Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

bbc.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

351–360 of 877 posts

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

#351

Post by hermitShell »

rich_sasha wrote: post #278
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.

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 no…

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.

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

#352

Post by cmrdporcupine »

slopinthebag wrote: post #323
cmrdporcupine wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 i…

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.

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

#353

Post by microtonal »

cmiles8 wrote: post #325
joha4270 wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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

#354

Post by padjo »

wewewedxfgdf wrote: post #133
noir_lord wrote: post #2

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.

Errrrr...... this has nothing to do with the struggle between USA and China. It is 100% about Trump.

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.

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

#355

Post by fidotron »

Sharlin wrote: post #321
fidotron wrote: post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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 membe…

This is the other part: if associate membership is a thing then won't half of the EU start thinking that's their future?

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

#356

Post by skissane »

> 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.

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

#357

Post by mitxela »

method_capital wrote: post #320
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. :)

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 cor…

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.

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

#358

Post by Maskawanian »

jcfrei wrote: post #308
etiennebausson wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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

#359

Post by konradx »

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.

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

#360

Post by Fnoord »

ChrisRR wrote: post #224
bluecalm wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>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.

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.
Post reply on HN