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. :)
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 tight as Norway/Switzerland/Iceland.
Common defense was already agreed anyhow.
I can tell you this enjoys broad support in the EU public. 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."
> Tighter integration than UK, not as tight as Norway/Switzerland/Iceland.
This will not work as Norway and Switzerland pay. I am unsure about the UK whether they pay or not, but anything else would be unfair to Norway and Switzerland.
> Common defense was already agreed anyhow.
Where and how? Surely not via the EU because the EU has no power over that. See how Austria is part of the EU but militarily neutral.
> I can tell you this enjoys broad support in the EU public. 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."
Canada is much more appreciated than the USA here, but you need to look at all fine details. Right now it seems to me that e. g. Carney, and Leyen, use this more as promo-tour. Nothing against Canada moving closer to the EU, mind you, but this here seems a lot more show-value centered than "show us the details". Because what are the exact details here? I am all in favour of countries cooperating more now that the USA has gone fully rogue, but politicians love show and entertainment.
Eurovision is also stupid. Why is Israel part of it? That makes zero sense, even way aside from what war criminal Netanyahu is doing - it's not a european country. Something is wrong with the word EU. It constantly seeks to expand. So that is now a misnomer.
Does Canada's agricultural output follow EU's (quite strict) norms? Not sure if this falls under "legislative integration" but I'd say that it would be quite important to have settled. The same goes when it comes to Canada's work-related laws.
I have such fatigue from listening to the rhetoric and whining from US farmers when enough of their goods are dangerous for consumers and illegal in Canada and the EU.
It's all bad faith from the US trying to run over any market they don't control so they can weaponize control over food supply of another nation later.
Yeah, I'm curious about which ones are a problem. I could see there being some incompatibility, and the details are more interesting than sweeping statements.
Some regulations would have to be normalized and agreed upon between the countries for trade open up. Can't have different quality standards and ways of evaluating and declaring them.
Welcome to Canada where the regulations are in fact provincial.
Canadian provinces have a harder time trading with each other than countries in the EU, although thanks to the sales tax and package transit changes the EU is becoming competitive in this area.
One I have actually dealt with was VATMOSS. Especially when first introduced it had very low ceilings for registration and actually deterred small businesses from trading across borders.
I also think GDPR is too strict for small businesses and non-profits and not strict enough to deal with big businesses that trade data.
...Those cookie banner things for a start!! heh. ;)
Mostly just wouldn't really work because Ottawa would have to somehow represent the provinces to the EU and the provinces and Ottawa don't work together in a way that would be compatible, I don't think anyone in Canada would want to change how Ottawa works with them. We may also end up in the same position again as we have with the Americans, nobody but us likes our supply chain management system[1]. GDPR is also something I think Canadians would struggle to get behind, our PIPEDA framework is quite good and I think most folks approve of it (except Quebec, who have their own framework). Taking the Euro would be a problem, etc etc, I think I could probably build quite a big list. btw, I respect the EU regulation, and that Europeans quite like it, I was just saying I don't think it would be practical for us to re-work the whole country to accommodate them, that's all.
If a company wants to sell in the EU, they should comply with EU rules. The market and the regulations are closely linked, you won't get one without the other.
> as long as we don't need to be involved in their regulatory or legal regimes
The only reason the trade is easy in EU (and with it non-EU partners) is these regulations. Countries that choose to stay outside but wanted access to our market (like Norway, Switzerland, etc.) - had to accept the regulations. So I highly doubt you'll get your wish.
Go do some research on China - it's economy is in the toilet and its leadership has destroyed much of it's success, foreign capital and companies have fled to India, Vietnam, Mexico, Indonesia.
Your lament of "Oh no China is the best in the world and only getting better!!!" is long long out of date.
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 absolute abundance of electrical and mechanical engineers in that country and funding to match.
I am not making any comments on the politics of it all, but I have not seen this anywhere else in the world - perhaps it exists but I am not aware of it.
For some of us, it mimics late 19th century europe where the rate of innovation perhaps was only matched by the lack of regard for cost, safety or need.
I think we are closer to seeing the Chinese Hindenburg than Arpanet or Moon voyage or some other bewildering humanity joining initiative.
Its inarguable that the industrial revolution brought tons of wealth quickly to the UK. But one, having past it all, has to wonder if the child work force, insanely cramped victorian houses, constant deaths due to smog, polluted water etc could not have been entirely avoided by reducing "innovation" speed.
Is the existing suffering of the Chinese system worth the economic growth? For its own middle class, the answer is probably yes. But systemic conditions like limiting the universities places to top 30% students, means you have a permanent underclass that cannot join the white collar jobs.
Is that required to have a cheap, hardworking manufacturing and construction industries? Maybe. But reinventing a class system that has a few steps removed from slavery as an "economic miracle" and "neck breaking speed innovation" feels a bit icky when they could take 5 years longer and treat people better.
We are arguably close to post scarcity, and instead of building post-capitalism instruments (like libraries could be imagined as), we are just perfecting the economic conditions of capitalism which require an inordinate amount of cheap labour and state violence.
Billionaires are building bunkers instead of museums, they can see the end game of this system they benefit from and its not a good one. Like I can't understand whats the point of winning "the economy" if we end up in a post nuclear hellscape of ecological collapse, but number must go up I have been told.
The US has depleted their missile stockpile and can no longer defend anybody. Countries in the Middle East are moving away from the US and forming their own alliances. Taiwan knows that the US cannot do anything to help them. South Korea also knows. The US has weaponized the US Dollar, forcing countries out of the SWIFT system if they don't do what they are told. As a result, the CHIPS system has become the alternative. China understands better how the economy works, with the Belt and Road Initiative. The US government doesn't understand how the economy works, and is run by a bunch of complete m orons.
I’m not sure I agree with “already won”, that’s an extreme position, but there are consequences to all the things s/he says. It may be a death of 1000 cuts, or it may hit a tipping point, but the us is certainly walking blindly down the “let China win” road.
As a joint us/uk citizen, even I would prefer to deal with China than the USA these days. Predictability is really useful in business, and narcissistic man child presidents aren’t predictable.
Look around and visit any country, you'll see chinese made and sold goods inundating everymarket, build infrastructures.
It used to be chinese made goods sold by local or western companies. Nowadays bar a few exceptions these are chinese goods sold directly by chinese brands/companies.
That's rich considering it was France and the UK that threw Poland under the bus despite having a signed defense pact. The US just came in to clean up the mess.
WW2 ended with Yalta conference where Roosevelt agreed to Stalin's proposition of giving Poland to USSR's sphere of influence, making Poland (and rest of EE) their puppet state.
Churchil wanted to pressure Stalin to leave Poland (and at least parts of EE) independent and even considered "Operation Unthinkable".
At least that's what I think the guy above referenced.
If "70% of Canadian exports are to the US", that's probably why the US has so much leverage, and I can see why the Canadian government would like a change.
Hence the need for a rebalancing of trade partnerships.
Polish export to US is about 3% of its total export and import - about 5% of Poland's total import. Not much to lose, honestly. We trade more with Czech Republic.
Polish export to EU is 74% of its total export and import is about 60% of its total import.
Economically - whatever's good for EU is good for Poland and US barely matters.
One thing that is common about middle democracies is that prioritize a bureaucratic elite structure over an entrepreneurship culture, while both the US and China embrace entreprenuership wholeheartedly.
If they changed that they'd perhaps become world powers themselves.
> One thing that is common about middle democracies is that prioritize a bureaucratic elite structure over an entrepreneurship culture
No, that's just the 2010s propaganda fed to you by people who assert that not letting them do whatever they want is "bureaucratic". These very same people are completely fine lobbying legislature for more moat when they benefit from it.
The difference between "middle democracies" or whatever that means and the US is just that politics aren't corrupted enough yet that they can buy whatever they want.
I did some admin work for the startup around 5 years ago and I have to say EU countries specially mine Sweden is far more clear. In USA you are basically hopeless without a lawyer. but I did a search and for clarity of rule I searched and this came up using AI:
World Bank’s broad “Regulatory Quality” measure supports that direction: Sweden scored 95.28/100 and the US 90.57/100 in its latest comparable 2023 data. I couldn't find EU wide score.
I wanted to help someone to get work visa and I thought it is like Sweden and you just fill a small form, oh boy! We hired a lawyer for just filling the US side application.
It's interesting to me that people generally see Europe's regulations as interfering with entrepreneurship, while they see American decisions that give more power to multinational corporations at the expense of smaller companies as a normal part of a free market.
That's unfettered capitalism at work—"free" implies no bounds. Multinational corporations have never been more powerful now than at anytime in history.
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.
> Canada's Bill C-22 Would Force Encryption Backdoors
> Signal, Windscribe, and NordVPN say they'll pull out of Canada before building surveillance infrastructure. The biggest threat to encrypted communications in a Western democracy since Australia's 2018 law.
I’m hopeful that closer ties with Europe could give Canadians a chance to learn from European agriculture and food culture.
Canada needs a new perspective in how we produce and sell food here. I’d love to see us move away from a food system dominated by crappy US-style highly engineered, ultra-processed products and toward a much greater variety of fresh and minimally processed foods, stronger regional production, and a richer everyday food culture.
I would welcome EU grocery chains and food producers to shake things up here and bring some sanity back to Canadian food culture.
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.
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.
> The EU needs to be truly Federal to succeed economically. That might create uniform regulations with more uniform regulations and actually make Europe competitive.
EU already has uniform regulations, what are you talking about? It's also the third largest economy in the world, as uncompetitive as it is.
No it does not. There's a lot of gold plating happening at the national level that goes beyond EU regulations. It's EU regulations + 27 national regulations in reality. The EU economies are still too different and the population too unwilling to have a truly US-style single market.
I am not sure, if I see the example of US as federation, it might work well for corporations only, but people have nothing, uniformity doesn't work because not all populations have the same needs/expectations
Its hard because its 27 different countries, but they are working on making it less hard. Many startups are made in Europe, but then bought up (often by Americans) or moves to USA when its time to expand outside the single countries boarders. Canada has the same problem.
Canada has made it pretty clear that they do not want to be part of the big country south of it, so they will have to find a way to create large companies that stays. Doing this together with a market of 450 million people seems like a good idea.
Eh, on a long enough timeline we have seen this and been there before. US is the beacon of democracy and the free world until it is not, and then until it again is. Depending on who is speaking and about whom and when.
Most of these attention grabbing statements by politicians are usually about scoring political points at home. The only thing worthy of judgement are hard facts, and excruciating details, which are yet to materialize on this topic.
From Blackberry to a budding VFX industry and many other sustainable businesses to come out of Canada has always made it seem like a very EU-like philosophy. This will be great for fair trade.
It's a bit wishy-washy; they're just saying "we're better off working together" not actually doing something.
I can't imaging Canada would be looking to align its standards and laws with the EU. Don't get me wrong, the EU does a lot of things that make it both safer and better, but it makes things more expensive to make, and that only works when there isn't a wild-west next-door-neighbour. It's hard to compete when your biggest and nearest export market has looser labour and product regulations than you.
Of course Canada can do more trade with the EU without broad regulatory alignment, it just seems weird you'd need to announce it.
Maybe this is a naive statement, but it seems like full membership including open borders between Canada and other EU states and adoption of the Euro would also be beneficial to everyone involved.
The UK should continue to be embarrassed and ashamed to leave such an incredible institution, although at this point we can say that they clearly don’t deserve the EU anyway.
Leyen babbles a lot. I have absolutely nothing at all against Canada and EU getting closer, but please don't dance when Leyen whistles - that leads to nothing but uselessness. She should have never been in politics to begin with - the absolutely worst person for the job.
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 in autocracy and force and it's often why I think the EU receives so much disproportionate hate.
"Annexing neighbour" is clearly a non-goal of the EU. One of the reason of its existence is to put an end to european countries invading each others all the time.
> Yes, you can read all about how that came about, and how it's going.
Yes, it seems to have made no difference. economically - economy performing much the same as France and Germany. Lots of lives saved by the faster covid vaccine rollout which is a plus IMO.
> You're projecting an American ideal. Not all nations are--nor want to be--America, and we're thankful for that.
You are missing my point. Not annexing anyone when its not an option because you cannot does not prove anything.
I have never even been to America - why would I project an American ideal?
> 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.
That won't be a problem for long. The native Europeans are swinging to the authoritarian right, the newly naturalized are very selectively for liberal democracy - aka the parts that directly benefit them, not the parts that make it liberal, and the liberal democrats are straight out refusing to have kids.
So in 50 years Tukey will border authoritarian regime either way.
Von 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.
The world was already moving on from US hegemony. China is already a super power, other economies are growing, and the west in general (i.e. all the countries mentioned here) are a shrinking proportion of the world economy (and population, or military strength).
You jest, but if you've ever seen a wounded animal fighting like mad for survival, I wouldn't be so confident that won't be the exact same things that's going to happen.
Von der Leyen sucks, but not in that way. She is an unscrupulous careerist with a talent for failing upward - and she failed a lot. More of a system abuser than a system changer.
Solar panels are even worse. Here in Poland they're covering entire fields in the countryside, I have no idea why they don't build them on parking lots or on factory roofs.
I've never seen a pumpjack nor any hydrofracking equipment. I have seen a few capitalists but I can't be positive they were red-blooded ones (whatever that means).
The LNG won't come from Canada either. Trudeau notoriously said "there's no business case" for it, but the truth is they can't agree with how to actually get enough of it to the east coast to make a difference, and that's what blocks it. (In fairness the route does go through some very unique environments).
Canadian provinces have a far bigger ability to screw things up for the whole than countries do inside the EU, and people remotely familiar with the EU will understand what a strong statement that is.
Petro-states are destroying their trust as they try desperately to cling on to the power fossil fuels have given them. Thankfully this makes renewables even more attractive than just their lower cost.
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 tight as Norway/Switzerland/Iceland.
Common defense was already agreed anyhow.
I can tell you this enjoys broad support in the EU public. 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."
> Tighter integration than UK, not as tight as Norway/Switzerland/Iceland.
This will not work as Norway and Switzerland pay. I am unsure about the UK whether they pay or not, but anything else would be unfair to Norway and Switzerland.
> Common defense was already agreed anyhow.
Where and how? Surely not via the EU because the EU has no power over that. See how Austria is part of the EU but militarily neutral.
> I can tell you this enjoys broad support in the EU public. 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."
Canada is much more appreciated than the USA here, but you need to look at all fine details. Right now it seems to me that e. g. Carney, and Leyen, use this more as promo-tour. Nothing against Canada moving closer to the EU, mind you, but this here seems a lot more show-value centered than "show us the details". Because what are the exact details here? I am all in favour of countries cooperating more now that the USA has gone fully rogue, but politicians love show and entertainment.
Eurovision is also stupid. Why is Israel part of it? That makes zero sense, even way aside from what war criminal Netanyahu is doing - it's not a european country. Something is wrong with the word EU. It constantly seeks to expand. So that is now a misnomer.
Does Canada's agricultural output follow EU's (quite strict) norms? Not sure if this falls under "legislative integration" but I'd say that it would be quite important to have settled. The same goes when it comes to Canada's work-related laws.
Which output specifically? To take one example, the Dijon mustard coming out of France is mostly from Canadian mustard seeds:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dijon_mustard#2022_shortage_in...
EU has such a bad name in these circles. As a EU citizen, I cherish these same regimes.
Also re: OP, yes if you want to sell stuff in the EU, you will need to adhere to the same rules as EU companies.
It's all bad faith from the US trying to run over any market they don't control so they can weaponize control over food supply of another nation later.
Some regulations would have to be normalized and agreed upon between the countries for trade open up. Can't have different quality standards and ways of evaluating and declaring them.
Canadian provinces have a harder time trading with each other than countries in the EU, although thanks to the sales tax and package transit changes the EU is becoming competitive in this area.
I also think GDPR is too strict for small businesses and non-profits and not strict enough to deal with big businesses that trade data.
Mostly just wouldn't really work because Ottawa would have to somehow represent the provinces to the EU and the provinces and Ottawa don't work together in a way that would be compatible, I don't think anyone in Canada would want to change how Ottawa works with them. We may also end up in the same position again as we have with the Americans, nobody but us likes our supply chain management system[1]. GDPR is also something I think Canadians would struggle to get behind, our PIPEDA framework is quite good and I think most folks approve of it (except Quebec, who have their own framework). Taking the Euro would be a problem, etc etc, I think I could probably build quite a big list. btw, I respect the EU regulation, and that Europeans quite like it, I was just saying I don't think it would be practical for us to re-work the whole country to accommodate them, that's all.
[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dairy_and_poultry_supply_manag...
The only reason the trade is easy in EU (and with it non-EU partners) is these regulations. Countries that choose to stay outside but wanted access to our market (like Norway, Switzerland, etc.) - had to accept the regulations. So I highly doubt you'll get your wish.
It is 100% about Trump.
Your lament of "Oh no China is the best in the world and only getting better!!!" is long long out of date.
I think we are closer to seeing the Chinese Hindenburg than Arpanet or Moon voyage or some other bewildering humanity joining initiative.
Its inarguable that the industrial revolution brought tons of wealth quickly to the UK. But one, having past it all, has to wonder if the child work force, insanely cramped victorian houses, constant deaths due to smog, polluted water etc could not have been entirely avoided by reducing "innovation" speed.
Is the existing suffering of the Chinese system worth the economic growth? For its own middle class, the answer is probably yes. But systemic conditions like limiting the universities places to top 30% students, means you have a permanent underclass that cannot join the white collar jobs.
Is that required to have a cheap, hardworking manufacturing and construction industries? Maybe. But reinventing a class system that has a few steps removed from slavery as an "economic miracle" and "neck breaking speed innovation" feels a bit icky when they could take 5 years longer and treat people better.
We are arguably close to post scarcity, and instead of building post-capitalism instruments (like libraries could be imagined as), we are just perfecting the economic conditions of capitalism which require an inordinate amount of cheap labour and state violence.
Billionaires are building bunkers instead of museums, they can see the end game of this system they benefit from and its not a good one. Like I can't understand whats the point of winning "the economy" if we end up in a post nuclear hellscape of ecological collapse, but number must go up I have been told.
The US has depleted their missile stockpile and can no longer defend anybody. Countries in the Middle East are moving away from the US and forming their own alliances. Taiwan knows that the US cannot do anything to help them. South Korea also knows. The US has weaponized the US Dollar, forcing countries out of the SWIFT system if they don't do what they are told. As a result, the CHIPS system has become the alternative. China understands better how the economy works, with the Belt and Road Initiative. The US government doesn't understand how the economy works, and is run by a bunch of complete m orons.
There is no path for victory for the US, where it remains the world's reserve currency. China will become the world's reserve currency by 2032.
You are simply in denial. Everything that I wrote points to China winning.
As a joint us/uk citizen, even I would prefer to deal with China than the USA these days. Predictability is really useful in business, and narcissistic man child presidents aren’t predictable.
It used to be chinese made goods sold by local or western companies. Nowadays bar a few exceptions these are chinese goods sold directly by chinese brands/companies.
In ten years the downvoters will not only agree with this, but have moved on to "and that's a good thing".
Churchil wanted to pressure Stalin to leave Poland (and at least parts of EE) independent and even considered "Operation Unthinkable".
At least that's what I think the guy above referenced.
If in 10 years the ratio moves from 70/6 to 50/26, the situation will be vastly different.
The options are not black and white
Since Trump is hostile to trade with both parties there's an opportunity to replace lost US trade that's probably not coming back.
Trump has weakened himself and his allies where as mutual trade between Canada and the EU makes both stronger.
The middle democracies will do better fighting together and not deal with US individually.
Polish export to EU is 74% of its total export and import is about 60% of its total import.
Economically - whatever's good for EU is good for Poland and US barely matters.
If they changed that they'd perhaps become world powers themselves.
No, that's just the 2010s propaganda fed to you by people who assert that not letting them do whatever they want is "bureaucratic". These very same people are completely fine lobbying legislature for more moat when they benefit from it.
The difference between "middle democracies" or whatever that means and the US is just that politics aren't corrupted enough yet that they can buy whatever they want.
World Bank’s broad “Regulatory Quality” measure supports that direction: Sweden scored 95.28/100 and the US 90.57/100 in its latest comparable 2023 data. I couldn't find EU wide score.
I wanted to help someone to get work visa and I thought it is like Sweden and you just fill a small form, oh boy! We hired a lawyer for just filling the US side application.
That's unfettered capitalism at work—"free" implies no bounds. Multinational corporations have never been more powerful now than at anytime in history.
If they were to change some within the citizenry would stand to gain at the expense of others. Inequality would increase.
Seems—for now—middle democracies aren't prepared to pay the high price of social upheaval such a policy would create.
> Signal, Windscribe, and NordVPN say they'll pull out of Canada before building surveillance infrastructure. The biggest threat to encrypted communications in a Western democracy since Australia's 2018 law.
https://stateofsurveillance.org/news/canada-bill-c22-lawful-...
+
> European Commission Revives Push for Encryption Backdoors in ProtectEU Strategy, Framing Mass Surveillance as “Lawful Access”
> The EU’s ProtectEU strategy quietly sketches the blueprint for a backdoor.
https://reclaimthenet.org/eu-protecteu-strategy-encryption-b...
Canada needs a new perspective in how we produce and sell food here. I’d love to see us move away from a food system dominated by crappy US-style highly engineered, ultra-processed products and toward a much greater variety of fresh and minimally processed foods, stronger regional production, and a richer everyday food culture.
I would welcome EU grocery chains and food producers to shake things up here and bring some sanity back to Canadian food culture.
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.
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.
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.
EU already has uniform regulations, what are you talking about? It's also the third largest economy in the world, as uncompetitive as it is.
Not because I think regulations are bad. But regulations need to be well designed with clears lines on what the Federal / State are allowed to do.
Canada has made it pretty clear that they do not want to be part of the big country south of it, so they will have to find a way to create large companies that stays. Doing this together with a market of 450 million people seems like a good idea.
They are working in it: https://www.eu-inc.org/
I have no clue whether that will be a success, but at least they have recognised that problem as well.
Been doing it for decades. Not a billionaire and not interested in becoming one; in the US I would've been one. But never had issues.
America's become erratic and untrustworthy. America's made a deliberate choice make its reputation worse.
Most of these attention grabbing statements by politicians are usually about scoring political points at home. The only thing worthy of judgement are hard facts, and excruciating details, which are yet to materialize on this topic.
40 years ago I probably would have agreed with this statement - these days, not at all.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morocco%E2%80%93European_Union...
Bonjour du Québec.
I can't imaging Canada would be looking to align its standards and laws with the EU. Don't get me wrong, the EU does a lot of things that make it both safer and better, but it makes things more expensive to make, and that only works when there isn't a wild-west next-door-neighbour. It's hard to compete when your biggest and nearest export market has looser labour and product regulations than you.
Of course Canada can do more trade with the EU without broad regulatory alignment, it just seems weird you'd need to announce it.
Please flood the timber market.
The UK should continue to be embarrassed and ashamed to leave such an incredible institution, although at this point we can say that they clearly don’t deserve the EU anyway.
I don't hate the idea
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 in autocracy and force and it's often why I think the EU receives so much disproportionate hate.
The EU does not have a military to annex any neighbours with. Individual states do, but non are really great powers any more.
Yes, you can read all about how that came about, and how it's going.
> The EU does not have a military to annex any neighbours with. Individual states do, but non are really great powers any more.
You're projecting an American ideal. Not all nations are--nor want to be--America, and we're thankful for that.
Yes, it seems to have made no difference. economically - economy performing much the same as France and Germany. Lots of lives saved by the faster covid vaccine rollout which is a plus IMO.
> You're projecting an American ideal. Not all nations are--nor want to be--America, and we're thankful for that.
You are missing my point. Not annexing anyone when its not an option because you cannot does not prove anything.
I have never even been to America - why would I project an American ideal?
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.
So in 50 years Tukey will border authoritarian regime either way.
All it took was Trump & Republicans
The pivot away from Germany / France is starting and will not stop.
All it took was Merkel and sucking up to Russia.
This is all a big pain in the back.
Solar panels are even worse. Here in Poland they're covering entire fields in the countryside, I have no idea why they don't build them on parking lots or on factory roofs.
Canadian provinces have a far bigger ability to screw things up for the whole than countries do inside the EU, and people remotely familiar with the EU will understand what a strong statement that is.