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EU Floats Canada Becoming the Bloc's First 'Associate Member'

83 points · 170 comments · helsinkiandrew

  1. gizajob · · focus · HN ↗
    Would it not make sense to perhaps invite the UK to be an associate member first? We’re right on the doorstep.
    1. Tomte · · focus · HN ↗
      You don‘t want to have any level of association with us, as you‘ve made clear repeatedly over many years, involving many insults.

      Don‘t expect the EU to actively offer anything again. Do the first step (after getting a clear view what proportion of your population actually wants that).

      The United Kingdom would be a great member, as you had been. But that ship has politically sailed.

      1. gizajob · · focus · HN ↗

        [dead]

        1. pibaker · · focus · HN ↗
          If you have a kid who ask you for a toy and you give him, and then he throws a tantrum and smashes the toy on the floor, you don't just pretend nothing happened and buy him the same toy again.

          Why? Because what you are teaching him is he can throw as many tantrums he wants and face no consequences. It gets worse if you have other kids — if he can throw a tantrum and get away with it, why not me too?

          He can have that toy again, but not before he learns the lesson and knows his place.

          Not communism, just cold hard game theory. Sorry your feelings got hurt.

          1. gizajob · · focus · HN ↗
            You’re projecting about my feelings. It seems a strange paradox that associate membership is on the table for Canada when it was a hard no to any idea like that where it came to the UK. As hard as the Brexit was, the EU refused to budge and the UK offered to be either in or out. Now Canada is offered to be half in.
            1. hardbass · · focus · HN ↗
              Canada starts neutral. UK starts anti. Very easy.
            2. optionalsquid · · focus · HN ↗
              Putting aside whether or not being an "associate member" counts as being "half in" the EU, of which there were already examples during Brexit, it should not be forgotten that the UK did not want to be "half in" the EU. The people who wanted to remain in the EU probably did want to stay "half in", but they did not set the agenda, so what the UK got was a hard exit
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