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

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

#621

Post by nephihaha »

weatherlite wrote: post #299
nephihaha wrote: post #13

The EU is running out of Europe. I thought Turkey or North Africa would be the next steps. Maybe Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan.

> I thought Turkey 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.

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

#622

Post by HarHarVeryFunny »

monkeywork wrote: post #302
leidenfrost wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 - 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 >the Crown has had both a shared and a separate character: the sove…

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.

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

#623

Post by goalieca »

usernametaken29 wrote: post #580
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 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 sou…

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.

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

#625

Post by drawfloat »

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.

It has very little to do with Trump. When he leaves, this shift isn't going away.

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

#626

Post by cmrdporcupine »

diego_moita wrote: post #226
sailfast wrote: post #132

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.

> I continue to be sad 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 A…

> 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.

No good guys.

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

#627

Post by donbox »

gizajob wrote: post #436
FabCH wrote: post #409

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

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

#628

Post by jen20 »

fidotron wrote: post #283
klelatti wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

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.

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

#630

Post by nephihaha »

graemep wrote: post #32
nephihaha wrote: post #13

The EU is running out of Europe. I thought Turkey or North Africa would be the next steps. Maybe Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan.

> 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.

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.
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