I hope Canada you are smart not to come anywhere near EU clowns
EU chief opens door for Canada to become 'associate member'
671–680 of 878 posts
Re: EU chief opens door for Canada to become 'associate member'
#672Earlier 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…
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.
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Re: EU chief opens door for Canada to become 'associate member'
#673Earlier quoted context omitted.
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?
Re: EU chief opens door for Canada to become 'associate member'
#674Von 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 ...
Re: EU chief opens door for Canada to become 'associate member'
#675[flagged]
> 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.
Re: EU chief opens door for Canada to become 'associate member'
#676Earlier 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.
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.
Re: EU chief opens door for Canada to become 'associate member'
#677Soon, Canada might overtake Finland in having the longest NATO border with a hostile country…
Re: EU chief opens door for Canada to become 'associate member'
#678No 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. :)
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…
> 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.
Re: EU chief opens door for Canada to become 'associate member'
#679Good, 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.
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?
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.
Re: EU chief opens door for Canada to become 'associate member'
#680As a European, I am very happy to see this, especially given what Canada represents and the values (I believe) we broadly share!