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EU chief opens door for Canada to become 'associate member'

bbc.com

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Re: EU chief opens door for Canada to become 'associate member'

#281

Post by softwaredoug »

luckystarr wrote: post #127
softwaredoug wrote: post #58

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.

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.

I want this one to succeed, but refactors often fail and revert to the original code structure :)

Re: EU chief opens door for Canada to become 'associate member'

#282

Post by graemep »

leidenfrost wrote: post #266
FabCH wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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 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.

Re: EU chief opens door for Canada to become 'associate member'

#283

Post by fidotron »

klelatti wrote: post #200
FabCH wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> Carney was asking for freedom of movement of goods, people and services, but without full monetary and legislative integration. > no payments into each others budget. 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 i…

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.

Re: EU chief opens door for Canada to become 'associate member'

#284

Post by lukasbm »

neom wrote: post #75

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. :)

You're in for a rough awakening if you think the EU is your friend

Re: EU chief opens door for Canada to become 'associate member'

#285

Post by T-RN-R »

cmiles8 wrote: post #158

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.

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.

Re: EU chief opens door for Canada to become 'associate member'

#287

Post by joha4270 »

cmiles8 wrote: post #208
layer8 wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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

Re: EU chief opens door for Canada to become 'associate member'

#288

Post by krzyk »

graemep wrote: post #260
krzyk wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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/e…

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.

Re: EU chief opens door for Canada to become 'associate member'

#289

Post by vintermann »

jeltz wrote: post #271
vintermann wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Israel's public broadcaster is a long time member of the European Broadcasting Union, which has nothing to do with EU, and honestly not all that much to do with Europe either. EBU organizes Eurovision. Why Israel's public broadcaster wanted to be part of EBU I don't know, cultural identification with Europe I guess? You'd have to ask them. But either way that's not the scandal. The scandal is that Russia's broadcaste…

Yeah, the scandal is about different members being held to different standards. Why are Azerbaijan and Israel allowed to stay while Russia got kicked out? Especially since Azerbaijan and Israel both have manipulated the voting in addition to waging wars.

Yeah, Azerbaijan is another which is often forgotten. Honestly, it seems Eurovision is mostly interesting for countries that need PR help. I'd be happy to see the whole thing go, it's outlived what little purpose it had.

Re: EU chief opens door for Canada to become 'associate member'

#290

Post by input_sh »

vehemenz wrote: post #227
Escapado wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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?
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