EU chief opens door for Canada to become 'associate member' • Hacker News Board

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

#821

Post by petilon » Wed, Sep 16, 2026, 5:38 PM UTC

rsynnott wrote: post #774

petilon wrote: post #465

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.

Germany got a whole new constitution which was fairly explicitly designed to prevent that from happening again. The trouble for the US is that it is now very clear that the US president can just act like a crazy dictator, and that the mechanisms which were supposed to prevent that simply don't function. Absent constitutional change (which the US system makes virtually impossible), well, sure, there might be sensible…

> The trouble for the US is that it is now very clear that the US president can just act like a crazy dictator, and that the mechanisms which were supposed to prevent that simply don't function.

This is true. A US president who has strong support from a majority of voters of his own party can act like a dictator. So if 51% of Republican voters (which may be just 25% of all voters) support him no matter what, then he can act like a dictator. This is because Republican members of Congress who are supposed to rein him in are worried that they will be voted out if they anger the 25% of voters who support the president.

The fact that 25% of voters can set the direction for the whole country is indeed a defect in the system that is not easily rectified.

But if Republicans are defeated by Democrats in the upcoming midterms then there is hope. That's how we are going to recover.

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

#822

Post by bryanlarsen » Wed, Sep 16, 2026, 5:42 PM UTC

FabCH wrote: post #819

dghlsakjg wrote: post #593

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That sounds like you are looking for the Ground News thing I get advertising for on every YouTube video.

Ground News itself is right wing propaganda.

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

#823

Post by LastTrain » Wed, Sep 16, 2026, 5:51 PM UTC

throwaway894345 wrote: post #801

LastTrain wrote: post #542

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Half. The other sixth that vote that way are also MAGA

Nah, they're independent and they've swung pretty hard away from MAGA once it affected their personal finances. Far from noble, but also pretty far from MAGA.

Nah, if you voted for him three time you’re MAGA for the purposes of this thread, which is basically a response to someone saying “all you Americans are dumb assholes”

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

#824

Post by mike_hearn » Wed, Sep 16, 2026, 5:55 PM UTC

amelius wrote: post #306

rich_sasha wrote: post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> Europe’s biggest problem, I think, is its lost mojo. 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.

That's not been true for a long time. About 80% of EU laws are passed by qualified majority voting.

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

#825

Post by saulapremium » Wed, Sep 16, 2026, 5:59 PM UTC

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.

Inflexibility was not the reason for Brexit. It happened because the British population was tricked by being fed misinformation about the EU for years by people like Nigel Farage and Boris Johnson. Little things like "The EU bans bendy bananas" to big things like "Turkey is going to join any day!"

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

#826

Post by snapplebobapple » Wed, Sep 16, 2026, 6:05 PM UTC

My country has fallen so far... dealing with the government and regulators in the usa, canada, and the eu. I can tell you the eu is pretty clearly bottom tier for competency, effectiveness and even justimplementation that makes sense. Usa is the best of the three surprisingly and canada is mid mostly because it is too lazy to suck as bad as the eu

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

#827

Post by jen20 » Wed, Sep 16, 2026, 6:09 PM UTC

gizajob wrote: post #676

jen20 wrote: post #628

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.…

> but there were at least 17 million crazies at the time

Yes. Just the demographics has substantially thinned their numbers by now though.

> would likely be a different 17 million crazies voting No again.

Highly unlikely - and turnout on the other side would be dramatically improved. Had the vote been held again the following day, it's likely that the result would have been different. If it were held today, it would be a landslide towards rejoining with the original terms.

People actually know what they're voting for, instead of falling for make-believe horseshit about how much money could go into the NHS (but didn't) on the side of a bus, with a heavy dose of Russian propaganda on Facebook.

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

#828

Post by Barrin92 » Wed, Sep 16, 2026, 6:11 PM UTC

graemep wrote: post #54

Barrin92 wrote: post #41

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 i…

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.

>The UK left, Iceland just voted not to join.

I don't know if you even made it to the end of the first sentence I wrote, but the fact that the UK could leave and is treated with respect, the fact that Iceland, a country of four hundred thousand people, which we could but will never threaten either economically or militarily, can decide their own future is a strength of the union.

We do not coerce our neighbors, no matter how small.

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

#829

Post by gizajob » Wed, Sep 16, 2026, 6:13 PM UTC

jen20 wrote: post #827

gizajob wrote: post #676

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.…

> but there were at least 17 million crazies at the time Yes. Just the demographics has substantially thinned their numbers by now though. > would likely be a different 17 million crazies voting No again. Highly unlikely - and turnout on the other side would be dramatically improved. Had the vote been held again the following day, it's likely that the result would have been different. If it were held today, it would…

I think you’ve fallen into the common trap in believing that there was a simple narrative which can be used to understand the Brexit vote, when the data shows there were 17 million different and varied reasons within a mass resistant to modelling.

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

#830

Post by FabCH » Wed, Sep 16, 2026, 6:17 PM UTC

andyferris wrote: post #300

trklausss wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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_…

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…

Freedom of movement is more than just visa opt-out. It’s legally almost impossible for an EU country to prevent a citizen of a different EU country from moving there. They would need to arrest you for terrorism or something equally dramatic.

The ECJ has consistently ruled that the freedom of movement is very broad.

I know this because it creates an interesting corner case where Swiss citizens don’t have quite the same broad freedom of movement since ECJ rulings don’t automatically apply to non-EU citizens. For example, an EU citizen can move to Greece for no reason at all and just sit on a beach. A Swiss citizen cannot, and has to find work in 3-6 months or leave.