US, not even EU) make more money.
"Single market (but food treated specially)" wouldn't be unprecedented; Switzerland was basically like this for a long time.
Working Time Directive may be more of a sticking point, though Canada doesn't seem _that_ far away from aligned with it anyway (big difference would be on paid time off, where Canada's way under the minimum).
He asked for phase 1. It would be foolish not to expect phase 2
Being an Associate Country (or Associate State) doesn't guarantee visa-free travel (ask how we know), yet I'm sure that Canadians will get it served on a silver platter.
This version of EU integration is more popular than EU itself in significant part of EU right now.
This was one of the stupid things that was touted as a benefit of not being in the EU during brexit.
That we'd still have to comply with EU rules if we wanted to trade with them, but we wouldn't have any vote in those rules
Well, the Brexit campaign was manipulated by a state actor (or rather: 'a criminal actor disguised as a state'). None of the alt-right nationalism is in the long-term benefits of the country. This is globalism, the end game. You either team up, thereby reducing your costs, or you get swallowed. Ask Ukraine, Tibet, Hong Kong how it worked out for them not belonging to a bigger team. So divide and conquer is a logical move for the opponent, and it happens to align with alt-right. There is also documented evidence of external influence in these. A medium such as Follow The Money has documented such in various of their articles.
The whole political course of Ukraine in the last ~20 years is mostly about teaming up with EU and NATO, isn't it?
... No. Not until this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolution_of_Dignity
Yanukovych was elected in 2010 promising "economic modernisation, greater economic ties with the EU, and military non-alignment." (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viktor_Yanukovych). His backsliding on those promises is what caused the Revolution of Dignity. I think the OP's statement is roughly accurate.
Not, on the NATO front at least, the part between NATO bending to Russian demands not to extend Membership Action Plans to Ukraine and Georgia in 2008 (followed immediately by the Russian invasion of Georgia)—when Ukraine abandoned pursuit of NATO membership—and the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2014, only after which did it resume pursuit of NATO membership.
The resumption is sometimes tied to the Revolution of Dignity preceding the Russian invasion, and even occasionally claimed to be a reason for the invasion, but the decision to abandon the neutrality position was well after and a response to the invasion rather than the other way around.
How is this different from the EEA (Norway/Switzerland/Iceland)?
EEA you have to follow rules but get no say in said rules.
To "join" the EEA both sides/parties of it has to agree, so yes, members do have a say, it's beneficial (and should be) to both parties of the agreements.
Will Canada have to follow the rules? Will Canada have a say in the rules?
Follow, yes. Say, very little.
Reductive to the point of untruth
Like me when I sign up for Hacker News or Twitter.
For one this seems related to EU the umbrella organization, not Europe the continent, while I suppose the European Economic Area might be geographically limited to Europe the continent. Maybe something like the European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP) might be more applicative here.
Jurisdiction of ECJ and boring normative stuff like languages on packing.
Not going to happen!
To enable free movement of goods and services the EU insists that the goods and services are produced in an identical regulatory environment.
Even when the regimes are basically identical - eg the UK - then the EU doesn't permit it without budgetary contributions.
It's actually going to raise questions as to why the EU are A-OK with this now when a possible interpretation of associate membership is it's what Cameron was trying to negotiate the UK into when complete inflexibility on the EU side triggered the Brexit referendum.
All depends on what an associate member is of course.
That's a bit of a stretch
It's literally what happened.
Cameron was trying to reduce the scope of EU integration with the UK (esp freedom of movement), with the threat he didn't want to use of a referendum, the EU said no (as the other commenter explained partly to disincentivize others, but also because they thought he was bluffing and people would never vote to leave), so the referendum was held.
To be fair, freedom of movement is one of the core principles[1] of the EU.
Restricting that is a tall ask, I wouldn't describe refusing that as being inflexible.
[1]: https://european-union.europa.eu/principles-countries-histor... "Freedom of movement gives citizens the right to move and reside freely within the Union."
I kind of made a point like this in the other thread - during Brexit it was a very hard No from the EU that they couldn’t negotiate on key points such as freedom of movement, and countries are either IN and have everything the EU comes with, or they’re out. Now, it seems, that Canada is being offered a favourable half-in arrangement simply because they’ve never before been involved. Seems pretty bizarre and arbitrary for the EU, but also totally standard for the EU because it’s bizarre and arbitrary.
This potential deal for Canada comes with compromises which would obviously be unacceptable to the UK (e.g. no full voting rights).
The crucial distinction is which half is in which “half-in” agreement.
They are not offering Canada conditions that the UK would have wanted.
Not sure why its so difficult for you to understand the obvious goal of taking a hardline stance on leaving the EU as a member state vs onboarding possible partnerships, members, etc. You're looking at this backwards.
Cameron wanted to split the four freedoms. Canada does not, from what I can read.
That's wrong, he did get what he wanted before the referendum: "After the deal had been approved, Cameron described it as giving the United Kingdom "special status within the European Union" and immediately declared that both he and the UK Government would campaign for a "Remain" vote in the referendum within a "reformed European Union"." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2015%E2%80%932016_United_Kingd...
I think that the EU would be in worse shape today if the UK had followed most other members at the time and restricted freedom of movement to it for the countries that joined in 2004 and 2007. It would have been nice to have got some credit for that.
The UK already enjoyed a large amount of unique concessions as a full member. The rest of the EU was right not to give in. Also, game theoretically it's of course more important to not make leaving (or threatening to leave) the union seem too lucrative. No such problem in negotiating tighter integration with nonmembers (and in retrospect, many of the old WP countries should've joined as something like associate members at first…)
This is the other part: if associate membership is a thing then won't half of the EU start thinking that's their future?
Because you simply wouldn't be offered the option of just deescalating your full membership to an associate membership. If you want to leave, you leave fully, and then in time we can discuss what happens next. Also, obviously an associate membership shouldn't feel more desirable than full integration if you're eligible to both. Indeed from the UK's perspective it would be exactly the opposite to what they wanted: free labor and movement but no representation.
This makes being involved as little as possible but no more far more attractive than being bound too tightly together though.
Almost like many of the EU states were misled into their current situations.
There is always the debate around "Europe of two speeds" - where there is a deeply integrated core of nations, maybe even going towards "United States of Europe" and the others tightly associated, but not fully integrated.
Of course the set of countries and level of integration depends on whom you ask
It would be towards “The United States of Germany”, not Europe.
Maybe, and that might actually be okay from the EC’s pov. There’s a fairly old proposal for a ‘two speed EU’; a core that accelerates towards near-federalism with a more eurosceptic periphery.
Right. The oddity now is the euroscepticism is rooted in the countries previously considered the core.
I am of the view the UK should never have joined as a full member, and it would have been better to establish the two speed membership way back then, allowing France and Germany particularly to engage in further integration without mutual interference involving the UK.
Presumably by "half of the EU" you mean (sometimes) euro-sceptic states like Hungary or Poland? Well, these are not in EU because some illuminati/lizard people tricked them into joining and now won't allow them to leave, like some of their politicians would like you to believe, but because they enjoy billions of subsidies per year.
There is a strong case that much of the eastern bloc were tricked into joining, by the UK, in order to weaken the Franco-German efforts for ever closer union.
This was even a joke in the UK at the time. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZVYqB0uTKlE
I would like to make a slight correction: the hungarian public opinion was never, ever euro-sceptic. This was one of the major reason the previous government was voted out, because they didn't reflect the will of the people. Opinion polls regularly poll 70-80% of EU approval despite being decade-long propaganda trying to change peoples' minds, making Hungary de facto one of the most pro-EU countries in EU.
I don’t think Cameron did much serious negotiation on this front. He resigned the evening of the referendum results.
It was a deliberate choice by his successors to pursue a hard Brexit. A softer Brexit was always possible and likely would have been more acceptable to the EU, as it would have had less financial impact and disruption to trade.
That's what happened afterwards.
The referendum was triggered by a failed negotiation between Cameron and the EU in the first place.
The referendum was triggered by him making a bad political calculation that he would win it and could squash the aisle of his party that was pushing his idea. This was never truly due to a failed negotiation. The hardliners in his party wanted entirely out either way.
You've got it wrong: "After the deal had been approved, Cameron described it as giving the United Kingdom "special status within the European Union" and immediately declared that both he and the UK Government would campaign for a "Remain" vote in the referendum within a "reformed European Union"." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2015%E2%80%932016_United_Kingd...
There's no planet on which Cameron's visit that time was regarded by anyone on any side as anything other than a failure. Cameron was simply putting a face on it.
It has pissed off the EU (understandably), pissed off his own supporters, and pissed off his enemies.
This is was about immigration. I don’t understand why people are still in denial about this. I am pretty sure it would have happened anyway regardless of what economic concessions UK would have got. It’s worth to note that the immigration is still an issue in the UK and the EU and I think more EU members will leave because of this.
Exactly. And, let's face it, democracy. Either the people in the UK wanted freedom of movement or they didn't, and they voted on that basis.
People don't exactly feel they agreed to the Boriswave either, and now when I am back visiting the UK it's noticeably the most racist it's ever been, by a very significant distance.
I'm in Canada now and Canada has the same dynamics going on.
I think this is what will kill it in Canada too. There’s maybe only a million Canadian citizens who would be interested in the idea of freedom of movement to Europe. There’s probably 10-20 million Canadian citizens who would be a hard “absolutely no way” to opening their borders to 250 million random Europeans in return.
The referendum was entirely the UK's choice and had nothing to do with the EU. It offered more concessions than the UK deserved (having already held numerous opt-outs) and they still called the vote.
One of the effects of Brexit is that EU popular solidarity has noticeably improved while the UK has gone in the opposite direction. That says a lot about Brexit.
The UK wanted to maintain its veto over all EU matters (cake and eat it too).
I mean, not really, since the UK was trying to renegotiate an existing deal (which they profited from for decades) towards a deal that would favor the UK more than the EU and would trigger an entire blow-back of other member-states wanting to renegotiate on their EU responsibilities without losing the advantages that this deal brought, whereas the deal with Canada is a new deal where the EU gains better trading and less dependence on the US and Canada gains better trading and more security if their next door neighbor falls apart even further.
The UK renegotiation was a net loss for the EU, this Canada deal is a deal where both parties gain something.
Also, the Brexit referendum was a campaign promise of David Cameron that was going to trigger if his conservative party won the 2015 general election. Sure, the relationship between EU and UK had strained over the years, but trying to pin this on the inflexibility of the EU feels a bit misdirected.
That is iff the renegotiations with Brussels failed, which they did.
V. hard to see what Canada gets out of it. All the roadblocks to Canadian trade with the EU today (especially around resources) are internal to Canada and have nothing at all to do with EU status.
Presumably under the proposed thing Canada would largely adopt EU regulations. This would make trade (particularly for small businesses) _far_ easier. See the UK for how difficult this can become if you're not in alignment; it's survivable for huge companies (though even some of them had trouble; for instance Marks and Spencers' stores in Ireland literally went empty for a while because they were insufficiently prepared), but if you're a small business importing a bunch of components from Europe and making a thing which is largely sold to Europe, there's a _massive_ difference in bureaucratic overhead between being in and out.
Even many Norwegian SMEs don't see direct sales to Europe as worth the overhead, and Norway's in the EEA, as close to the EU as you can get without actually being in it.
Canadian provinces do not agree with each other about trade regulations. They will not surrender this to the federal government, and they certainly won't to the EU.
Canada isn't actually a single market itself.
No. The Conservative party promised an EU membership referendum by 2017 in its 2015 manifesto. That was not conditional on a failure of renegotiations. Nor, indeed, did David Cameron even concede that the renegotiations had failed, so that can’t possibly have been his stated reason for calling the referendum.
You can check the summary of the manifesto at https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/election-2015-32302062, or page 30 (printed page number) of the original document at https://www.barnetconservatives.co.uk/sites/www.barnetconser....
Another clear indicator can be found in this article: https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/jan/10/david-camer.... Here, Cameron is directly quoted as saying:
So you can see that there was never any suggestion that the referendum would be called or not called depending on the outcome of the renegotiations.
I missed the part where the UK was willing to give up all veto and voting rights and still have freedom of movement.
Both of which Canada is ok with.
I am in Canada. There's no evidence Canada is OK with those things.
Fair enough.
It’s what the newspapers report:
https://www.wsj.com/world/europe/canada-alliance-eu-carney-2...
It's not actually reporting on the substance in any meaningful detail, and no one is, for the relatively simple reason that once it happens every special interest group in Canada will find something to go nuts about.
Do you have any sources that aren’t right wing publications from a country whose right wing is actively working against Canada and the E.U.?
US publications as a whole, and especially those on the right consistently miss the mark on Canadian coverage.
A majority of Canadians haven’t decided this in an election, and I doubt that 20 million of them would be on board with it.
The elected representatives can decide? I mean their Parliament.
It sounds constitutional, and if you want to make a Canadian exasperated ask about the history of the Canadian constitution.
Hint: it's still not been signed by all the relevant parties.
Why is the EU obligated to treat every country the same way? Canada presents different economic opportunities and challenges than the UK. Or, if you want to say it was due to politics, who was bashing who?
The explanation is easy: Canada is not on the European continent. The EU can only extend full membership to countries on the continent, so Canada needs a special arrangement. And because there's a whole ocean serving as a reason for this special treatment, it's easy to argue that it won't extend to countries who can become full members.
There's actually no continental definition in the EU constitution but yes probably in practice this is correct in terms of perception
The UK wanted it the opposite way. They wanted full access to the EU market but forbid the movement of people because they wanted to get rid of the Poles. The EU would never agree to that and rightly so.
Cameron did get what he wanted before the referendum: "After the deal had been approved, Cameron described it as giving the United Kingdom "special status within the European Union" and immediately declared that both he and the UK Government would campaign for a "Remain" vote in the referendum within a "reformed European Union"." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2015%E2%80%932016_United_Kingd...
That is a rather fantastical and revisionist version of why the Brexit referendum was called - which had more to do with a misguided attempt to put the crazy wing of the Conservative Party to bed rather than anything to do with the EU, where the UK had the best deal imaginable already.
Nevertheless when put to British voters 50% of them decided that best possible deal still wasn’t in their interests. And that 50% who voted No was more people than even voted in the EU elections (to elect MEPs) before that. So the EU was very much fine with their democratic process seeming like an irrelevance, while at the same time the Brexit vote was actually an example of a democratic process working as it should. One can argue about craziness or otherwise, but there were at least 17 million crazies at the time and if there was a referendum to rejoin the EU would likely be a different 17 million crazies voting No again.
"Negotiate" ... is that what you call it?
David Cameron (and team) were the most inept bunch of wankers this country has had the misfortune of being represented by in living memory (in terms of medium/long-term real impact).
We had better terms than anyone in the EU and we still fucked it up.
You are assigning too much responsibility to the EU here and none to the other actors responsible for Brexit. It borders on propaganda, but I do not want to assume ill intent.
And Cameron, didnt he say he would guide UK no matter the result and then resigned when Brexit won?
Brexit was obviously going to happen a good decade before the referendum, the tension was so blatant. This idea people were conned into voting leave is just utter nonsense - they'd been chomping at the bit for the opportunity for years.
Now the UK has managed to ramp up the tension dramatically, but without some easy foreign political bogeyman to blame. It's not going to end well either, but it's not clear exactly what the endgame is. This is why the Greens, Reform and Restore are suddenly things.
A) Would never happen.
B) If it did happen, the US would just say “give us the same deal or you get cut off” and Europe would capitulate immediately.
Cut the EU off from ... what?
Technlogy? That would likely result in a US market crash the likes of which has never been seen before. Look at what percentage of the stock market is the magnificent 7. Now imagine what would happen to that if US tech giants were no longer allowed to sell their products/services in the EU. The market is fragile as it is with the AI bubble going on.
Trade? That cuts both ways, and the US economy and cost-of-living crisis doesn't give them lots of wriggle room.
Products? China will be all to happy to step into whatever market is thus competition-free, not to mention the impact this would have on US businesses.
Doesn't seem to be true anymore, at least in every case. See the EU-Mercosur agreement for one recent exception to this, the goods we're now importing from South America don't have the same regulatory environment by far, to many of our local farmers.
EU - Mercosur is not free movement of goods and services.
EU-Mercosur products need to comply with the EU's food safety standards (SPS1)
Canada already has a free trade deal along the lines of the EU-Mercosur one; free movement of goods and services implies a _lot_ more than that.
A lot of this is about resource access, and that can't be magically conjured. You can have all the industry and business you want to put on paper, but this is a tangible concern for Europe where they require these things from a stable and trusted nation with a similar regulatory and political environment.
This trade matter is likely going to require a new type of agreement that has some special privileges not extended in any other case for both parties.
Depends what they mean by ‘full’, really. I expect the EC would be happy enough to let them opt out of the euro, say. But maybe not the working time directive.
There are many EU countries not having, some not even planning, to adopt the Euro. So I cannot imagine this being an important discussion topic.
I'm curious how an integration into Schengen Area could actually work... Or does it just mean no passport controls?
Also, to be able to sell stuff, you gotta comply with the CE rules one way or another, there is no free card here.
About competition in Eurovision: absolutely, would love for them to participate, even if just as guest state :D
LMAO just googled it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canada_in_the_Eurovision_Song_...
I think free movement of people doesn’t imply Schengen Zone style borders - I thought this was mostly an economic lever that people can move and work in another country by default, not a human right where a country cannot exclude chosen people (known criminals, etc) and track all crossings. I think of it as another country giving me a visa is opt-out for that country, not opt-in.
The CE rules are relatively sane and followed commonly right? At least I see a lot of CE-stamped goods in Australia… so I always assumed that was the case.
All that Schengen does is dismantle border checkpoints. As a German, I can freely move to any EU country for any purpose - transit, tourism and work - no matter if, say, I were a convict or whatever.
There are expulsions and entry bans even under Schengen, but these are incredibly rare things to happen as the freedom of movement is considered to be a cornerstone of EU values.
CE is a tool against protectionism. If a thing is CE stamped, you must allow it to be sold (if you're a member).
Yep; Ireland, say, has free movement, but is not in Schengen (the border with NI would make it virtually impossible).
Not all of the EU is in schengen, but we do have freedom of movement. Ireland for example is not in Schengen and never will be because of our travel arrangements with the UK.
Yes but there's a big difference between "only import electronics that aren't fire hazards" and "you have to pay custom & excise on anything you import".
more than a half dozen Canadians have already competed in Eurovision, including one winner (Céline Dion). has Australia ever won?
Australia has managed a 2nd and a 4th from 11 entrants. Our voting participation is quite low though, as the voting windows are usually at awkward AEST times and the main Australian broadcast of the contest is delayed until our primetime.
You can't vote for your own country so Australian bedtime is irrelevant.
AFAIK Charles III is the monarch both for UK and Canada.
Doesn't this mean that Canada is, in a certain degree, dependent of UK?
No, he’s just the monarch of two different countries simultaneously.
No. We have our own monarch who happens to be the same human is all
So it's like two kubernetes pods happen to run on the same node.
More like a bunch of CNAMES pointing to a single record, but in this case the CNAMEs all start with "charlesv3".
No. He is separately the monarch of the UK and Canada. You could just as well argue that the UK is dependent on Canada for that reason.
You could, but it might be difficult to hear yourself over the explosive laughter of everybody around you.
Which country would you say has a closer relationship with the King of England?
Which country would you say has a closer relationship with the King of Canada?
Let me introduce you to the Commonwealth of Nations
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commonwealth_of_Nations
These countries choose voluntarily to hold ties with the UK, and each other, and some accept the UK's monarch as nominal head of state, but don't be mistaken; they are all fully independent countries. Some are republics, some are kingdoms with their own monarch. They value each other's friendship, shared values and heritage, but they're not beholden to the UK or each other.
No - it means that Charles III is an independent monarch for two separate nations.
The monarchy is 99% ceremonial in Canada but it's important to note that the Canadian Crown isn't the UK Crown... Canada is not a dependent of the UK in anyway, simply the person that wears the Crowns is the same person.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monarchy_of_Canada
I guess if going in the UK gets tough the royals could move somewhere else to reign. Sigismund was king of Sweden and Poland, though he couldn't maintain both. Maybe we'd need some drama with usurpers and uncles and so on to keep the populace entertained. Without the civil war part...
Oh, Canada wouldn't actually welcome a local monarch. Ceremonial across a sea... sure, why not. A King moving to our shores, nope.
It's not just theoretical -- IIUC, if Charles, William and George get hit by the same bus, Charlotte would become Queen of the UK while Louis would become King of Canada.
I'm sure that in that scenario Canada would quickly update their primogeniture laws to give Charlotte primacy over her younger brother, but at the moment the primogeniture laws of the two countries are different.
No, all the Commonwealth countries changed their succession laws at the same time precisely to avoid this scenario.
You're right. I thought Canada only agreed to do so, but didn't follow through. I was wrong.
The monarchy is essentially ceremonial in the UK too - the position gives the monarch a platform for advocating for inoffensive things like the environment, and the pomp of state visits is perhaps sometimes useful, but the monarch really has no wield-able political power despite technically being the boss and inviting the winner of elections to run the country.
As an ex-Brit I was always pro-monarchy, enjoying the pageantry and historical continuity, although the current crop of royals don't have much going for them. Perhaps William will turn out OK.
No, it’s like Elon. He happens to be CEO of multiple companies but they are separate and independent companies (for now).
It has to be like Norway/Switzerland/Iceland or more to get any free movements of goods and services. Level of access goes hand in hand with integration in term of regulation, etc.
"Associate member" actually sounds like TIGHTER integration than Norway/Switzerland/Iceland, which are not members at all. Switzerland is not even in the EEA. It is a very bad term, actually as Canada cannot be an EU member (it isn't in Europe) and if they don't want or can't join the EEA then that leaves a Switzerland-like deal, which is purely bilateral.
“Canada cannot be an EU member (it isn't in Europe)”
I think the construct of geographical location should not be that big of an issue in these times. Plenty of EU countries have overseas properties.
It's the law and it should be very strictly enforced because otherwise it'd open the door for the Middle East and North Africa... But I don't think Canada would want to join the EU, it's anti-Trump bluster.
Canada does not want to join the E.U. as a full member and that is not what is being offered.
Canada very much is not “blustering” when it comes to Trump. A big majority of Canadians see sovereignty and less reliance on the US as a massive issue. Canada has embraced China in a way that was unthinkable 5 years ago in a deal intended to hedge against the US. The Canadian Conservative Party lost an election it was thought to have a guaranteed win from and has continued losing seats since then in large part due to their half hearted response to Trump.
I'll go back to my first comment above: What is an "associate member"? We don't know because it's a concept that does not exist but the very name suggests something stronger and tighter than anything that exists with non-members that have very close ties (Norway, Switzerland, Iceland).
Hence I think it is safe to say that this is a lot of bluster, or ar least hyperbole, considering what Canada and the EU might really want and the long and complicated treaty process to define and create an "associate member" status.
Middle eastern or North African countries can’t join because the member states don’t want them to join and they need unanimous agreement. See Turkeys failed bid for example. Even a country with positive general public appeal like Ukraine is very unlikely to join in the next 10 years
Yes, unanimous agreement is required once a country has applied, as part of the process of accepting the application.
However Article 49 of the European Union states: "Any European State which respects the values referred to in Article 2 and is committed to promoting them may apply to become a member of the Union".
So Middle Eastern and North African countries (and Canada) cannot apply in the first place.
I think Turkey is in the grey area that allows some wriggle room as it spans both Europe and Asia.
Turkey, only a tiny part of which is geographically in Europe, is a candidate (though talks are suspended in practice until, at least, Erdogan is out of power), and Cyprus is geographically in Asia/Middle East, not Europe. The rules could certainly be loosened further with agreement.
But also, yes, Canada probably does not want to be a full member, at least in the near-term; they want some sort of alignment not amounting to full membership. I wouldn't be totally amazed if we look back on this as the start of the (long-suggested) two speed EU system.
Eurovision being the primary point of contention between the US and the EU.
A possibility.
https://www.reuters.com/business/australia-on-same-page-cana...
I loved seeing "Le Vent du Nord" at Cambridge Folk Festival 2023, they'd probably make a decent Eurovision entry.
When several EU countries are already struggling with large Indian Subcontinent communities that don't integrate (and dodge taxes and food-processing regs--Indians where I am have their own large underground cash-only food economy among themselves), opening up flow of people from Canada's mobile classes which has seen vast demographic change seems like it would only exacerbate the problem.
Which countries are these? There's a large population of Indian immigrants in Ireland, who seem to be integrating fine and are not notably doing much tax dodging (they would largely work in high-skill PAYE jobs, where tax dodging is virtually impossible).
I am assuming you are somewhere in Europe and given your apparent dislike for Indians, let's look at an alternative narrative. As a Canadian of East Indian origin, I can tell you that if these individuals are Canadian citizens, they are very unlikely to leave Canada for Europe. If they are not Canadian citizens, the point is moot anyway. In fact, I would expect more European citizens of South Asian origin to move to Canada, where English is spoken, integration is generally easier and salaries are far higher. So, breathe easy.
Hey, Celine Dion won Eurovision already. We just need to get Switzerland to retroactively let her win stand for Canada :)
If it gets a free trade and freedom of movement system in place, I don't think anyone is going to object in Canada much. Unless they try to open up fisheries, which would get them a bunch of Maritime (and Quebec?) objections...
You only need 100 000 signatures to start a referendum...
Fisheries are obviously not going to happen. They didn't happen with Iceland, they are not going to happen with Canada either.
Easier to fly to Europe from our privatized airports! Sounds great!
The funny thing is that we got this, instead of tangible and needed deregulation within Canada. Another announcement, instead of actual shovels in the ground and making life better for Canadians.
The main negative of the EU is people can migrate through it to get to your country, like the UK's small boats crisis. Canada, being so far from the EU, doesn't have that unique disadvantage. Which is good news for Canada if this does end up working.
What actually _is_ the deal? Nobody in this thread seems to have any idea what the specifics are, which matters a lot. It sounds like we're still at the "very early talks" stage? Less integration than even Norway (EEA)?
This requires likely an alignment of trade and product standards, so could still be demanding legally to get over the line. But the foundations are similar.
Maybe Canada could just join EFTA, that would be easier.
So what about the CETA (trade agreement) between canada and europe that isn't ratified yet. This feels like a hollow announcement for politicians.
Sounds like it could be a solution for the UK as well, which begs the question: why wasn’t a similar proposal worked out with the uk?
The UK left and wasn't even able to make proper deals for exiting the EU, their own Brexit caught them by surprise and it was total chaos for a long time. They could now try to get closer integration with the EU but there doesn't seem to be much will for it in the UK.
Because the UK wanted out, not in. You can work out solutions only when you are looking to work out solutions.
What? First time I hear of this. Honestly, Eurovision doesn't really have anything to do with the EU. We all know the main sponsor is from a non-EU country whose participation is much more controversial than Canada anyway.
The main sponsor did not renew the sponsorship deal for next year, though.
I fully support eurovision-based enrollment tbh
Hopefully Canada can just get the economic benefits and not end up having to be subject to the insane stuff like Chat Control
https://stateofsurveillance.org/news/canada-bill-c22-lawful-...
And yet NordVPN and Signal both continue to work in Australia (I don't know who/what Windscribe are), so all other things aside, I suspect this is a hollow threat.
They have not asked yet or companies (Fastmail for example) just provide access and keep quiet.
https://cyberscoop.com/australia-encryption-backdoors-law-pa...
There are way more benefits to being in EU than disadvantages.
Just a few days ago, Iceland disagreed.
And that is the beauty of it, no one is forced.
Benefits are more visible from the inside, and if you don't like it you can brexit.
Unfortunately no one can be forced out also.
This is only part of the question though, the other question is is it actually good for the EU to continue growing and becoming more heterogenous indefinitely, which to me isn't at all clear.
You could make a good case that the EU is still trying to deal with issues from the 2004 expansion for example. Doesn't mean it was a bad idea, but it's not cost free
If a company wants to sell in the EU, they should comply with EU rules. The market and the regulations are closely linked, you won't get one without the other.
I hope it means we'll allow EU cars on our roads.
"Nations have no permanent friends or enemies, only permanent interests."
I am just hoping that I can finally get an EU-spec station wagon
It would be nice to have roam-like-at-home also.
I think Canada might have an opportunity to help Europe at least reason a bit about regulations.
For the most part I am thankful that the EU regulates things strictly. As long as I am the consumer of what is regulated and not the maker. Because while the regulation is well meaning, it is not always effective or efficient. And sometimes it achieves absolutely no positive results.
And yet, I am generally for regulating a lot of things.
For instance the cookie-popup-horseshit is failed regulation that came about mainly because regulators were squeamish about real solutions that would have required constant judgement calls. Instead of posing an existential risk to companies that run roughshod over our privacy, they created impotent regulation that is a dual failure: it protects exactly nobody and it wastes everyone's time multiple times over.
Companies that do bad things should face existential risks. It is the only mechanism that works. Fines only work for small players. For large players it is surprisingly often a calculation where the numbers dictate you DO bad things because the downside risk is mostly quantifiable and financially acceptable.
Yes, sanctioning companies guilty of egregious violations of privacy would have been noisy, but it would have been the right thing to do. And it would have been cheaper and more effective than what we have today.
A lot of replies confidently explaining ‘what this actually means’ in some detail despite the article saying things like:
CETA (free trade) already exists with the EU. What is happening here is mostly symbolism and diplomacy. And maybe it will lead to the last hold out EU member states fully ratifying CETA (French farmers famously difficult).
Many people (including Carney himself) are presenting this as a fundamental and recent pivot.
But the opening moves of this happened a long time ago. CETA was negotiated by Chrystia Freeland and the now-often-maligned Trudeau gov't.
(also Trudeau also had a honeymoon phase for the first two to three years of his term...)
It was initially an effort from the conservatives, not the liberals.
Canada has Coke and Pepsi flavours of gov't. The differences between the two parties comes down to stupid culture wars stuff and perhaps emphasis on which sectors should dominate the economy, but they don't fundamentally differ.
Carney just eviscerated all environmental laws and climate change initiatives -- which were already pathetically weak -- and cons back in my home province of Alberta are still apoplectic about how persecuted they are. It's all team sport theatre. Dangerously close to US style dysfunction.
Translation: I don't care if it was Harper or Trudeau who "initiated" CETA.
You're in for a rough awakening if you think the EU is your friend
I'm afraid you're mistaking our lunatic leader with "us". Understandable, but this step will be wholly unnecessary as soon as December when his power will be checked (largely). I lean right, more libertarian small government type, so you're not hearing this from a blowhard on the American left. His foreign policy, the way he's treated friends has been wanton and immensely damaging, and a whole lot of us want this corrected.
The majority of US voters like the guy. He represents the country, like it or not. Most of his voters still agree with all the stuff he's doing, and the opposition seems intent on sabotaging themselves as much as possible so he will likely win again this year.
The majority of US voters do not like the guy. 58.1% disapproval, 38.6% approval.
The votes consistently tell a different story.
Trump won the popular vote once, not consistently, against an understudy candidate who was pushed on stage at the last minute. Also, opinions have shifted since that time as people have noticed how unhinged Trump is.
Voting for someone and liking someone aren't synonyms. You claimed one thing, now you're saying something else.
In 2024, if the Dems just had a normal primary they would have won. But they consistently lied to people about what they were seeing with their own eyes (Biden's obvious lack of mental acuity), which people find really insulting, and then forced in a weak candidate.
To clarify, since this is the Internet and people make lots of assumptions: I voted against Trump three times, plus I voted against him in my state's open GOP primary, which he lost.
That's all copium. Harris was a perfectly average Democratic candidate and an improvement over Biden.
Yes, if they'd run Bernie they probably would've won, but there was zero chance the Democrat party would ever run a far-left presidential candidate - it goes against all their interests. It's like saying the Republicans should've run Chuck Schumer.
What do you mean by this?
I mean the Trump party will win in a landslide. Same reasons as last time. The opposition hasn't done anything to inspire more votes.
You're right, I am confused. It was clear what was going on under his first term... You guys voted him back in!!
The system elected him without a majority.
It was 49.9% vs 48.3%. The 1.8% of people voting for a 3rd party candidate and those who didn't vote were implicitly endorsing Trump.
That’s a weird way to say 50.1% of votes were against Trump.
As another of your, ah, problematic presidents once said:
Like, if the US had just elected ol' minihands once, that would be one thing. But it did it _twice_. Ultimately, even if he's comprehensively put back in his box, there is an issue of long-term trust.
At this point, Pandora's Box has been opened; it has been established that the US president can just act like a crazy dictator and... none of the mechanisms which are supposed to prevent that actually really function. Even if the US elects the most normal, sensible, rule-of-law-focused president imaginable in 2028, Canada will still have to look to 2032. I'm not sure that anything short of constitutional change would really restore trust, and the US is set up such that changing the constitution is virtually impossible.
Kinda like what Norway has, I'd imagine.
Eased travel and trade, but not full membership voting rights, etc. So basically, an extensive trade and economics agreement, with options to intensify relationships later on.
Good thing for both sides!
This is a sinking ship trying to lash unwitting tenders to it to try to keep it afloat while it rams an iceberg. Canada does not need that kind of trouble.
Seriously. Not to mention that Alberta is trending towards independence (still unlikely, I know).
Just want to chip in: I love you "yanks", not so much your politics and your imperialistic tendencies, but nearly all Americans I met were nothing but kind (coast to coast, left or right).
This is a nice vibe. Appreciate you.
Every "yank" I know is also pretty great. The problem is a political system that has entrenched an advantage for a party that would otherwise be consistently in the minority, reducing the ability of the center to moderate policy.
Canadians are right to be skeptical that the next presidency will be significantly better than the current one. A serious amount of goodwill has been burned and I think the average view up north is that it's time to build a very solid backup plan.
It doesn't even fix things if the next POTUS is the exact opposite. The world has been shown what we are capable of doing. Any four-year stretch could be governed by a joke hired to "own the libs".
Caligula's horse can't be elected solely because horses don't live past 35.
Am Yank; feel the same about our politics and imperialism.
I was surprised to learn that Canada doesn't even have free trade across their own provenances. A big benefit of the United States is that it's essentially a very large free trade zone across 50 states.
If Canada wanted to facilitate trade, I would imagine they would figure it out internally. So my guess is that this is just giving up some political autonomy for some unknown reason, maybe to stick it to the US?
The biggest trade barriers between Canadian provinces are labor licensing laws. The biggest trade barriers between American states are labor licensing laws.
The second biggest trade barriers between Canada provinces are liquor regulations. The second biggest trade barriers between American states are likely car emission laws.
Fairly comparable, IMO.
Not comparable at all. The US is one market unless you have a compelling reason to protect your state market. Canada is 10 separate markets with provincial agreements between them - all protecting themselves. Easiest example is Quebec.
I.e. Opt in vs Opt out but more complicated.
The US is the opt-in system where the States regulate everything not specifically allocated to the federation and Canada is the opt-out system where the federal government regulates everything not specifically allocated to the provinces.
Of course it's more complicated -- the US's inter-state commerce clause has been broadly interpreted by the courts.
The problem is the differences are asymmetric. Canadian labour mobility is a lot more impactful when the pool of skilled labour is just overall smaller.
Doctors can move pretty much freely between 44 American states. Doctors can't do that in Canada, and here we need more specific kinds of doctors in rural populations and there is absolutely no reason to not have a harmonized licensing regime.
We also have non-uniform regulation on stuff like the manufacture of construction goods (for example door sizing) which can cause a big drag in trade. This might be harder to fix but it exists and is not comparable to the US market.
The US also doesn't have free trade following the same criteria, labeling requirements differ by state, licensing regimes are different, the same kind of challenges that exist in Canada
Until you try shipping perfectly legal industrial hemp across the Idaho border. https://www.idahopress.com/news/local/hemp-truckers-strike-d...
*Provinces (and territories)
What is a provenance WRT Canada? :-) But it is true, our provinces have trade barriers internally that is an ongoing source of dispute. There has been movement since the USA started falling apart to remove them. The dumbest one was that hay bales had to be re-arranged on the AB/BC border.
We say as Europeans while interacting daily with USA engineers and other people here on HN - a site ran by Silicon Valley investors - while we usually talk about USA-made software. I personally do not hold every American accountable for the actions of their government.
I think this is speaking from the perspective of nations/governments rather than individual citizens.
For what it’s worth, as an American, I agree with them. The USA is proving to be unreliable, if not outright malicious, to our long term allies.
On day-to-day interactions with my coworkers, I had no problem working with Americans.
At the same time, a lot of them voted in favor of foreign policies that I very strongly disagree with.
Both can be true at the same time, and the former doesn't make me forget the latter. Especially when their president continues to voice threats against the sovereignty of my country.
Thanks - you are right and have the much more mature perspective. Many want to further drive a wedge between the US and Europe, presumably they live in Moscow and Beijing and Tehran.
Easier trade, past a certain point, basically requires regulatory alignment.
The current regime is due 2028. For most of their history Canada and USA had cordial relations. This looks like a reactionary measure rather than a long term strategic one. Europe is in decline and facing political irrelevance, not the type of partner you want to have particularly if your border neighbor is one of the two current global super powers. It’s yet to see if the UE’s economic reforms will pay off, even of they do, is still decades away, with no cheap energy and having to invest in their own defense. You don’t want to hang out with the losers. Put your emotions aside, be patient with the current US government and get ready for post 2028.
Canadians who expect America to suddenly be friendly towards Canada in 2028 are ignorant of history and reality.
Yeah speaking of history. Let’s pretend that the US and Canada have never been in conflict before. We literally went to war, had multiple territorial disputes, plans of invasions, tariffs and trade wars, not to mention all the disagreements in foreign policy including Vietnam, Cuba and Iraq. None of this has prevented the two countries to have one of the most peaceful and cooperative relationships between two sovereign nations in modern history.
Why would a new "regime" affect this?
Trust has been broken. The US has lost its shine and hard-earned reputation. Most of the trust was that a person like Trump would never have been elected in the first place.
Can't unelect Trump. The damage has been done, and is ongoing.
Nobody knows; it’s all up for negotiation.
FWIW, a (¿the?) previous time this term was floated, it involved (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potential_re-accession_of_the_...):
“Also in September 2023, France and Germany proposed a restructuring of the membership of the EU to allow the UK to rejoin as an associate member, rather than a full member. Associate membership would include membership of the European single market but not the EU customs union, in exchange for participation in the European Court of Justice and making contributions to the EU budget.”
I get that the trend is being accelerated with Donald Trump being an aggressive asshole for no reason, but Canadians pretending like they're anything but American is very weird.
Salut ! I wouldn't say the Americans are no longer our friends, but trust is definitely gone.
There are multiple levels of European integration [1]. Fun fact: Canada already borders the EU. There's an island called Saint Pierre and Miquelon, which is only ~12 miles from Newfoundland. These islands became a massive smuggling hub for alcohol during Prohibition.
Here are some guiding principles of EU integration:
1. To have a say in EU rules generally requires being a full member. To some extent you can negotiate your entry into whatever level you desire but this has to be mutual agreement and can be difficult to change later without essentially threatening to leave;
2. Conditions generally need to be reciprocal. If you want freedom of movement in the EU then you have freedom of movement from other European states. This was a real sticking point in the Brexit negotiations and the EU doesn't play with reciprocal freedoms; and
3. Any sort of free trade with the EU will mean adopting EU regulations to be within the EU customs union. I don't see this flying with Canada because despite current trade hostilities with the US, the US is and will remain the primary trading partner of Canada. Adopting EU regulations might make US trade more difficult;
Also, the US might have legitimate cause to object. If Canada and US have free trade and Canada and the EU has free trade then that's opting the US into EU regulation essentially.
In some ways this is similar to the strained situation invented for Northern Ireland.
Obviously, Canada won't be joining Schengen or the Euro. Canada already has visa-free travel to the EU.
Canada still has a housing crisis and increased migration from the EU is likely a political non-starter even though those things aren't really related and literally nobody is going to tackle the true cause of the housing crisis (just like in every developed country). As an aside, the true cause is hoarding combined with tax advantages and a political goal of raising house prices.
In short, I don't know that this means anything because I don't think anything can substantively change with the Canada-EU relationship.
[1]: https://www.reddit.com/r/europe/comments/1qbq43v/european_in...
That means Angel Merkel for president, my friend! :-D Harharhar. Just kidding.
Do Canadians think "Yanks" is some sort of insult?
I guess it's the white version of saying Gringo.
Canada's economy is propped up by Alberta's energy production, which you my loose because they're so disgusted with the liberal politics.
Anyway, good luck with revitalizing the economy by trading with a bloc of countries in economic decline.
Canadians are not using that as a real insult, no. “Child fucker” is an insult that is often used, however the USA does not consider that an insult.
This message has been brought to you by the Minister of The Truth of the Government of Canada. /// Ce message a été émis par le Ministre de La Vérité du Gouvernement du Canada.
Thank you for directing your hate at the specified target. /// Merci d'aiguiller votre haine à la cible sus mentionnée.
Von Der Leyen has a stellar track record of successes in both internal and external EU affairs. She is an inexhaustible well of good ideas and great policies. When such suggestion comes from her I am sure it is great idea for both Canada and EU.
Good old broomsticks-for-guns lady.
Mercosur, sanctions against Russia and Belarus, defence of France after the AUKUS fiasco, an intent to cut down reliance on natural gas, an ethics commission following the Qatari corruption scandal, the European green deal, European defence plans, she's done plenty of good.
She's also done plenty of bad things on the political theatre, but it's not like everything she does is destined to be a failure.
War in Ukraine is still waging, can't comment, war in Iran showed the brilliance of importing LNG, ethics commission will find no wrongdoing, stupid idea, vaporware ...
Maybe this is a naive statement, but it seems like full membership including open borders between Canada and other EU states and adoption of the Euro would also be beneficial to everyone involved.
The UK should continue to be embarrassed and ashamed to leave such an incredible institution, although at this point we can say that they clearly don’t deserve the EU anyway.
Yes but someone will need to step in and adjudicate once everyone in Europe has enough of living in the United States of Germany and there’s another war over it.
Leyen babbles a lot. I have absolutely nothing at all against Canada and EU getting closer, but please don't dance when Leyen whistles - that leads to nothing but uselessness. She should have never been in politics to begin with - the absolutely worst person for the job.
A description that fits a lot of politicians!
If I’m Canada I look for a trade agreement rather than associate membership - no reason to put your eggs in one basket.
As an American, I continue to be sad and tired that our current president is somehow allowed to unilaterally destroy a very successful and thriving trade partner via arbitrary tariffs that have already been ruled illegal and while it doesn’t make a damned bit of difference I’m sorry about it.
We have that trade agreement (CETA). Negotiated by the Trudeau gov't a long time ago.
Notably many member states (incl. France) have not fully ratified it. The majority of its benefits are in place but not all.
Which doesn't bode well for the actual on the ground reality of any "associate member status."
I expect it will be mostly symbolic/diplomatic. (Which is also fine)
funnily, they already have a trade agreement, though not fully ratified.
Don't be. Trump is a necessary and welcome wake up call. We Canadians needed Trump's shock of reality.
The truth is that, for more than a century, the main trait of being Canadian was simply not being American and not trusting Americans.
In 1775 George Washington ordered the invasion of southern Quebec and we resisted. After the American revolution we received an huge influx of Loyalists, the Americans that didn't want to be part of the U.S.; we say the American Revolution created 2 countries: yours and ours. In 1812 Americans raised war against us, as a continuation of the Napoleonic wars. Although we were still a British colony, we fought back, invaded Washington DC and set the White House on fire. In 1890, the McKinley Tariffs were meant to subjugate us, the same way Trump wants to do now [1]. They backfired, made us stronger.
But in the 80's the Reagan-Mulroney trade agreement fooled us. We became too reliant, friendly and confident to the Americans. It was a dangerous illusion. The Comanche, Apache and Navajo have learned too late that you can't trust Americans. Luckily for us, Trump reminded us that lesson on time, before it would be too late.
[1] https://canadiangeographic.ca/articles/the-u-s-tariff-act-of...
The Haudenosaunee Confederacy probably learned this the strongest. And more even than the Loyalists help build this country. Or I'm more conscious of this as I live in a place where Joseph Brant's (Thayendanegea) name is all over the place.
But they -- and Britain's other indigenous "allies" in the US interior -- also learned the hard way that the British couldn't be trusted either. The Treaty of Ghent ended the war of 1812 but on terms that let the Americans commit genocide against the native populations to the west of them ; which the British were formerly allied with.
And while the Iroquois were granted all extensive lands along the Grand river as reward for helping fight the Americans in 1784 (Haldimand proclamation) -- they subsequently had that chipped away at for generations and it's just a tiny postage stamp of what it used to be.
No good guys.
https://stateofsurveillance.org/news/canada-bill-c22-lawful-...
+
https://reclaimthenet.org/eu-protecteu-strategy-encryption-b...
Both of these things can be true (and things we as Canadians have to aggressively oppose) but at the same time, it was the US that pioneered such gems as:
the PATRIOT act, Stellar Wind, PRISM & Section 702 (FAA), Upstream Collection & AT&T Splitter Rooms (Room 641A), Bulk Telephony Metadata (Section 215, the Post-9/11 NYPD Demographics Unit, the Data Broker Loophole (Commercial Surveillance Purchase). Oh god, I could go on all day.
Or did/does things like extraordinary rendition to Guantanamo, or the illegal rendition of Canadian citizen Maher Arar to a Syrian torture facility while he was traveling through the US, or even just taking tourists phones and looking at the anti-Trump memes they've shared and detaining them.
Any "libertarian" American pointing fingers at Europe and Canada as somehow more repressive is living in an ideological echo chamber. The targets are (sometimes) different but every "western democracy" set up oppressive regimes post-9/11 that should outrage anybody.
Both "left" and "right" in the US are living in a delusional world if they think their constitution is worth jack shit as any kind of protection in the 21st century.
It seems every country in the world has such regimes, either publicly or in the background. You can bet no Chinese or Russian system comes without backdoors, plenty of US systems have been revealed to have backdoors, etc.
I disagree with this, but it's still somehow not an aspect uniquely horrible about EU or Canadian policy making, so not sure why this would be relevant here.
I would just assume everyone has back doors in their equipment. Big country or not, it spies.
There is a strand of US politics which has tried to characterize Canada as uniquely authoritarian ever since the Ottawa protests. And it's been used increasingly as justification for external partisan "interventions"
It's a bit wishy-washy; they're just saying "we're better off working together" not actually doing something.
I can't imaging Canada would be looking to align its standards and laws with the EU. Don't get me wrong, the EU does a lot of things that make it both safer and better, but it makes things more expensive to make, and that only works when there isn't a wild-west next-door-neighbour. It's hard to compete when your biggest and nearest export market has looser labour and product regulations than you.
Of course Canada can do more trade with the EU without broad regulatory alignment, it just seems weird you'd need to announce it.
Please flood the timber market.
I’m hopeful that closer ties with Europe could give Canadians a chance to learn from European agriculture and food culture.
Canada needs a new perspective in how we produce and sell food here. I’d love to see us move away from a food system dominated by crappy US-style highly engineered, ultra-processed products and toward a much greater variety of fresh and minimally processed foods, stronger regional production, and a richer everyday food culture.
I would welcome EU grocery chains and food producers to shake things up here and bring some sanity back to Canadian food culture.
Wonder how does Morocco feel about this becasue they applied to be an actual full memeber before s and they are geographically closer too.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morocco%E2%80%93European_Union...
They would probably argue “European nation” is cultural and not geographic. Morocco is officially Muslim and not a full democracy, the EU isn’t ready for that I don’t think.
Full membership isn't Association Membership. The article you reference mentions that the EU condemned Morocco for human rights abuses in 2023. So perhaps Morocco should clean that up before feeling anything about this.
This would be Canada getting down leveled to the minor leagues. Yes there are a few issues with the US, but Canada is vastly better off playing on the world stage under the wings of the US than it would be as the EU’s “associate member.” The next phase of history is going the be China and the US and then everyone else scrambling for scraps.
This kind of move by Canada indicates that perhaps it believes the US to be unreliable and in decline?
A necessary move, because the US isnt acting like an ally anymore.
Hence the increased cooperation and agreements with the EU and China.
Well, it's up for Canada to decide, right? RIGHT?
And won't the dems just undo all this tariff nonsense anyway? Or is Canada acting like a bitter ex after a breakup who vows to take their seething to the grave no matter what
I think the metaphor you're looking for is from the "USA as an abusive ex" angle, not a "bitter ex" metaphor that shifts blame to others...
Bitter ex? This is amazing.
The US is a completely broken country, and simply switching governments will not change that. Without a complete and utter change in how that entire country operates -- including dissolution -- no country should ever normalize relations with it again.
The US is by far the world's most dangerous rogue nation. It is a terroristic nation. It is a bully. It not only elected a rapist self-dealing criminal imbecile to president, it elected him again, seeking a round two after the utter debacle the first term was, and the disastrous results are exactly what everyone could predict, but you know...this is who America is now.
And a big reason Canada is moving on is that it's pretty clear that the US is a country in spectacular decline, and it is China's century now. Which is maybe why the US is electing disgusting garbage like Trump -- and he's certainly not alone, and there are various garbage "football coach" type creeps filling the entire US political class -- lamenting the position they once held, now going down the Russian/Putin path where they'll accelerate the crash just to reminisce about a past that mostly never existed.
EDIT: I should add that agreements with the US are worthless, and this has been amply demonstrated. As Carney noted, the US' signature is written in pencil, and even agreements signed by this very president mean nothing, and will be dishonoured at the earliest convenience. In recent trade negotiations, where Canada almost made a horrible mistake of accepting ridiculous terms to maintain the status quo as much as possible (sidenote: Canada absolutely must withdraw from USMCA, a Trump-signed and negotiated agreement that the US is in utter defiance of), they asked "so when we sign this, you'll then honour it?", and the US side couldn't even commit to that. They knew that it could be days before the rapist toddler had a twitter tantrum after one of the kleptocrats whispered in his ear and imposed new barriers, tariffs, etc. Like, what is even the point of negotiating with such a farce? A lawless cabal led by just the absolute worst human trash.
And how does that make you feel?
I don't know. How did writing the farcical nonsense about Canada being "down-levelled" make you feel? Must have felt like you're clutching onto a delusion?
Don't worry, America still has the cartoonishly pathetic "Board of Peace" (though the Arab despots might not be as eager now that the US got completely humiliated by some isolated rogue theocracy), and your close allies Argentina and El Salvador.
Don't forget North Korea and Russia.
Somewhat sad, but also full of opportunities. For instance, in the EU a lot of things are set in motion that used to be taboo, like moving away from US tech, moving away from US weapons, stronger European military integration. Stronger ties with Canada, rebuilding ties with the UK.
Funny, as a Canadian I feel like Canada is a completely broken country and the US is sane by comparison. Grass is always greener, etc.
Canada isn't an abused spouse that's supposed to sit around and wait while their partner magically undoes all of its threats and (economic) violence. "Undoing" the tariffs in a few years won't magically fix the intense economic damage they've caused to Canadian citizens. The US government being forced to pay hundreds of millions of the illegal tariff money back to corporations didn't magically bring prices back down. The US has completely ruined its reputation in the eyes of most Canadians to the point where nearly every single person I know refuses to travel to the US and many refuse to purchase US goods.
There is no guarantee the Democrats are going to reverse the tariffs. And even if they do, the Republicans after that can just undo the undoing, and then do worse.
If you're still looking at this through the lens of party politics, you're missing the big picture. Most of US power comes not from its military, but its economic system. And that depends on trust and reliability. Both "sides" have been engaged in a project to scuttle that as hard and fast as they can since the end of the Cold War.
Both sides demonstrate that the United States can be consistently relied upon to break every deal they make, be it relating to international relations and borders, economics and debt, trade, military protection, and supply of arms.
Bush Sr and Clinton both broke the assurances made to Gorbachev that made the relatively peaceful dismantling of the Soviet Union possible by marching NATO eastward and carving up fresh borders in the Balkans.
Clinton, Bush Jr, and even Biden were still talking about free trade agreements, less than a decade before we see an international tariff regime spring up, and the United States reserves subsidy carve-outs in every deal they make with other countries who they expect to open their markets.
US spending has been out of control for decades no matter who controls the White House or Congress, and is only getting worse. They're relying on the inertia of its massive economy to bear the inflationary burden by printing money. The biggest export of the US economy, Treasury Bonds - that is, debt - is now seen as unreliable, and other countries are dumping them like burning garbage. Indeed, the United States has already started defaulting on such loans to a growing number of nations, only they get to call it "sanctions" when they don't repay their loans. The rest of the world looks on in horror as they realise how much of their wealth is tied up in this make-believe that the United States can renege on or bully creditors into not divesting on a whim. This explains the skyrocketing price of gold.
Speaking of those creditors, a lot of them are gulf states. As in, Persian Gulf. They used to sell oil and buy Treasuries as investments. But since nearly every US base in the Persian Gulf has been effectively destroyed, every gulf state that participated in the war crimes against Iran has been punished into submission for that involvement. Resumption of hostilities like we saw in the opening month would see the infrastructure that those nations rely on to continue to function as countries destroyed within hours. Absent desalination and oil export facilities, those countries would just cease to exist as significant polities. The de facto government in Yemen (referred to perversely as the "rebels", while the legitimate government sits in Riyadh, capital of the country that has been bombing Yemen for 15 years or so) just delivered Saudi Arabia a major military defeat, while the President refused to help. Saudi Arabia, land of black gold, unable to export from either the Strait or the Red Sea, with one of the biggest oil pipelines in the world now burning, is being forced to borrow money! The United States, so called most powerful military the world has known, dares not send a large naval vessel within about 1000 km of the Strait of Hormuz, and two aircraft carriers have been forced to limp away. Meanwhile, trade through the Red Sea has also been strangled off. All of the US allies under the protection of Pax Americana have been humbled by a country that has been getting "strangled" in some form or another for the past 70 years by a superpower.
And after all that the US military is out of interceptor missiles. They can't spare any for West Asia or Ukraine, right when everyone wants them. They wasted thousands of million dollar missiles on thousand dollar drones, and cannot make more at a rate that matters.
If you think it's just tariffs and some hurt feelings, you haven't been paying attention.
Newsom is on the record stating he wouldn't undo all of the tariffs if he becomes president in 2028. And he's a leading Democratic candidate for the position.
US governance has become so unreliable, destructive and inane, with little prospect of reverting back to what is once was, given the US’ internal political and societal landscape, that being under its “wings” now constitutes a major risk for any of its allies. Canada is correct to diversify.
I hear you, but the US is hardly the only country on the planet that’s had a few disruptive elections, including the EU BTW. Making generational decisions over one presidential cycle is rather short sighted.
It’s been going on since 2016, which by the end of the current term will already be roughly half a generation. And what has been destroyed in the first half of this term alone will take longer than that to rebuild.
While there are troubling developments in EU countries as well, there is also the converse (e.g. Hungary), and the EU parliamentary systems are significantly more resilient than the US two-party presidential system.
Two actually*
Mistakes happen but this same buffoon got elected twice. That's no fluke, deep down the american population likes him enough to give him two chances.
And if Trump had just faded into obscurity after 2021 we probably wouldn't see this kind of realignment, but the fact he got reelected makes it look much less like a fluke and more like an USA that's increasingly unreliable on the international stage
Not giving you what you want != unreliable. It’s been extremely reliable for folks that want other things.
Imposing tariffs one day and TACOing out a few days later and infinitum is not reliable. There is no 4D chess going on, only incompetency and self-enrichment.
The US is on the path of Russia since the end of the iron curtain, moving to a kleptocracy ruled by (tech br)olichargs.
The electoral + two-party system makes it nearly impossible to break out of this.
Context of this discussion is Canada (and Europe). It's not at all reliable for them.
I was gonna post my actual thoughts but then had a vision of me being show this comment at the border as the reason I can't enter the US.
Constantly ripping up trade/other deals that were signed in the last decade is unreliable and hard to plan around.
When it's Hungary it's funny, because it doesn't matter, when it's the US it's not, because it fucks up the entire world's order. It really is not that hard to understand the problem
Trump was elected twice.
Until the USA fixes their broken political system, it would be unreasonable to seek to create major bonds with them.
They will remain a partner, but they should be a minority partner.
I'm sorry, but this comment feels insufferable. I feel so much eye roll from reading it. USA is not "major leagues" by the measures that the rest of the world cares to size itself up by.
If there's an apt non-baseball metaphor, it's perhaps that USA is a circus we are compelled to pay attention to for now. We'd rather just not
They'll be right back in two years
They'll undo like 30% of the damage and call that a win.
Naïve American exceptionalism. It is going to be generations before Canadians could possibly be on as friendly terms as we were just 5 years ago.
No. The US has shown it is completely unreliable.
Even if Democrats were to be back in power and devote their 4 years to restore things and apologize, that wouldn’t be enough.
Americans have shown they can vote TWICE for a fascist regime that is willing and eager to generate chaos.
Their political system is foobar.
What in the world is this train of thought? Do you not understand that the American President has directly threatened Canadian sovereignty multiple times over the last 2 years, even if under the auspices of “trolling” or “jokes”? In addition to that, the President is seeking direct control over Canadian trade relationships, control over its natural resources and all while attempting to destroy its industrial output.
This ignorance makes it very clear that the American voting populace does not take positive relations with erstwhile allies seriously. Increased trade integration may not be the ideal situation for Canada, but nothing about the situation is ideal. At least we won’t be subjugating ourselves to hostile hegemons like China and the USA.
American exceptionalism is astonishing to see in the wild.
The next phase of history is China's, and broadly Asia's. Everyone on the planet, but Americans, can see this. It is indisputable.
Everyone else is finding a place within that new reality, and no one else wants to play along with American delusions that they're going to hold onto their place and everyone else are their supplicants.
At this stage, the US should be begging every like-minded nation to be friends. Instead you elected a grotesque embarrassment farce that coddles up to two-bit clowns like Milei, while endlessly attacking allies. ROFL.
Enjoy the coming crash.
Yeah, we don't want to be under the "umbrella" of a terroristic idiocracy menace. You can become the worldwide pariah on your own, without our offering of legitimacy for your terrible behaviour.
What specifically do you mean “under the wings of the US?”
Calling for Canada playing "under the wings of the US" is like calling for Ukraine to play "under the wings of Russia".
The US government has repeatedly called for invasion of Canada. Canada would be insane not to find allies against the American threat.
You think the wings of the US are a larger league than the EU?
The EU has built the world's largest trade zone, from Mercosur to South Korea, Japan and India to Canada.
I believe they are currently outmaneuvering the rest of the world by quietly binding everyone to themselves while the US, Russia and China are caught up in their saber rattling.
The US and China are fighting a 20th century contest of hard power. The EU is the only 21st century superpower of soft power.
Which of those agreements are fully ratified by the EU?
im canadian but this feels performative
yes i get it, stick it to the USA. yay patriotism. suddenly thats cool and not problematic for some reason.
and im also all for less restrictive coordination between nations. it's all performative in the end.
but like, this feels basically like "stick it to trump" and not anything meaningful.
I agree and at the same time I'm all for it.
Almost a decade on and most Canadians don't seem to realize we already have CETA (free trade) with the EU. It's not fully fully ratified but it's there. It's why our grocery stores have been slowly filling with European products we never had before (Yay!)
For example: It's already cheaper for me -- as a consumer -- to import sporting goods (skis, etc) from the EU than it is from the US. (And often less shipping hassle too, oddly).
And yet distributor arrangements often still funnel everything through the US, first as "North American distributor" models. Incurring shipping and sometimes even tariff overhead. (Looking at you Scarpa, North America. You suck.)
Even if all of this is symbolic, it may at least shift perceptions on our side of the Atlantic so Canadian businesses at least start looking to Europe more seriously as both importers and exporters.
People often forget our country was built on an east west shipping and transport axis with the St Lawrence (and later the Pacific) as outflow, to supply Europe (mainly Britain). It was only later that north-south trade became more important economically.
Shipping manufactured goods across the Atlantic to European customers may end up cheaper for them than shipping from China in some circumstances.
I'm maybe also a bit biased, I currently work for a European employer.
funny cuz i still cant buy european butter :P
best we can get is "european style"
id love to just move to somewhere in the eu and be able to freely work there. thats how it should be in every country btw. until then, it seems like more performance, which carney has seemingly mastered.
Dairy is highly protected in Canada. For better or for worse.
Exceptions were made for cheeses though. They've dropped significantly in (relative) price and varieties of imports have improved significantly in the last 10 years. Even the most white-bread grocery stores tend to stock a selection of decent European cheeses now.
i eat a certain cheese almost every day and i feel like im being molested very time i stock up. i get your general point, but the dairy cartel reigns supreme.
it's funny because we had someone running for PM in 2017 who was the only person who said they'd fix it and he was branded a racist right-winger.
politics in canada is rworded
I've started making my own cheese (with the new 6% milk we have in the grocery stores here in Ontario now). 4 litres of $10 6% milk gives me a huge pile of halloumi or similar that lasts the week. Protein / nutrition wise works out to be about 2/3rds the price of equivalent chicken and like 1/3rd the price of beef. About an hour and a half of rather enjoyable labour.
I have mixed feelings about the dairy cartel. I am in favour of reform of some kind to eliminate the quota system but I also don't want a flood of American milk into the Canadian market.
send me some cheese pls :)
also 6% is something ive never seen. does it come in an extra large bag?
This is new in the Ontario market this year. It was lobbied for by the South Asian / Desi community as they like to make their own paneer and yogurt. It comes in the same 1.33L milk bags, it just costs a bit more, depending on the grocery store.
It took a while but most of the local grocery stores around me are now stocking it.
Good.
We get better cheeses, wines and other fine food.
They get maple syrup, Atlantic lobster and Manitoba flour.
Win, win.
If that be the case, maybe we the USA ought to take the UK and Ireland as an associate state of the USA.
Ireland is part of the EU.
No one is taking anything here, but I think the american mind cannot comprehend complex things such as having allied and building agreements
American here. Only a third of us are MAGA. Still plenty to ruin our country though.
Half. The other sixth that vote that way are also MAGA
If rather see the US stop self-sabotaging by destroying our relationships that established us as the monopole.
So two regions declare they want to be closer and your reaction is “we should conquer a couple countries just to show them up”?
This is exactly the problem.
The USA would take them by force because there is no way anyone in the world wants to have anything to do with the USA.
But taking someone by force in on brand for Trump, so it might happen.
They won't need to if they start electing normal politicians and put in the effort to fix the damage they've done over the past decade.
Telling that you would use the verb 'take' rather than 'offer'. But these days, it seems the USA has trouble 'taking' anything besides Venezuelan moustaches.
As far as an offer goes, polls find that almost third of the UK now regards the USA as a threat rather than an ally.
https://www.opinium.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/Opinium-U...
Would that means Canadians would be protected by the GDPR and DMA?
No it wouldn't. Other EU associate members have their own data protection laws, some of which align with GDPR
The "Common Foe" principle at work.
I have no idea how we do it, but I think we should somehow ban the expansion of all the existing unions (EU, CIS, NATO, whatever else we got). The overall worldwide tension is pretty high, but now
- US goes after South America and Greenland
- EU goes after Canada and Georgia (country), which is just ridiculous in terms of geography
- Russia invades Ukraine and goes after Eastern Europe and Middle-East to some extent
- China does its expansion too
Even though some of these actions are just political nonsense, it still increases the overall level of escalation. This is not what the world needs right now
Trade agreements and unions — yes, please; yet another political or military union expansion — please, God, no. I understand that EU is a mix of both, but also do think that this is a purely political game against Trump
- US goes after South America and Greenland
- EU goes after Canada and Georgia (country), which is just ridiculous in terms of geography
Absolute brain dead comparison
I’m an American, and I don’t see it as a purely political game against Trump—my country has dramatically shifted its position toward its allies from reliable partner for 80 years to aggressive antagonist both in trade and military. And it’s not just a rogue president—a full third of the US electorate supports these actions.
It makes sense to me that these countries would want to build new trade and security alliances with countries who have similar interests and who face similar threats.
The alternative to these defensive military pacts is that Russia or the US or whomever can literally invade and annex countries piecemeal to expand their power. If we can’t effectively ban that, then it doesn’t make sense to me to ban the only thing that deters it today.
The US invaded South America and is treatening to invade Greenland, just like Russia is invading Ukraine.
The EU is offering enhanced trade relations with Canada and Georgia.
Those are completely different things.
You dont really see a difference between US wanting to take over SA and Greenland militarily and Canada and Georgia wanting closer ties to the EU voluntarily?
You sound like Puting fan boys arguing about NATO expansion, NATO does not expand. countries voluntarily ask to join them, because the alternative is being destroyed
Aye, please no. We don’t want to be the 28th EU state any more than we want to be the 51st EU state.
An associate state is not a member state. It's a funny name to give a country with a specific kind of trade deal and understanding.
The EU itself is becoming increasingly integrated with the free movement, common currency, aligned education system etc etc, but these things take a lot of time, not the least identity-wise. For sure, my children feel more European than I did growing up in what was then a non-member state.
So outright membership is likely not the route for overseas friends, but it seems we are inexorably moving towards a closer cooperation between a group of democratic countries outside the sphere of non-democratic China and ever more erratic US. Hopefully this will be an association which is less dependent on one single member than the western world has been under US lead.
It seems very likely the EU, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and the UK would be part of this. Japan and Korea are still very US-dependent but given the lack of enthusiasm the US is showing its former allies, this may change quickly. I also expect growing cooperation with some of the south-American countries.
The world is definitely under realignment politically.
Article 238 of the original Treaty of Rome, which is now article 217 TFEU, provides for the EU (or its precursors) to enter into "association agreements" with non-member states, e.g. Turkey has one of them. Many current EU members (e.g. Greece) had them before becoming members.
A lot of 1970s/1980s sources referred to these states as "associate members of the EEC" – but it seems like everyone has forgotten that.
It seems the nuance here would be between association agreement and an associate member which presumably is more integrated. E.g. EU candidate countries are joining many technical meetings and are invited to listen in to some Council meetings, can express views on important legislation, etc. I could imagine a similar status for Canada, but without the candidate label and neither the financial benefits or legal obligations to work towards regulatory alignment.
Europe definitely needs to find replacements for the USA as a trusted partner. The US now supports Russia in its war against Ukraine, imposes random tariffs, pressures European companies over DEI (I'm not particularly woke myself, but I think equal opportunities regardless of race, for example, is a good idea), and makes threats against Greenland, Canada and Iceland. It also puts pressure on free speech and EU digital rules: the US imposed visa bans on former EU Commissioner Thierry Breton, an architect of the Digital Services Act, and four anti-disinformation activists, and I believe it also had his Microsoft email disabled. Add to that climate denial, the war on science, threats to leave NATO, antivax etc. I believe many countries will unfortunately turn to China, since even China is more predictable than the US.
Let's be serious. If the US supported Russia in its war against Ukraine, there would be no Ukraine now.
I guess it’s a good idea as long as Canada can only join the free economic/labour movement zone.
Brian berletic posted a brilliant video on this. This is just Canadian government and oligarchy doing a job of a vassal of USA.
Why not a free trade agreement?
That already exists: https://policy.trade.ec.europa.eu/eu-trade-relationships-cou...
This is about much more than that.
Alberta separatism efforts by the US/Russia are probably about to be cranked up to 11.
The sad part is that the US could very well have had made such a trade and companionship deal with Canada themselves. Or even a better one, should they wanted to.
They used to have an excellent relationship with Canada, the UK, with the EU and with other civilized and democratic parts of the world. Until Trump started to undermine everything. And have selfish and unfair demands against everyone.
Now the US has a "comradeship" with Venezuela, Russia and North Korea.
I know that the above is perhaps an exaggeration. But the fact that the US now has worse relationships with almost all the civilized, democratic parts of the world and is bowing down to dictators and authoritarians does not come from external factors. It is all self-inflicted. Including the Iran war and its consequences.
Not sure what it really means but Mark Carney is turning out to be one of the the most consequential prime ministers of Canada.
He has an exceptionally poor hand of cards to play but is maximizing any opportunity. Very creditable leadership - even for those who don't agree with everything he does.
I do think this is a lesson for political parties all over the world. You can be pragmatic.
Trump is not emperor for life, fortunately. He'll be gone in a couple of years. With any luck the upcoming midterms will significantly limit his powers. America will recover from this dark period. Other countries have had dark periods too, like Germany, and recovered.
The trouble for its global partners, especially in the Western Alliance, is that even if the attitude in the White House does change in 2029, no-one will ever be able to trust a repeat isn't 4 years away. US dominance has depended on its reliability as a partner - and that's gone.
Trust won't come back immediately, but if the next 2 to 3 Presidents are "normal" then trust will come back slowly.
This is the same EU who once reduced the Canadian trade minister to (literal) tears, and made her denounce the (accurate) fact that, and I quote, "Europe is not capable of signing a trade deal". Notably, the EU has never ratified the Canada FTA and everyone's just sort of pretending it did for convenience's sake.
Nice symbolism, but this is merely being used as leverage in Canada's negotiation with the US. "See, we have other options!"
Worth adding that Europe is far more protectionist than the US, so this is economically farcical. Symbolism trumping reality. Sort of like when celebrities were saying they'd move from the US to Europe in the aftermath of the Dobbs ruling... only to find out abortion law is far, far more restrictive in almost all of Europe than California or New York.
Meanwhile the EU itself is about two years away from being run by the AfD + Le Pen freak show.
In some ways it's fitting though, the chaos and infighting of the EU mirrors the structure of our own confederation.
Provinces in Canada have strong powers and much of the same back and forth trade and regional politico-economic bickering as what happens between EU member states. Much more so than US states.
The vibe is familiar at least.
Wow. That's really pathetic. I'm ashamed as a Canadian. I don't want someone who can be reduced to tears by a negotiation negotiating on my behalf.
As a Canadian, this feels like hopping on board a sinking ship. EU and Canada have both severely underperformed for the last 10 years. I hope encouraging more trade can help.
i have to think that many people would consider the current situation with the usa is already a sinking (sunk?) ship.
Imagine what the EU reaction would be if the United States offered to make bring in the UK or Poland as state(s).
Geopolitical games like this are how real wars eventually start.
Did you miss the part where the US president said he would annex Canada against their will?
At one point, 20 years back, I was joking that The Netherlands should quit the EU and join the USA as the 51st state. Lot less appealing in the current political climate, but for technology it'd be great. My point was that the constitution of the US is based on ideas, and the country could be open to any territory, independent of location, whereas all of Europe's countries are based on more on historical artifacts.
Funny that the opposite approach is now considered with Canada. I can see it though.
It seems you do not know anything about Puerto Rico and its history of shameful US meddling.
Right Europe famously has never meddled
Good! My dream is an alliance with Canada and Australia, a truce with China, the dismantling of Russia (Siberia goes to China), and the isolation of USA.
China has a reasonable claim to Outer Manchuria, which includes Vladivostok; the treaties giving it up were signed under duress. But that's a far cry from all of Siberia. Siberia has not been treated well by the Russian or Soviet empires, but many non-Han territories have also been treated poorly by Chinese Empire.
Siberia is likely better off independent.
I don't understand the articles insistence that it could take years for a new type of association.
Norway is a prime example for a country that is exactly that, isn't it?
Not sure if this is a good or a bad thing.
See: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49419237
With all the EU glazing, and given this is HN, can we start some kind of Gattaca like identity exchange program please?
Let's pair off by height, hair colour and sex. You can take my EU passport and I'll take your US passport. You too can enjoy smothering regulation- uh, I meant mothering regulation. For you see, Europe is a place that cares about people.
This is definitely a great deal for you. Europe is just like every vacation you have had here, that's definitely totally representative of the overall experience. You know all the things European teenagers on Reddit say about how great Europe is? All true.
Look, yes, it's a stagnant continent that's on the eve of a neo-fascist turn, but that's just because we care about the little guy or whatever. Unlike Americans we're not obsessed with money and profits, sometimes it's about uh... blood and soil, apparently, judging by recent election results. Don't worry about this. Think about pretty castles or something. Orange man bad! Just don't look up any European leaders or election results.
Never you mind that millions of Europeans live in America and that doesn't happen in reverse. Don't think too hard about why that might be. Think instead about trains! You love em, we got em. Choo choo. Haha, you love trains. You should swap with me. Sometimes they even run! Ignore the tent cities around train stations, those are just because it's illegal to build housing. Because we care about protecting our neighbourhoods. You know, from people that might want to live in them.
You don't want to start a business. That's not for people like you and me. It's for our betters, the people who started businesses two hundred years ago and can afford to navigate the maze they've put behind them preventing anyone else from starting a business ever again. No, what you want is a generous minimum wage for all the minimum wage work that you'll do. Well, I mean, probably not. It's very hard to actually get minimum wage work, don't check the unemployment rates. No, what you want is to put your feet up and relax in the sun. We don't have much sun, but you know, in principle.
Yep siree bob, Europe sure is great. Is it the future? God probably
*thousand yard stare*
America may have been founded by Europeans, but nowadays most immigrants are from countries like Mexico, India and China. You won't find any European country in the top 10.
There are about 5 million Americans living abroad, lead again by Mexico.
There are millions of people who were born in Europe and currently live in the United States, mainly of working age. There are a comparatively much smaller number of Americans living in Europe, a significant portion of which are well-off retirees (well-off by European standards). This is a fairly typical migration pattern for two places at different levels of economic development. A larger group of economic migrants move to the richer region in search of a better life, while a much smaller group of retirees move to the poorer region in an effort to boost their spending power.
Yet again more Canada brainrot.
Canada has poor inter-provincial trade, with some provinces having an easier time trading with other countries than other provinces.
Maybe it's time we focus on ourselves? :think:
This will never happen. However. If it did I'd love to watch Canada get Europe's regressive policies forced on them.
I also don’t think Canada would ever be a full EU member. That would be going against monroe doctrine
Sorry, why would you “love to watch” something being forced?
Will probably end poorly like the UK, rule takers without the benefits.
As an European I hope this leads to some concrete outcomes and will not just be a couple of statements by both sides.
Also it's a great test for the EU. If all the EU countries can still actually agree on anything so novel. If we couldn't all agree on obvious stuff like support for Ukraine (famously Hungary had issues).
Even if things are very positive on the surface there are often small groups that get affected negatively. We can see this on the recent example of the EU-Mercosur agreement. It was supposed to to "unite a free market of 700mln people", but for example farmers in my country (Poland) protested it an I think they got a lot of concessions. (We have to remain food-self sufficient in case of war, so I'm not against their ideas per se). The deal is supposedly done, but I'm still not seeing bananas from South America in our supermarkets (don't laugh, this was one of the main points anti EU people raised back in 2005).
Ideally I'd like to see free market eventually expanded to free movement of people between EU/Canada but I have no idea how difficult aligning the legal systems might be.
As to contributions, it's not membership so things can maybe be worked out. As to the UK being able to get similar deal. I don't really get the idea to "punish the UK for exiting" they shot themselves in the foot sufficiently anyway (as well as us), but Canada has way more natural resources which may be a great benefit to our common market. So they have better "cards" to quote a certain Donald.
For example the whole farce that is EUs green initiative could actually make sense if we had a place to procure resources from in a more ecologically sound way. As opposed to what we do with China, we basically killed 90% of local industry, but we still get finished goods from countries that burn huge amounts of coal and manufacture those things in ways that would be never allowed here.
Of course that we E immensely expensive to set up, but we have 2 trillion $ in investment looking for a new home and there is a good argument to make this should be invested in a place that honours rule of law, democracy, human rights (inclusive of right to healthcare) and so on.
China is always looking to maintain trade routes to Europe. This would be their go-around of the Panama canal until the polar ice cap melts.
I hope Canada you are smart not to come anywhere near EU clowns
Soon, Canada might overtake Finland in having the longest NATO border with a hostile country…
But it will probably be a long time till Canada purposefully causes the death of a million civilians in the USA, like Finland did with Leningrad!
It’s not a pretty competition, but I’m pretty sure Russia "wins" vs Finland in number of deliberate civilian deaths over any time period.
As a European, I am very happy to see this, especially given what Canada represents and the values (I believe) we broadly share!
Yeah no, run from this dumpster fire, the EU from inside is a disaster, an organization from the Germany for the German interest, and a buffer zone for the US.