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

692 points · 904 comments · hackernj

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noir_lord · 1789555669 · focus · HN ↗
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.
1. nixass · 1789556028 · focus · HN ↗
  Non-aligned movement 2: electric boogaloo
  1. xyzsparetimexyz · 1789559962 · focus · HN ↗
    They're very clearly aligned
    gpvos · 1789560806 · focus · HN ↗
    Not really with the US anymore.
    Anyway, I think you missed this reference: <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-Aligned_Movement" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-Aligned_Movement
    debugnik · 1789563374 · focus · HN ↗
    Does it really count as non-aligned if the observer states are very much aligned?
    sheepjumpmoons · 1789563939 · focus · HN ↗
    The point was non alignment with the two superpowers.
    bryanlarsen · 1789564119 · focus · HN ↗
    Both Russia and China are observer states within the non-aligned movement.
    gpvos · 1789568950 · focus · HN ↗
    I'm pretty sure that is a more recent development, and that at least the Soviet Union and China weren't observers during the cold war. (But I haven't looked it up.)
    [deleted] · 1789564607 · focus · HN ↗
    [deleted]
    gpvos · 1789568895 · focus · HN ↗
    I'm pretty sure that is a more recent development, and that at least the Soviet Union and China weren't observers during the cold war. (But I haven't looked it up.)
    ndiddy · 1789568369 · focus · HN ↗
    There are over 30 US military bases in EU member states, so I would classify that as alignment with the US.
    mandeepj · 1789569591 · focus · HN ↗
    > There are over 30 US military bases in EU member states
    As of today, with current affairs and the unpredictable element in chief, you may never know how long.
    ndiddy · 1789571509 · focus · HN ↗
    I agree that if EU states start kicking out the US military, that would be compelling evidence of an actual shift in alignment.
    thih9 · 1789572310 · focus · HN ↗
    There is shift in alignment even if the source is different. A popular headline from earlier this year was "US pulling 5000 troops from Germany"[1].
    [1] <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/national-security/trump-administration-pulling-5000-troops-germany-rcna343147" rel="nofollow">https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/national-security/trump-adm...
    gpvos · 1790611509 · focus · HN ↗
    It is definitely being considered from the European side as well. Currently there's too much dependency, but this is being worked on, and not just because America wants us to contribute more to NATO.
2. 0xpgm · 1789556090 · focus · HN ↗
  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.
  1. _heimdall · 1789556285 · focus · HN ↗
    The CCP retains too much power over businesses and business leaders for me to consider them to "embrace entrepreneurship wholeheartedly."
    gmerc · 1789556667 · focus · HN ↗
    Because the US isn't exactly on the same path, right?
    _heimdall · 1789559120 · focus · HN ↗
    On the same path and on the same point of the path are two very different things.
  2. ohyoutravel · 1789556436 · focus · HN ↗
    Didn’t China force Meta to unwind Manus? In no way is China embracing entrepreneurs wholeheartedly.
    monideas · 1789556546 · focus · HN ↗
    The US has something called CFIUS. This is normal statecraft
    ohyoutravel · 1789556670 · focus · HN ↗
    I believe Manus was a Chinese company.
    monideas · 1789557099 · focus · HN ↗
    But Meta isn’t
    bogdan · 1789557127 · focus · HN ↗
    They are saying this is normal and that the US has a similar framework by posting to it.
  3. petesergeant · 1789556521 · focus · HN ↗
    The US _also_ embraces rent-seeking, regulatory capture, and the externalization of social and environmental costs as entrepreneurship.
  4. pyrale · 1789556652 · focus · HN ↗
    > 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.
    mmrezaie · 1789557495 · focus · HN ↗
    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.
    enaaem · 1789647800 · focus · HN ↗
    When it comes to innovation Sweden punches far above its weight.
    petesergeant · 1789559652 · focus · HN ↗
    Heavily country-dependent, in practice. The UK lets you set up a company online cheaply, quickly, and filing is easy. Insurance is plentiful and sensible, as are business bank accounts. The law is mostly straight-forward. Setting up a German limited-liability company OTOH involves putting down some ghastly large sum as a guarantee.
    But yes, Americans are told they have the freest speech and the freest markets, and don't seem to question either.
    mitxela · 1789562060 · focus · HN ↗
    I live in one, it's definitely true. It doesn't mean entrepreneurship doesn't exist, but there is a lot of bureaucracy and the bureaucracy is iron law. They will go to any extreme to make reality align with the bureaucracy. For example if you build a building without permission, the police will come by with a bulldozer, demolish your building, dispose of the remains, and then bill you for it. Even if the building is hosting the world's first AGI, or whatever extremely important thing you can think of - there is no excuse for not complying with the bureaucracy. Whereas the US would allow you to keep it and maybe pay a fine.
    pyrale · 1789567208 · focus · HN ↗
    > but there is a lot of bureaucracy and the bureaucracy is iron law.
    Yeah, an organized and powerful administration is the basis of rule-of-law system. The opposite isn't entrepreneurship, it's a state of widespread corruption where laws are toothless.
    It doesn't benefit upstarts who want a fair environment to start a business, it benefits megacorps with their own militia of lawyers to bend the rules, and pockets deep enough to lobby for the removal of rules that can't be bent.
    mitxela · 1789567551 · focus · HN ↗
    The optimal amount of crime is not zero. If someone does an illegal thing but it turns out to be good for society, it should be permitted, then legalized.
    pasc1878 · 1789727177 · focus · HN ↗
    And I prefer to live iun a place that does that.
    Do you want your house blocked of by someone elses' wall. Do you want to be kept up all night by load industrial noises next to you?
    AlexandrB · 1789566481 · focus · HN ↗
    You clearly don't pay attention to Canadian politics. Canada basically let McKinsey run their immigration policy[1][2] for 10 years and has now appointed the former CEO of McKinsey[3] to a business development role in government. I wouldn't say that Canada is just a satellite office of McKinsey, but it's getting closer.
    Canada is corrupt as hell, just no one cares so it doesn't make international news.
    Edit:
    Oh yeah, forgot about the SNC-Lavalin debacle, where the ruling government tried to make the legal problems of their corporate buddies go away[4] by sneaking a new "slap on the wrist" law into an annual budget bill and then pressuring the prosecutor to apply it.
    [1] <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/mckinsey-immigration-consulting-contracts-trudeau-1.6703626" rel="nofollow">https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/mckinsey-immigration-consul...
    [2] <a href="https://thewalrus.ca/shadow-government/" rel="nofollow">https://thewalrus.ca/shadow-government/
    [3] <a href="https://www.pm.gc.ca/en/news/news-releases/2026/08/31/prime-minister-carney-announces-appointments-new-chair-board-and-ceo" rel="nofollow">https://www.pm.gc.ca/en/news/news-releases/2026/08/31/prime-...
    [4] <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SNC-Lavalin_affair" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SNC-Lavalin_affair
    pyrale · 1789567346 · focus · HN ↗
    > Canada is corrupt as hell, just no one cares so it doesn't make international news.
    So is Europe. It's just not at the point the US reached, yet.
    llm_nerd · 1789568289 · focus · HN ↗
    It's pretty clear the echo chamber you emerge from (protip - move to the US. I am 100% serious), but this is comical.
    When your examples of Canada being "corrupt as hell" is such chickenshit nonsense, it betrays that you're just a partisan zealot that has literally zero sense of scale or reason.
    McKinsey, a massive consulting firm, had a whole $32M contract? Holy shit, basically the deep state!
    The SNC thing was embarrassing, but it was over its behaviour overseas (Libya, to be precise), and the government was concerned about a massive, major Canadian firm being crippled by domestic hand wringing.
    When that is what you have to offer up for Canada being "corrupt as hell", in comparison to criminal shitholes like the US (which you think is much better, and again you should move there), wow. Back to shitty subreddits where your tiny group of laughable farces have your discussions about how dire things are.
    blacklimetea · 1789568486 · focus · HN ↗
    [dead]
  5. InsideOutSanta · 1789556794 · focus · HN ↗
    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.
    hilbert42 · 1789558518 · focus · HN ↗
    "…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.
    mcv · 1789559764 · focus · HN ↗
    And that hurts the free market. A free market should be transparent, have low barriers to entry, and not be dominated by monopolies or cartels. There's nothing free about American capitalism.
    InsideOutSanta · 1789566001 · focus · HN ↗
    > "free" implies no bounds
    No bounds for whom?
    Your implied premise is that private companies cannot impede others' freedom, which isn't true. In unfettered capitalism, only the largest corporations have the power and money to be free.
    anhner · 1789558528 · focus · HN ↗
    well you see, maybe one day they'll be the CEO of that multi-trillion dollar company, so it's better to err on the side of capitalism. /s
    roncesvalles · 1789560032 · focus · HN ↗
    Don't you see that the same bureaucracy that adds friction to entrepreneurship also serves the purpose of protecting the incumbents?
    It is odious to start a company in the EU. There are many accounts of this on HN itself.
    mitxela · 1789562160 · focus · HN ↗
    Starting a company is not the hard part of staring a company in any country. Many many companies do exist in the EU. It might be annoying but it's obviously hardly insurmountable.
    InsideOutSanta · 1789566091 · focus · HN ↗
    > It is odious to start a company in the EU.
    This is false.
    > There are many accounts of this on HN itself.
    Yes, I saw one just recently where the poster made obviously false statements about starting a company in Germany.
    jgwil2 · 1789569131 · focus · HN ↗
    [delayed]
  6. NuclearPM · 1789557294 · focus · HN ↗
    This is just wrong. The US prioritizes billionaires over entrepreneurs.
  7. hilbert42 · 1789557575 · focus · HN ↗
    "If they changed that they'd perhaps become world powers themselves."
    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.
  8. [deleted] · 1789557767 · focus · HN ↗
    [deleted]
  9. hilbert42 · 1789557952 · focus · HN ↗
    "If they changed that they'd perhaps become world powers themselves."
    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.
    noir_lord · 1789578400 · focus · HN ↗
    Some of us are citizens of what where previously world powers, even then it wasn't great for the average person living there (understating it wildly).
    When people go on about a Golden Age, I'm the awkward one who asks "Golden for who exactly?"
  10. throwaway283737 · 1789564450 · focus · HN ↗
    You're getting downvoted now, but it's the Europeans who are running out of money for healthcare and public services (and voting for neo-fascist parties promising fixes that will never come).
    European sentiment is totally out of touch with European reality. They'll post gleefully online about how much better their life is and then go back to their sardine flat where they can't pay for heating, and it never ever occurs to them to reconsider any priors.
    bryanlarsen · 1789564859 · focus · HN ↗
    American government deficits are far larger than European or Canadian deficits. It's not the Europeans who are running out of money.
    jgwil2 · 1789569320 · focus · HN ↗
    [delayed]
3. dosisking · 1789556534 · focus · HN ↗
  There is no struggle, China has already won.
  1. baxtr · 1789556569 · focus · HN ↗
    In what way has "China already won"?
    dosisking · 1789556959 · focus · HN ↗
    > In what way has "China already won"?
    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.
    cbg0 · 1789557481 · focus · HN ↗
    You've said a bunch of things that don't really equate to "China already won".
    spacedcowboy · 1789558112 · focus · HN ↗
    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.
    dosisking · 1789558237 · focus · HN ↗
    > You've said a bunch of things that don't really equate to "China already won".
    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.
    haldujai · 1789558654 · focus · HN ↗
    [delayed]
    charlieyu1 · 1789559323 · focus · HN ↗
    This has to be the funniest thing I’ve read for a while. China still has two exchange rates.
    mitxela · 1789561914 · focus · HN ↗
    So did the US (into gold), once, at a time when it was already the world reserve currency.
    roncesvalles · 1789559436 · focus · HN ↗
    Reserve currency status entirely depends on whether the issuing authority has the ability to drop a munition over anyone who dares to counterfeit the currency.
    China's military is good but until it gets that good, no it won't.
    Because, imagine the scenario where the US simply counterfeits the renminbi. What is China's recourse?
    kakacik · 1789559472 · focus · HN ↗
    Folks can keep their heads in the sand for pretty long, as long as they look just at progressively smaller circle around them and ignore rest of reality.
    The momentum China already gained, and gaining more every day is well beyond anything in the west. Plus if you consider the position they are rising from, its properly meteoric. Nobody knows future, but its rather easy to continue projection with current, or even a bit slower pace and within 1 or 2 decades, situation will be pretty clear from any objective perspective.
    Above is purely technological/process progress. Add US making enemy of whole world in one brilliant move, something that is practically irreversible in upcoming decades, and situation is clear. Military (without ammo) alone won't give you much negotiating power. LLMs can be replicated elsewhere with rather little cost, and soon some small bleeding edge advantage will be largely meaningless for most practical tasks.
    It doesn't even matter what near future brings, this is settled and no amount of denial from US or self-patting is changing that.
    layer8 · 1789558729 · focus · HN ↗
    It’s meant in the sense of “omae wa mou shindeiru", i.e. that defeat will be unavoidable.
    roncesvalles · 1789559169 · focus · HN ↗
    Every single point you've made is either straight up untrue or comes with caveats. I hate to quote Trump but, in light of Brandolini's law: "Wrong."
    weatherlite · 1789559683 · focus · HN ↗
    > China understands better how the economy works,
    Many people avoid Chinese stocks like the plague because the system is still half communist and as a foreign investor you get some paper in a company on Cayman Island instead of real direct ownership. That keeps me from buying their stocks and I'm not the only one.
    mitxela · 1789561975 · focus · HN ↗
    China understanding the economy appears to include them understanding that an economy consists of producing and trading goods and services, not a cancerous stock market. You can't invest in their stocks because that would be bad for their economy.
    Escapado · 1789557082 · focus · HN ↗
    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.
    Arkhaine_kupo · 1789558486 · focus · HN ↗
    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.
    graemep · 1789559098 · focus · HN ↗
    I do not think it was necessary for the industrial revolution. Possibly displacing agricultural workers through the agricultural revolution and enclosures was?
    It is certainly not necessary for economic development now. You probably cannot give people in less developed economies the same pay and working conditions, but you can provide the basics and relatively decent treatment.
    vehemenz · 1789559799 · focus · HN ↗
    Agreed, but on other dimensions China is still 150 years behind the West. It’s important to keep this progress in perspective.
    input_sh · 1789560475 · focus · HN ↗
    Go on, on which dimensions is China 150 years behind the West?
    method_capital · 1789561317 · focus · HN ↗
    Creativity, innovation, freedom? 10 guys in a room can't compete for long against hundreds of millions or billions pursuing their own separate interests. Sure, they can steal, but they can't create to the same degree if at all.
    mitxela · 1789561861 · focus · HN ↗
    Why is all the newest and best technology from China, outside a few specific fields?
    RunSet · 1789563208 · focus · HN ↗
    Why is there still demand for Chinese student visas at universities in the USA?
    mitxela · 1789637135 · focus · HN ↗
    Many reasons that have nothing to do with creativity, innovation, or freedom.
    vehemenz · 1789914205 · focus · HN ↗
    While we’re asking rhetorical questions, why is China’s cultural development behind tiny, poor European countries?
    bryanlarsen · 1789563860 · focus · HN ↗
    I recently read a survey of 14 promising new technologies: AI, EV's, drones, robots, batteries, et cetera. China was leading in 13/14, and is only 4 months behind on the 14th, AI.
    vehemenz · 1789913588 · focus · HN ↗
    History, philosophy, literature, journalism, art, education. The list goes on.
    arethuza · 1789557283 · focus · HN ↗
    Because, unlike the other superpower, they don't seem to be losing?
    9dev · 1789557388 · focus · HN ↗
    The USA is repeatedly punching itself in the face over and over though, so it's not a fair fight.
    philipallstar · 1789557355 · focus · HN ↗
    Their culture prioritises economic outputs not entitlements.
    prmoustache · 1789557424 · focus · HN ↗
    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.
    fidotron · 1789558545 · focus · HN ↗
    And many of those products are not only good they're becoming good in ways nowhere else can do.
    weatherlite · 1789559252 · focus · HN ↗
    China has the largest combined collective penis size. Around 500 million men (I'm discounting young kids and the elderly) times 4.5 inches (according to statistics). No other power on earth has that penis size.
  2. dguest · 1789558222 · focus · HN ↗
    We should keep open to the option that they might both loose.
  3. wewewedxfgdf · 1789558460 · focus · HN ↗
    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.
    lnsru · 1789559866 · focus · HN ↗
    With 2 billion people you’re absolute power. Internal market with middle class size of whole United States. No need for wallstreet and American style financial engineering. Producer of 80% goods for Europe. I mean buying something mainstream not made in China is barely possible. Technically there are some challenges like plane engines or lithography. But they’ll nail it. Trust me.
    jgwil2 · 1789569062 · focus · HN ↗
    [delayed]
  4. fidotron · 1789558472 · focus · HN ↗
    This is being heavily downvoted, but it's dangerously close to true.
    In ten years the downvoters will not only agree with this, but have moved on to "and that's a good thing".
    lkbm · 1789569427 · focus · HN ↗
    I mean..."close to true" is another way of saying "false". It could easily have been phrased in a way that was actually true and gotten plenty of upvotes instead.
  5. triceratops · 1789568134 · focus · HN ↗
    Imagine if China said that about the US in 1950.
    MetroWind · 1789662916 · focus · HN ↗
    You are comparing the US today with China 1950. That's already pretty telling. It's not a 1:1 comparison but close in some aspects.
    triceratops · 1789671191 · focus · HN ↗
    That's my point. China was so far behind and caught up. Even if we accept the premise that the US is behind today (debatable) "it's over they won" is an inaccurate statement.
4. krona · 1789556716 · focus · HN ↗
  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?
  1. pasc1878 · 1789556816 · focus · HN ↗
    Because Trump is trade warring everyone.
    The middle democracies will do better fighting together and not deal with US individually.
  2. consp · 1789556821 · focus · HN ↗
    Isn't the point that there already is one?
  3. NuclearPM · 1789557173 · focus · HN ↗
    Because the US is likely to ally with Russia over Poland.
  4. 9dev · 1789557286 · focus · HN ↗
    Because the US is going to throw Poland under the bus without even considering once if it yields a short-term benefit.
    walthamstow · 1789557555 · focus · HN ↗
    Under the bus again, I might add
    gustavus · 1789558124 · focus · HN ↗
    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.
    post-it · 1789558278 · focus · HN ↗
    I don't think they're talking about WWII.
    ajuc · 1789558367 · focus · HN ↗
    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.
    hilbert42 · 1789561056 · focus · HN ↗
    That's pretty much what happened. Trouble was the stakes were already high, if Starlin didn't yield to a bluff (had one been pursued) it would have been an embarrassing backdown and a show of weakness on part of the allies.
    "Bluff" because no one other than perhaps Stalin would have followed through—to essentially extend WWII (this time between former allies).
    So pragmatism was the order of the day, thus Poland and EE were sacrificed.
    UpsideDownRide · 1789559329 · focus · HN ↗
    If Stewie punched me, It doesn't mean Quagmire didnt.
    awruko · 1789559923 · focus · HN ↗
    I am under impression that some other nation was involved in cleaning up. If you can even call it cleaning up.
    ifwinterco · 1789560306 · focus · HN ↗
    Well we started an enormous war that basically destroyed Europe over poland, so I guess at least we tried?
  5. Komte · 1789557406 · focus · HN ↗
    So the assumption is trading with Canada = trade war with US? Canada is abused pretty hard it seems...
  6. invaliduser · 1789557481 · focus · HN ↗
    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.
    arethuza · 1789557573 · focus · HN ↗
    Wouldn't being strongly aligned with the EU give Canada a lot more leverage in trade discussions with the US?
    gizajob · 1789560204 · focus · HN ↗
    No
    microtonal · 1789560705 · focus · HN ↗
    Imagine they were in the EU. The EU could leverage the trade bazooka in the current tariff war.
    Even if Canada doesn't join the EU, there is a lot of mutual benefit from an economic and military defense pact (beyond NATO, which is nearly dead).
    gizajob · 1789562761 · focus · HN ↗
    I’m not sure what the EU has to trade, except Volkswagens and BMWs which are 10% car and 90% pension costs.
    microtonal · 1789564212 · focus · HN ↗
    You know that the EU has a large trade surplus of goods with the US?
    ericmay · 1789565396 · focus · HN ↗
    Right… so why do you think the US imposed tariffs? Germany is already seeing gigantic problems via declining exports because of China. Are they going to stop exports to the United States too?
    The EU can’t add any more “trade bazooka” than it already has. Canada doesn’t change anything in that dynamic.
    mcv · 1789559570 · focus · HN ↗
    I'd like to take a closer look at what exactly Canada is exporting to the US, and what exactly the EU is importing from elsewhere, to see if there's a match. I'd rather buy from Canada than from Russia. Or China. Or the US.
    microtonal · 1789560604 · focus · HN ↗
    I bought a dbrand case from Canada last week. Even the packaging is funnier (in a comical way) than US products.
    Sorry, my brain is fried by a cold :).
    enoint · 1789565583 · focus · HN ↗
    The important categories are oil and potash. Consumer actions might not influence those much.
    mcv · 1789566411 · focus · HN ↗
    How much oil is Europe still importing from Russia? I'd rather have Canadian.
    enoint · 1789566807 · focus · HN ↗
    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?
    WarmWash · 1789568341 · focus · HN ↗
    You know how despite climate change being very real, in day to day discussions with other level headed people, they still very regularly say stuff like
    "We ran the numbers for an EV, and right now gas is still cheaper, so we are holding off on the switch until it makes financial sense"
    Canadian oil would need to be shipped halfway around the world. It would be more expensive. Price is always the top factor for everyone.
    mcv · 1789569187 · focus · HN ↗
    Fair point. What we really need of course is more renewables, and that is happening, but not fast enough, so we still need oil. And I'd rather get our oil in a way that doesn't fuel the Russian war machine, even if it does cost a bit more.
    enoint · 1789605572 · focus · HN ↗
    The politically-important Alberta oil mostly goes to the mountain states down here. Coincidentally, those same states rely heaviest on coal for electricity. So, the choice is recharge an EV on coal (think arsenic and mercury accumulating somewhere nearby) or good ol gasoline (which is piped from Canada).
    bryanlarsen · 1789649760 · focus · HN ↗
    The heavy oil refineries are generally near the Gulf and in the Midwest, so that's where the Canadian oil goes.
    enoint · 1789719051 · focus · HN ↗
    That’s proportionally true. Utah and Wyoming depend on Alberta because of elevation. I’m confused by the change at Seaway.
    mcv · 1789661718 · focus · HN ↗
    Mountain states? Can't they use hydro power?
    enoint · 1789719682 · focus · HN ↗
    I think what you’re wondering is: can residential electricity schedules promote off-peak rates for EV charging. I’ve seen that and I think it takes the edge off.
    But we’re in a drought right now. I think hydro is down at least 20%. Wyoming wind power alone totally makes up for that.
  7. gbalduzzi · 1789557575 · focus · HN ↗
    Deals right now are intended to increase the trades between Canada and reducing those with the US, in little improvement steps.
    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
  8. Lio · 1789557614 · focus · HN ↗
    It's not that they want to enter a trade war with Trump, it's that there's large room for growth in trade between Canada and Poland (your example).
    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.
  9. ajuc · 1789557927 · focus · HN ↗
    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.
    graemep · 1789559246 · focus · HN ↗
    What about the importance of that trade. The US exports a lot of critical things that cannot be supplied from elsewhere. Everyone is heavily reliant on American technology.
    krzyk · 1789559863 · focus · HN ↗
    Like what specifically?
    graemep · 1789560128 · focus · HN ↗
    The hardware is produced in Asia but American controlled. its still a dependency on being supplied by American companies.
    "Only services" covers a lot of critically important things. Just AWS could turn off a huge chunk of European economies.
    krzyk · 1789560457 · focus · HN ↗
    Yes, but services are easier to replace than hardware. And control is something you have, and then you don't have if the country in which you operate decides otherwise (or US presidents throws another tantrum).
    Companies use AWS because it is there and others used it, so they got ball rolling. It doesn't mean one couldn't replace it with another service, most probably more pricey one. If there would be some kind of war, then one doesn't need to have servers in US, and European ones are right there.
    You can't easily replace e.g. lithium or other metals.
    microtonal · 1789561224 · focus · HN ↗
    After decades of globalization, everyone is just extremely dependent on everyone.
    I think hardware is a bit complicated by the way. A lot of hardware is also not US controlled. For instance ARM Holdings is British, Japanese, or global depending on how you look at it and quite a lot of vendors rely on ARM's reference designs. Europe also has a lot of important chip designers, but they are more focused on embedded systems and support chips, like NXP and ST Microelectronics.
    "Only services" covers a lot of critically important things. Clouds services and payment systems, for example. Even just one American company like AWS could turn off a huge chunk of European economies.
    Why European governments and increasingly companies are trying to move away to European alternatives. It all starts small, but e.g. a bunch of governments are already disentangling from Office. The sale of the maintainer of the Dutch DigiD infrastructure to a US company has been blocked (would have happened without any blockers a few years ago).
    It's like turning a mammoth tanker, but it is slowly happening.
    Let's just hope we have critical mass before the right-wing populists take over, big tech has been intensively lobbying them in recent years [1]. So much 'for the people', like they always proclaim.
    [1] <a href="https://www.brusselstimes.com/1916422/us-tech-giants-allying-with-european-far-right-to-strip-back-eu-rules" rel="nofollow">https://www.brusselstimes.com/1916422/us-tech-giants-allying...
    graemep · 1789562264 · focus · HN ↗
    Arm is important, but for R & D. The impact of not having Arm will take a long time to be felt. The same for a lot of the others you mention. Not having a supply or Intel and AMD CPUs would be felt much faster and would be harder to find replacements for.
    > It's like turning a mammoth tanker, but it is slowly happening.
    Is it really happening? As has been mentioned on HN multiple times the EU's age verification app will only run on American controlled devices. Some countries are moving some things away from US suppliers, buts its very much one step forward then two steps back.
    > Let's just hope we have critical mass before the right-wing populists take over, big tech has been intensively lobbying them in recent years
    Unfortunately, not only them. As the article says the existing European Commission is already going in the direction big tech want, just not as far. The current British government (a historically left wing party) has also been cosying up to big tech. One of the organisations mentioned in your link has a lot of info on EU lobbying in general: <a href="https://corporateeurope.org/index%2Ephp/en/lobbying-the-eu" rel="nofollow">https://corporateeurope.org/index%2Ephp/en/lobbying-the-eu
    microtonal · 1789564166 · focus · HN ↗
    Arm is important, but for R & D. The impact of not having Arm will take a long time to be felt. The same for a lot of the others you mention. Not having a supply or Intel and AMD CPUs would be felt much faster and would be harder to find replacements for.
    ARM doesn't just do R&D, they design full CPU cores. Until recently, Qualcomm's cores were ARM's reference design with their own extensions on top. It's only since Oryon that their CPUs are more dependent (the tech was acquired through their Nuvia acquisition).
    graemep · 1789564366 · focus · HN ↗
    > ARM doesn't just do R&D, they design full CPU cores
    How is design not R & D? it is literally what the D in R & D stands for!
    pyrale · 1789629835 · focus · HN ↗
    That is the kind of discussion where people end up saying "Oh okay, but we can FIRE ZE MISSILES".
    AWS will never willingly stop serving the EU, and oil corps will (unfortunately) never willingly stop selling oil. The US govt could force it, but that would be the end of US-EU relations, economic or otherwise.
    subscribed · 1789593831 · focus · HN ↗
    Remember International Criminal Court sanctioned for investigating Israeli and American role in the crimes being committed on the Palestinian territory?
    <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cnvnl0elz47o" rel="nofollow">https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cnvnl0elz47o
    On top of more than 10 already.
    Or sanctioned Francesca Albanese, a UN Special Rapporteur, for her work related to human rights abuses in the Palestine.
    She can't have bank account (or other financial product), own a property or work in many sectors in countries holding meaningful bilateral relationships with the USA.
    So what services do you have in mind? :)
    data-ottawa · 1789560823 · focus · HN ↗
    So the implication is continue doing that?
    I’ve always been told don’t let perfect be the enemy of good, and the journey of 1000 miles starts with a single step.
    The lesson here is that you can’t rely on the US anymore. Not for military protection, not for defence procurement, and not for trade or supply chain. That legacy has ended entirely by choice of the United States.
    The problem has moved beyond monetary trade value and into existential risk.
    pyrale · 1789628676 · focus · HN ↗
    That reliance is increasingly seen as a bomb about to explode rather than a boon.
  10. raverbashing · 1789558457 · focus · HN ↗
    Funny, to justify Brexit numbers like these were meaningless
    subscribed · 1789593928 · focus · HN ↗
    Putler invested a lot in that. Cheap price for the impact we still see.
  11. LeBit · 1789561264 · focus · HN ↗
    Because the US is wreaking havoc world wide. The US cannot be trusted anymore.
    Better remove the bandaid now then wait until you are screwed.
    People now see China as the reliable partner. This will be a multigenerational change.
  12. epistasis · 1789566918 · focus · HN ↗
    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.
  13. rsynnott · 1789569351 · focus · HN ↗
    In 1960, 75% of Ireland's exports went to the UK, and 50% of its imports came from there. By 2000, it was 35% imports, 25% exports. Today it is 20% imports, 8% exports. There are a few things going on here, but a lot of it was EU membership giving Ireland options beyond its 'natural' trade partner (and then the big drop from 2000 to now was mostly Brexit).
    Being in a situation where 70% of your exports go to one country is arguably pretty unhealthy; that is something that Canada would do well to work towards reducing, even _if_ the US administration wasn't openly hostile.
5. wewewedxfgdf · 1789558357 · focus · HN ↗
  Errrrr...... this has nothing to do with the struggle between USA and China.
  It is 100% about Trump.
  1. noir_lord · 1789558937 · focus · HN ↗
    Trump is a symptom not the disease, when he's gone the people who supported him and voted for him still exist and another Trump-like figure is almost inevitable given they've basically ploughed and planted that field to grow the next one and who's to say NeoTrump isn't going to be smarter.
    The other democracies can no longer count on the US as a stable ally the way we have in the past (whether that trust was misplaced is a matter of perspective).
    Simply put, you did it twice, We can't rely on them not doing it again.
    LeBit · 1789561117 · focus · HN ↗
    That and nobody believes that if the Democrats get back in the driver’s seat that they will correct all the disgusting things Trump did.
    Americans voted for that clown regime twice.
    They cannot and should not be trusted anymore.
    mettamage · 1789561403 · focus · HN ↗
    IMO it’s the 2 party system in the US that make it more vulnerable for things like this to happen
    pvaldes · 1789578678 · focus · HN ↗
    US biggest existential crisis is the fact that the opposition is always a monopoly.
    So either you have a massive win, or a party will block the other forever out of spite, nothing can be accomplished and no mistake can be fixed. With more opposition groups the situation would change for good ("You don't want to make a deal with me, I will ask the third and fourth parties. The first team doing a reasonable move gets the prize").
    sethammons · 1789597892 · focus · HN ↗
    I'm in favor of Rank Choice Voting for this reason. Our system makes 3rd party votes hard or impossible, so instead of voting for who you like, you have to vote for who you dislike the least.
    Let people vote for who they like the most without fear of their vote bolstering a candidate they really don't like. We should start exposing kids to RCV in schools. Now. It needs to not be "weird" or "hard" or propagandized as "not fair." Not fair is not being able to vote for your favorite person.
    petilon · 1789562749 · focus · HN ↗
    When Hitler was removed did another Hitler variant take control of Germany? No, Germany recovered from that dark period. The same will happen in the US. We will recover from this dark period. The comparison to Hitler is not baseless, btw. His own vice president once called Trump America's Hitler.
    b112 · 1789563460 · focus · HN ↗
    If you mean after facing bitter defeat, being broken into two nations, being controlled directly by foreign powers for years (and on one side decades), paying reparations, its upper political class and collaborators seized, jailed, trialed, and the free side being afraid of annexation by Russia, having nazism and any artifacts outlawed, then yes.
    Yes, after all and more, no future Hitler has yet emerged.
    Unless you see these things happening soon, then not really a good comparison.
    pjc50 · 1789564984 · focus · HN ↗
    > The same will happen in the US
    I don't think even the most hardened bsky communist seriously expects the outgoing administration to be literally taken out and shot.
    enoint · 1789565980 · focus · HN ↗
    Canada was able to convict Peter Nygard, and Trump might not have completed the Epstein coverup yet.
    Toynbeeidea · 1789569096 · focus · HN ↗
    No, because he was removed at gunpoint (no, not the one he pointed at himself). Unless and until that happens to a US President, you can expect more of the same.
    calf · 1789579010 · focus · HN ↗
    Such a simplistic historical comparison tells on yourself, it is precisely this mentality that larger sociopolitical forces exploit and reproduce new fascisms and the like. In other words your very argument demonstrates the falsity of the claim.
    dfxm12 · 1789564153 · focus · HN ↗
    It doesn't need to be a trump like figure. I would temper expectations that anything for Europe or Canada goes back to some status quo. It's more likely for Canada, but the US has changes domestically and with regards to other foreign nations in ways that necessitate different foreign relations even with close allies.
    We can look at Biden. He's not a trump like figure by any stretch. He decided to continue some of Trump's foreign policy.
  2. ChrisRR · 1789559843 · focus · HN ↗
    Trump is absolutely a malicious imbecile, but the US is a country that willingly voted him in twice.
    Removing Trump doesn't remove fundamental issues with the US
  3. padjo · 1789561522 · focus · HN ↗
    This has been brewing since George W Bush. Obama made a valiant attempt at normalising relations with Europe but I don't think any future US president has any hope of reversing this now.
    mschuster91 · 1789562461 · focus · HN ↗
    Europe was skeptical ever since 'nam and at the latest Bush Sr's Iraq adventure.
    NeutralCrane · 1789564854 · focus · HN ↗
    Since the wars in Iraq, sure. Vietnam was the US inheriting Europe’s mess.
    braho · 1789622356 · focus · HN ↗
    US shifting accountability of their choices on account of some mess of others. ‘We had no other choice because you can’t take care of it yourself’
    Thats exactly the narrative the rest of the world doesnt take anymore.
    mschuster91 · 1789628022 · focus · HN ↗
    They do have a point though. Libya, Syria, Lebanon, that's our doorstep, not the US'. And we in fact did not do a good job keeping house there.
    NeutralCrane · 1790162730 · focus · HN ↗
    It’s not shifting accountability. After WWII, France demanded that its colonial holdings, including French Indochina, be returned to it as a requirement for it joining NATO. The Vietnamese were not interested in returning to French colonial rule. This kicked off a decade-long war between the two that the French lost. The US had advisors to the southern Vietnamese during that time, and rather than fully pulling out, increased their presence as they tried to manage the void left by the French. This spiraled into the Vietnam War.
    The US is on the hook for its decisions. But Europe doesn’t get off the hook for its own.
    padjo · 1789579975 · focus · HN ↗
    Nah, Europe was a happy participant in Iraq 1. The trend from that to Iraq 2 to whatever the hell they're doing in Iran now is really clear.
    RunSet · 1789563012 · focus · HN ↗
    <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-qdvm6h8WKg" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-qdvm6h8WKg
  4. Waterluvian · 1789563399 · focus · HN ↗
    We don’t do trade with Trump. We don’t get attacked by Trump.
  5. drawfloat · 1789565650 · focus · HN ↗
    It has very little to do with Trump. When he leaves, this shift isn't going away.
karlkloss · 1789555974 · focus · HN ↗
Nearly 60% of EU LNG imports come from the USA. If Trump doesn't like Canada to cuddle with the EU, then it won't happen.
This is all a big pain in the back.
1. N_Lens · 1789556065 · focus · HN ↗
  Good thing EU is investing heavily in renewables then.
  1. altern8 · 1789556242 · focus · HN ↗
    Those wind turbines are destroying the scenery, though.
    ohyoutravel · 1789556574 · focus · HN ↗
    Exactly. I prefer seeing pumpjacks and hydrofracking equipment, just like all red blooded capitalists.
    altern8 · 1789557294 · focus · HN ↗
    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).
    ohyoutravel · 1789569561 · focus · HN ↗
    The red blooded thing was tongue in cheek. Go visit California. Eat at In n Out. You may see a pumpjack next to the place you’re sitting enjoying your animal style fries. They’re pretty common. I don’t mind them really, but do find them to be equally / neutrally as a wind turbine in the area (also common sight in California), admittedly the wind turbine is sleeker and more modern, but the pumpjacks have more history.
    RugnirViking · 1789556884 · focus · HN ↗
    only if you're weird and think they dont look lovely?
    altern8 · 1789557200 · focus · HN ↗
    Why, do you like them?
    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.
    RugnirViking · 1789559100 · focus · HN ↗
    of course. Ive not met a person that doesn't like them, either. I love hiking and have travelled pretty wide across europe.
    Solar panels are similarly lovely to see. I'd just as rather see them than a uniform field of corn or maize or somesuch thing. I can't understand the mindset that objects to such things? is it just a straight up childish nimby "I don't want ANYTHING to be built" or would you prefer natural gas+coal power plants ? or any other built structures for that matter (I think they are better than concrete buildings etc - white tree-like things, thin with smooth curved surfaces)
    altern8 · 1789560260 · focus · HN ↗
    I mean... Different people have different opinions.
    I would prefer nuclear
    RugnirViking · 1789568408 · focus · HN ↗
    I'm sorry I came off a little hostile. I do find it hard to understand how people can be so opposed to such clearly necessary infrastructure on purely aesthetic grounds.
    bryanlarsen · 1789570696 · focus · HN ↗
    I know several people who think oil pump jacks are pretty but wind turbines are ugly. Myself, I did a bike tour of Denmark in 2006 partially to see the wind turbines...
    rireads · 1789624803 · focus · HN ↗
    Yikes
    desterothx · 1789559375 · focus · HN ↗
    Yes I have no problems with them looks-wise. They don't build them on parking lots/factory roofs because of efficiency. Good solar panels follow the sun, which isnt really a mechanism practical to setup in a parking lot. maintenance is also a lot easier if you have one field generating a gigawatt of power vs having to service 20 parking lots that generate a gigawatt of power. Also obviously the land itself is cheaper in the countryside. Renewables are operating on relatively thing margins profitability wise, so you really want to make the juice worth the squeeze (the main value being sovereignty from other countries as discussed in the thread)
    timbit42 · 1789753171 · focus · HN ↗
    I like solar panels and windmills because they bring a lot of freedom from oil, an unstable and sometimes scarce commodity, even if the solar and turbines are purchased from China.
    _ink_ · 1789558037 · focus · HN ↗
    Not as much as 4°C temperature increase will do.
  2. AlexandrB · 1789563223 · focus · HN ↗
    Canada has a proven, safe reactor technology[1] and Uranium to spare. This is a good synergy.
    [1] <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CANDU_reactor" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CANDU_reactor
2. fidotron · 1789556208 · focus · HN ↗
  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.
  1. jonapro · 1789556666 · focus · HN ↗
    If by screw things up you mean retain some level of governance then yes... Canada is a confederation, not a federation.
    post-it · 1789558450 · focus · HN ↗
    Canada is definitionally a federation.
  2. post-it · 1789558487 · focus · HN ↗
    Where there's a will, there's a way. There hasn't been a will until now.
    fidotron · 1789559654 · focus · HN ↗
    The only "way" involves greasing the palms of every special interest group in the way until they have successfully accounted for the whole potential revenue of the intended enterprise, and that's what blocked everything repeatedly.
    I'm in Quebec and very familiar with the exact territory this has applied to wrt getting resources out on the east coast, and unless someone was willing to rule by decree to bypass all those entrenched groups it's not happening, and we all know why such decrees would not happen as well.
    post-it · 1789563929 · focus · HN ↗
    They'll ship it out of Churchill. The only special interest groups are Indigenous and they rarely successfully hold up projects that are actually important.
  3. llm_nerd · 1789646573 · focus · HN ↗
    > Trudeau notoriously said "there's no business case" for it
    LNG was at all time low prices at the time, and Canada has an integrated NG pipeline system with the US, and the US has enormous amounts of export capacity as they just repurposed import terminals into export terminals, whereas for Canada it would be a greenfield project.
    I mean, much of that natural gas that the US exports to Europe came from Canada, through that integrated "we're friends and allies" network.
    There wasn't a case for it, because the US wasn't a criminal idiocracy at the time and we had an integrated system.
    I mean, now we're talking about just building our own pipeline system because it has come to that, but at the time Trudeau was absolutely correct. You don't build a tens of billions of dollars terminal just in case a country goes rogue.
3. hengistbury · 1789557727 · focus · HN ↗
  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.
4. llm_nerd · 1789646916 · focus · HN ↗
  > If Trump doesn't like Canada to cuddle with the EU, then it won't happen.
  The US is teetering on the edge of bankruptcy. It has barely any friends in the world, and its economy is on perilously shaky grounds. Crybaby Bessent is desperately trying to scare the bond market, but a run for the exits and the US will be fucked.
  Yeah, Trump is totally just going to cut them off, bro. The fossil fuel companies, that basically run your government, will totally be cool with that too, because they love not making money and accelerating the transition off of their wares.
  American delusions are amazing stuff. As a Canadian it has been astonishing seeing Americans constantly think they have the upper hand in everything and then getting frantic and crazed when it turns out...other people have "hands" as well. Eventually it all turns over to "yeah well we'll invade you!" because that's all you really have.
074287432996 · 1789556100 · focus · HN ↗
Who wouldn’t want to be a subject of the totalitarian megalomaniac von der Leyen?
1. ahartmetz · 1789556410 · focus · HN ↗
  Von der Leyen sucks, but not in that way. She is a careerist with a talent for failing upward - and she failed a lot.
  1. dosisking · 1789556667 · focus · HN ↗
    Von der Leyen was hand-picked by Klaus Schwab
    ahartmetz · 1789562253 · focus · HN ↗
    Schwab is the second most popular bogeyman of internet wackos after George Soros and doesn't have much formal power. So I'm gonna need some credible evidence for that.
N_Lens · 1789556111 · focus · HN ↗
Australia is also seeking a closer alliance with EU and Canada. The world is moving on to a post Us-hegemony era.
All it took was Trump & Republicans
1. graemep · 1789556737 · focus · HN ↗
  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).
  1. N_Lens · 1789556881 · focus · HN ↗
    Not if we kick off WW3 as a last ditch attempt to hold on to the old order ;)
    9dev · 1789557686 · focus · HN ↗
    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.
    desterothx · 1789559054 · focus · HN ↗
    You don't have to look into the animal kingdom, history works too. No ruling empire has fallen silently and without conflict. Changing the world order always included an aggressive transfer of power
    actionfromafar · 1789560001 · focus · HN ↗
    The British Empire dismantling wasn't exactly peaceful, but it could have been much worse. Next to India, everything else becomes a rounding error.
    graemep · 1789560896 · focus · HN ↗
    It was mostly peaceful in itself. There was a lot of conflict that followed in the wake of it as borders and power structures were settled. Just in South Asia we had the partition of India, the secession of Bangladesh from Pakistan, the Sri Lankan civil war, and various smaller separatist conflicts.
    sajithdilshan · 1789593099 · focus · HN ↗
    Not to mention the whole Middle East mess is due to the British on how they drew the borders when they left
    throwaway894345 · 1789562379 · focus · HN ↗
    In the case of my country, USA, we are the ones wounding ourselves. We made the conscious choice to elect a government that prefers isolationism to economic competition, and which rejected near-peer military preparedness in favor of more deadlock wars with third world middle east countries. It’s not like we were somehow victimized by the EU.
    swat535 · 1789569368 · focus · HN ↗
    This unfortunately tends to happen, declining empires usually cause a lot of destruction in history on their way out.
  2. jeroenhd · 1789563950 · focus · HN ↗
    The collapse of the USA as the world leader was already happening, but plenty of countries were under the impression the USA and the other western countries were working together to save the sinking ship.
    The USA did plenty of offensive stuff before that (like a full campaign labeling the French as cowards for not supporting their baseless war in the middle east), but it took until Trump and his unhinged behaviour for the world to see how bad the situation really was.
2. drstewart · 1789558520 · focus · HN ↗
  Meanwhile Poland's share of trade with China is growing over that with Germany: <a href="https://notesfrompoland.com/2026/09/16/china-overtakes-germany-as-polands-biggest-source-of-imports-for-first-time/" rel="nofollow">https://notesfrompoland.com/2026/09/16/china-overtakes-germa...
  The pivot away from Germany / France is starting and will not stop.
  All it took was Merkel and sucking up to Russia.
tvbusy · 1789556121 · focus · HN ↗
Good news. This world needs more cooperation and friendship.
1. nephihaha · 1789556249 · focus · HN ↗
  It's not about friendship but money.
  1. wood_spirit · 1789556396 · focus · HN ↗
    There is a friendly trusting common values part to this too.
  2. cisc · 1789556530 · focus · HN ↗
    It's more about predictability.
    America's become erratic and untrustworthy. America's made a deliberate choice make its reputation worse.
    usewik · 1789556861 · focus · HN ↗
    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.
    arethuza · 1789557726 · focus · HN ↗
    "US is the beacon of democracy"
    40 years ago I probably would have agreed with this statement - these days, not at all.
    usewik · 1789559947 · focus · HN ↗
    This was a kind of example, and not really the point of my comment.
    Though to illustrate further, there are many examples one might find of US acting undemocratically even 40 years ago.
    So, politicians will talk, governments will be in power, and the observers will discuss. My invitation was simply to discuss known facts not political rhetoric. And main facts are largely absent and unknown.
  3. baxtr · 1789556592 · focus · HN ↗
    Friendship is about values?
  4. frereubu · 1789556747 · focus · HN ↗
    Why not both?
  5. the_gipsy · 1789558341 · focus · HN ↗
    The true treasure is the friendship we made along the way.
2. drstewart · 1789559085 · focus · HN ↗
  Define what "friendship" means here and how that differs from "economic or political interests", please?
  1. layer8 · 1789559625 · focus · HN ↗
    It means shared values and a willingness to hold long-term commitments.
3. petcat · 1789560140 · focus · HN ↗
  > This world needs more cooperation and friendship.
  There's no such thing as "friendship" and geopolitics. Everyone should have learned this by now.
  To use the Oracle example, USA is like a lawn mower. If you grease the wheels and keep the gas tank full then it will mow your lawn. But if you stick your hands in the blades then it will cut your fingers off.
  It also might just cut your fingers off anyway.
4. dvrp · 1789560212 · focus · HN ↗
  You may not be interested in politics, but politics is interested in you!
5. dudul · 1789560943 · focus · HN ↗
  Nations don't have friends, they have interests.
  1. Eupolemos · 1789589083 · focus · HN ↗
    Democratic populations have feelings towards each other, including friendship.
    There are plenty of nations I feel my nation has friendships with - if they were bullied, we'd stand up for them on pure reaction.
    Not everything is interests. People are people.
    sajithdilshan · 1789592638 · focus · HN ↗
    This is such a dumb take. Like 80 years ago the so-called Europeans were killing each other. 35 years ago there were 2 German nations that had animosity towards each other. This is why teaching history is important in schools so people don’t live in imaginary land
    dudul · 1789599653 · focus · HN ↗
    Thanks for the good laugh.
    Interesting that you didn't feel the need to say what your "nation" is, or their nation BFFs. It would have allowed us to dig into real data, but no, let's just use feelz instead :)
    People are people, and nation states are nation states. These are different entities.
    orf · 1789642608 · focus · HN ↗
    [delayed]
  2. xethos · 1789593938 · focus · HN ↗
    I'm not sure what you would call it, but the Whiskey War sure reads like a running gag between two friends to me.
    <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whisky_War" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whisky_War
  3. MetroWind · 1789663389 · focus · HN ↗
    The fact that this is downvoted tells a lot about the average level of political literacy on HN
yorwba · 1789556121 · focus · HN ↗
Previous discussion: <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49723424">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49723424 (49 points 2 hours ago, 120 comments)
redsocksfan45 · 1789556179 · focus · HN ↗
[dead]
nephihaha · 1789556222 · focus · HN ↗
The EU is running out of Europe. I thought Turkey or North Africa would be the next steps. Maybe Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan.
1. graemep · 1789556630 · focus · HN ↗
  > 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.
  1. InsideOutSanta · 1789557050 · focus · HN ↗
    Sure, but Turkey is also an authoritarian autocracy, which I think might be a bit of a problem for the EU.
    ReptileMan · 1789557890 · focus · HN ↗
    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.
    mcv · 1789560005 · focus · HN ↗
    Turkey has been a candidate member since forever, but instead of addressing the many problems they need to fix before entry, they're making it worse.
  2. arethuza · 1789557100 · focus · HN ↗
    Fear that Turkey would be "imminently" joining the EU was one of the scare stories used by the Brexit campaign in the UK.
    nephihaha · 1789565854 · focus · HN ↗
    There are already quite a few Turks in the UK, but I don't remember Turkey being used as a specific scare story.
    Either way, it's clear that UK migration levels have not been diminished by Brexit, and much of it is coming from outside the EU... So whatever one thinks of the issue it is bigger than Europe.
    arethuza · 1789567921 · focus · HN ↗
    Dominic Cummings said that the Turkey immigration scare tactic was an important factor in the Brexit result:
    <a href="https://bylinetimes.com/2021/08/12/cummings-brexit-confessions-reveal-the-hollow-heart-of-a-hallowed-project/" rel="nofollow">https://bylinetimes.com/2021/08/12/cummings-brexit-confessio...
    The warnings before Brexit that it would increase immigration - and look what happened!
  3. 9dev · 1789557719 · focus · HN ↗
    No, just too corrupt for the EU.
    sajithdilshan · 1789593593 · focus · HN ↗
    More corrupt than Greece?
  4. account42 · 1789558622 · focus · HN ↗
    More like not culturally aligned enough.
  5. nephihaha · 1789565721 · focus · HN ↗
    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.
  6. rsynnott · 1789570246 · focus · HN ↗
    Talks with Turkey are currently dead because the current government does not wish to continue them; realistically they won't resume until, at the earliest, Erdogan is gone.
2. dncornholio · 1789556661 · focus · HN ↗
  EU is looking for strong democracies, while none of your suggestions are
  1. nephihaha · 1789662282 · focus · HN ↗
    There are some countries in the EU which are not very strong democracies. Slovakia springs to mind. Greece has struggled too within living memory.
3. arethuza · 1789556721 · focus · HN ↗
  The EU covers just over 40% of the area of Europe.
  1. usrnm · 1789559904 · focus · HN ↗
    Another 40% is in Russia, good luck with that
  2. nephihaha · 1789632054 · focus · HN ↗
    Look at what's left in Europe:
    * Nordics: Iceland and Norway which are ambivalent, despite repeated attempts to get them to join. (They are already in EFTA.) Greenland and the Faroe Islands fall more under the dependencies category below.
    * Switzerland which can't because it wishes to be neutral, and also because of the finance sector. The Vatican has some similar issues.
    * Microstates, dependencies and tax havens.
    * Ex-USSR. The Baltics function well in the EU and are the exceptions, but Moldova, Belarus, the Ukraine and Russia each have massive issues. (Including how Moldova doesn't control much of its territory and much of Belarus is contaminated by Chernobyl.)
    * The Balkans. Problematic recent history. I think Albania and North Macedonia may join in the near future. Serbia, Montenegro and Kosovo have ex-USSR style issues.
    * Turkey.
    * The UK, which is problematic since it is the only major state which has left.
4. weatherlite · 1789560657 · focus · HN ↗
  > I thought Turkey
  Oh yeah, that's gonna be hella popular with the voters.
  1. nephihaha · 1789565600 · focus · HN ↗
    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.
    weatherlite · 1789566109 · focus · HN ↗
    > There are already large numbers of Turks in western Europe, particularly Germany
    Define large numbers. It's around 5% or even less in Germany which hosts the biggest Turkish community to the best of my knowledge, and way less in other European countries. Bringing Turkey in imo might dissolve the Union, I don't see anyone trying it soon.
    rsynnott · 1789570291 · focus · HN ↗
    It's not just been floated; Turkey was (and strictly speaking still is, though talks are suspended because Erdogan) an official candidate, in the accession process.
5. dachworker · 1789562149 · focus · HN ↗
  I think in recent times we realized that culture is still very important and just doing realpolitik alone does not work. Turkey and North Africa are way too foreign and bring more problem than benefits.
  1. sajithdilshan · 1789593483 · focus · HN ↗
    Sure, white people only Union. Hitler would have been so proud
marbleotter115 · 1789556265 · focus · HN ↗
[dead]
maelito · 1789556401 · focus · HN ↗
Bienvenue les amis.
1. RRRA · 1789556600 · focus · HN ↗
  Oui, j'ai hâte que l'on partage d'avantage avec l'Europe que les É-U...
  Bonjour du Québec.
  1. musha68k · 1789558979 · focus · HN ↗
    Salut ben fort d'Autriche ! On joue tous ensemble. Cheers to closer ties, Freunde.
  2. LeBit · 1789562309 · focus · HN ↗
    Je suis tellement heureux de constater que Carney bouge rapidement.
    Au début des annonces des tarifs, plusieurs experts disaient que de se découpler des américains étaient impossible à court terme. Nos économies sont trop entrelacées pour changer de cap rapidement.
    Je ne sais pas exactement ce que Carney a en tête , mais j’espère que ça va accélérer le découplage.
    52-6F-62 · 1789579816 · focus · HN ↗
    Il a écrit un livre dans lequel il aborde ce qu'il a dans la tête.
    C'est une bonne interview:
    <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1g0nLGZIzhc" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1g0nLGZIzhc
    Mais les cas les plus extrêmes en Amérique sont relativement récents...
tsss · 1789556421 · focus · HN ↗
Oh god no
pards · 1789556606 · focus · HN ↗
51st state? Pfff. How about 28th EU country!
1. pards · 1789556658 · focus · HN ↗
  Eurovision was just the beginning
2. amai · 1789627132 · focus · HN ↗
  Canada should be careful. The last country that leaned towards the EU got invaded by its jealous neighbor.
cronin101 · 1789556647 · focus · HN ↗
Is this the path to a Bizarro World future where the Commonwealth realms become associate members of the EU to slowly unBrexit?
I don't hate the idea
1. ChrisRR · 1789560269 · focus · HN ↗
  I wouldn't be surprised if Scotland eventually leaves UK and joins the EU. Part of the reason they voted to stay in the UK was so that they could remain in the EU, and then brexit happened
  1. gizajob · 1789560525 · focus · HN ↗
    That can’t happen though because they’d be without a currency in the interim period and it’s also baked in to the EU’s treaties to make this difficult else places like Catalonia and the Basque Country would break away and join the EU, so there are barriers in place to make this less than quick or easy.
    jeroenhd · 1789564236 · focus · HN ↗
    It would be rather foolish, but they can continue using the GBP. Or they can start using the Euro before joining. They wouldn't be able to mint their currency, but plenty of small (often island) nations use foreign currency already.
    Scotland is already a separate country, technically speaking, so I don't think it's comparable with the Basque situation. Furthermore, with the UK leaving the EU, they've opened doors that non-EU members can't use to work around such issues.
    I don't think it'll happen soon, but the desire for independence does seem to be there to a significant extent already: <a href="https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2026/09/13/irish-scots-and-welsh-leaders-meet-to-plot-break-up-uk/?WT.mc_id=tmgoff_tw_post_to-plot-break-up-uk/" rel="nofollow">https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2026/09/13/irish-scots-...
    The largest problem for an independent Scotland trying to join the EU would probably be that the EU doesn't just let anyone join. You need to have a strong enough economy and a grip on national debt to join.
    gizajob · 1789567542 · focus · HN ↗
    I think if you keep researching one of the things that killed the referendum last time was the British government saying a hard no to continued use of the pound while scotland applied to the EU and joined the Euro. Now of course they could keep using the pound, but the amount of economic attacks against Scotland by the City of London and general lack of financial independence seems like it really would kill the idea dead. If Scotland thinks it gets a better deal from the EU than it gets as part of being in the UK then it should go for it but it would be an extremely expensive and fragile 10-15 years in that interim period. And not even full independence, it would be tantamount to saying “we hate the English so much we’d rather be governed from Belgium”.
    graemep · 1789585466 · focus · HN ↗
    IIRC it was not a refusal to allow Scotland to use the pound but to give a Scotland a say in setting interest rates, and even that was not a hard no because terms had not been agreed
    rsynnott · 1789570734 · focus · HN ↗
    > because they’d be without a currency in the interim period
    From independence 1922 to 1979 (when we joined the EMS) Ireland just used a currency pegged to Sterling. An independent Scotland would presumably use a newly-created currency pegged to either Sterling or the Euro, on at least a temporary basis.
    Spain have dropped their threats to veto Scottish accession: <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2017/apr/02/spain-drops-plan-to-impose-veto-if-scotland-tries-to-join-eu" rel="nofollow">https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2017/apr/02/spain-drops...
    gizajob · 1789584992 · focus · HN ↗
    You really think contemporary Scots are going to be alright with that? If we’re saying that Brexit has been economically disastrous for Britain then it seems exiting the UK could be even worse. I’d support the Scots doing it though if they manage to vote for it in a third referendum.
    rsynnott · 1789593219 · focus · HN ↗
    I mean, if pegged against Sterling, they'd be about where they are now; Scotland has no meaningful control over Sterling currently.
  2. graemep · 1789561163 · focus · HN ↗
    They would then have a hard border with England, and would have to untangle their economy from the UK to some extent, which would be extremely disruptive. There will also be complex issues around who gets which citizenship, who would need work visas, a change of currency, etc.
    It was known that there was likely to be a Brexit referendum at the time of the Scottish referendum: Cameron had promised one if the Conservatives won the 2015 election.
Barrin92 · 1789556684 · focus · HN ↗
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.
1. graemep · 1789556911 · focus · HN ↗
  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.
  1. penguin_booze · 1789557220 · focus · HN ↗
    > The UK left
    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.
    graemep · 1789558004 · focus · HN ↗
    > 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?
    khalic · 1789558644 · focus · HN ↗
    Do you seriously consider invasion of other countries a good thing??? What the hell is wrong with people
    graemep · 1789559507 · focus · HN ↗
    > Do you seriously consider invasion of other countries a good thing
    No, of course not.
    Can people please read what I said in the context of the comment i replied to!
    khalic · 1789565413 · focus · HN ↗
    Sorry, corrected
    corford · 1789562011 · focus · HN ↗
    Brexit has caused an estimated ~6-8% per capita loss of output: <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cyv0m164m84o" rel="nofollow">https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cyv0m164m84o
  2. lefra · 1789557952 · focus · HN ↗
    "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.
  3. the_gipsy · 1789558568 · focus · HN ↗
    Do you really think the USA could annex anything but (maybe) Cuba, after seeing how the Iran war is playing out?
  4. etiennebausson · 1789560014 · focus · HN ↗
    Iceland said no because they are afraid of overfishing in their water.
    It isn't an unreasonable fear, especially given their dependance on that food source. Their "No" was perfectly reasonnable from what I can see.
    Britain's "Leave" campain was drowning in lies, exageration, and british-empire nostalgia.
    Those two situations are very different.
  5. Barrin92 · 1789582309 · focus · HN ↗
    >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.
2. drstewart · 1789558852 · focus · HN ↗
  >we seem to be the only large institution that countries still want to voluntarily join, and can voluntarily leave.
  Really? Because there's this organisation called CUSMA that nations can voluntarily leave (the US) and some want to stay in (Canada).
  It's economy is larger than the EU btw.
  1. vrganj · 1789563932 · focus · HN ↗
    CUSMA is just a trade deal, not a full-on organization like the EU.
    If we're doing a trade deal measuring contest, I will just point out that the EU has the world's largest free trade network, including Canada (already), South Korea, most of Latin America, India etc etc.
    drstewart · 1789570056 · focus · HN ↗
    NATO is an organisation and people want to join it - and it has more countries than the EU.
    Let me guess: NATO doesn't count because...
    Sorry, the EU does not have any special mythical status that does not apply to other organisations, unless you want to play word games so it's the only one that even qualifies.
    vrganj · 1789570150 · focus · HN ↗
    Apples, Oranges etc once again. Of course NATO is a completely different kind of organization from the EU.
    The Catholic Church has more members than NATO, too, but it's a completely nonsensical comparison.
    The EU doesn't have some mythical status that doesn't apply to any other organization, it just has a very specific status in political science that it's the most successful example of: Supranationalism.
    Anyways, why are we doing this silly phallus size competition in the first place? Can't we just accept that the EU is a major player on the world stage and that people look up to it?
callamdelaney · 1789556749 · focus · HN ↗
The EU must be stopped
1. jurmous · 1789556962 · focus · HN ↗
  Why? For me as a European it is pretty clear we need to cooperate to not be swooped away by the other big powers.
dude250711 · 1789556874 · focus · HN ↗
Could retroactively mean Earth Union. Let the good ones like Korea and Japan also join.
mannycalavera42 · 1789556954 · focus · HN ↗
Yieppieeee!!! Love you Canada! :waves from Italy
softwaredoug · 1789557035 · focus · HN ↗
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.
1. lnxg33k1 · 1789557188 · focus · HN ↗
  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
  1. softwaredoug · 1789557398 · focus · HN ↗
    Maybe, but it’s way too difficult to do business in the EU.
    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.
    Epa095 · 1789557820 · focus · HN ↗
    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.
    _ink_ · 1789557849 · focus · HN ↗
    > but it’s way too difficult to do business in the EU.
    They are working in it: <a href="https://www.eu-inc.org/" rel="nofollow">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.
    anonzzzies · 1789557924 · focus · HN ↗
    > but it’s way too difficult to do business in the EU
    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.
    mitxela · 1789562564 · focus · HN ↗
    You can't deal with 27 different groups of people without dealing with 27 different groups of people or forcibly unifying them to become 1 group. I'm sure you agree the latter is bad.
    softwaredoug · 1789563376 · focus · HN ↗
    That’s obviously reductive. They don’t have to be forced. They could mutually agree to unify more strongly
    mitxela · 1789567299 · focus · HN ↗
    Yes, and they have in some ways, and that's called the EU. They have not unified in every way. For example the French people have not agreed to start eating Surströmming, they do not want to start eating Surströmming, I don't know whether it's even legal there to possess it, and that decision should rightfully be up to them. If you want to sell your Surströmming in France you have to take France into account, you can't just assume your business will be the same everywhere in Europe, and that's not just limited to laws, but also all other facets of culture. For a basic example, you have to have a version of your packaging written in French.
    lnxg33k1 · 1789595019 · focus · HN ↗
    It's easy to do any business in EU, it's hard if you want to do business in EU over multiple countries, but if you are planning to do business over multiple countries then you're already extremely rich so you can afford staff to navigate regulations
  2. bitcurious · 1789563789 · focus · HN ↗
    > I am not sure, if I see the example of US as federation, it might work well for corporations only, but people have nothing,
    What does this mean, concretely? What do the people not have? Who are those people? What would they have in the EU?
    There is this odd fatalistic attitude about the US in this thread that seems divorced from the reality I’ve experienced in my travels.
    lnxg33k1 · 1789564415 · focus · HN ↗
    universal healthcare, paid time off just to cite two
    work/life balance?
2. cbg0 · 1789557628 · focus · HN ↗
  > 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.
  1. cowboy_henk · 1789557849 · focus · HN ↗
    The EU is not a fiscal union. It is also not yet a single capital market.
  2. jcfrei · 1789558088 · focus · HN ↗
    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.
    etiennebausson · 1789559349 · focus · HN ↗
    You seems to be arguing that a U.S. style single-market would be an improvement.
    But for whom, people or companies?
    jcfrei · 1789560888 · focus · HN ↗
    It's an improvement for the economy and that mainly benefits the shareholders. How you redistribute those gains more broadly is an open question. But keeping inefficiencies in place to protect workers is a losing strategy in the long term - see: Soviet Union.
    Maskawanian · 1789561570 · focus · HN ↗
    Unsurprisingly, people in different parts of the world hold different values. Europe is generally more focused on actual people and how their lives live, than simply accumulation of wealth among the few. It is unsurprising that they focus on different things.
    jcfrei · 1789562533 · focus · HN ↗
    That's easier said than done when you are competing in a global economy. The US is actually getting more consistent here: It starts to become more isolationist (through the trade war and specifically tariffs) and as a result will have more leeway in choosing their own mix of workers rights, compensations, taxation, etc. Sidenote: Of course consumers will be worse off as a result.
    The EU however is in this weird spot where they are pushing for a more integrated global economy (thanks to all kinds of trade deals) with fewer hurdles while at the same time making their own companies less competitive with all these regulations and internal hurdles.
    Maskawanian · 1789562707 · focus · HN ↗
    Thanks for replying to a comment I didn't make. It is clear that your mind is full of American exceptionalism, I'm done in this comment thread. Thanks for your contribution.
    jcfrei · 1789563263 · focus · HN ↗
    FYI: I'm European and worried about our competitiveness. It appears you didn't get my point. You can have different values like you said but then you have to be consistent with this on all levels to make it work. And that means less EU integration into the global economy - the EU doesn't have a clear vision where it wants to go.
    hhh · 1789559621 · focus · HN ↗
    What exactly is the difference between that and 50 states having their own regulations?
    jcfrei · 1789561400 · focus · HN ↗
    [dead]
    peebee67 · 1789562740 · focus · HN ↗
    The absence of a central bank.
    goobatrooba · 1789572073 · focus · HN ↗
    EU has two main legal instruments, regulations and directives. One applies directly, the other needs to be transposed into national law which indeed often ends with gold plating, but the tool is there to give uniform legislation- if all countries agree.
    In addition there are plenty of technical standards which are agreed in expert committees, and these too apply directly. I'd expect Canada would join at least those technical processes and the two sides align technical standards over time.
  3. hobofan · 1789564069 · focus · HN ↗
    > It's also the third largest economy in the world
    If going by GDP (which this claim usually does), the EU as a whole beats out China for second place by ~10%. When going by individual countries Germany alone is the third place behind China, though with a large gap between the two.
3. luckystarr · 1789558302 · focus · HN ↗
  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.
  1. mcv · 1789559866 · focus · HN ↗
    The US was greenfield 2 centuries ago. It currently has a lot more technical (political?) debt than the EU. Some reforms are long overdue.
  2. softwaredoug · 1789560388 · focus · HN ↗
    I want this one to succeed, but refactors often fail and revert to the original code structure :)
4. nickslaughter02 · 1789558551 · focus · HN ↗
  EU is a failed experiment that must be stopped.
  1. akie · 1789558973 · focus · HN ↗
    We disagree.
  2. softwaredoug · 1789563978 · focus · HN ↗
    I think it’s an incomplete experiment. And leaving the EU (Brexit) might be worse than dealing with its excessive proceduralism.
5. graemep · 1789559353 · focus · HN ↗
  > The EU needs to be truly Federal to succeed economically. That might create uniform regulations with more uniform regulations and actually make Europe competitive.
  I agree, but there are huge barriers to taking this step. You need a common identity to create a nation. Americans have one, so do other large nations. The EU does not.
6. hilbert42 · 1789559866 · focus · HN ↗
  "But still able to create additional annoying regulations on top of nation level ones."
  It seems to me the EU is overburdened with trivial regulations (like regulating the maximum power consumption of domestic vacuum cleaners) rather than prioritizing core issues of its single market, manufacturing, trade, etc.
  Trouble is small vested interests hold overly powerful sway over EU-wide policy. The example above is a case in point, individual member states should be able to set their own regulations independently if deemed warranted.
  You're correct, annoying regulations are bloating the EU bureaucracy making it lethargic and uncompetitive.
  1. prof-dr-ir · 1789561665 · focus · HN ↗
    > individual member states should be able to set their own regulations independently if deemed warranted.
    People proclaim this with such confidence, especially in the UK before the Brexit years I must say, and yet there are so many arguments against it.
    First, accepting this goes against a core tenet of the single market, since the single market for vacuum cleaners is now split into 27 little markets. We thus need 27 regulatory bodies to each investigate, and then make a political decision, on the maximum power setting of domestic vacuum cleaners. Then, producers in China will have to make (up to) 27 different models of vacuum cleaners. This is certainly not going to be cheaper, completely destroys the famous Brussels effect [0], all for some token amount of "sovereignty".
    Nations states can sovereignly decide to delegate this process of rule making to Brussels, and domestic vacuum cleaners are a perfectly mundane "case in point" to showcase the benefits of this process. The EU is far from a perfect union, but throwing these frankly naive arguments around will not help it much.
    [0] <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brussels_effect" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brussels_effect
    mitxela · 1789562505 · focus · HN ↗
    Nation states are also free, in practice, to ignore any regulation they don't like and implement their own. Hungary did this for a decade. They usually don't, because there is no benefit to ignoring the more widespread setting on maximum vacuum cleaner power.
7. rich_sasha · 1789560362 · focus · HN ↗
  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 nothing. Or it might rekindle out of nowhere due to some impulse.
  Either way, middle democracies are a somewhat threatened species now, and from their individual PoV an imperfect union might be much better than efficiently staying on their own.
  1. amelius · 1789560823 · focus · HN ↗
    > 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.
    mitxela · 1789562395 · focus · HN ↗
    No, not every decision made in Europe can be vetoed by any EU member state. Only EU decisions can be vetoed by EU member states.
    amelius · 1789562797 · focus · HN ↗
    This was implicit ...
    mitxela · 1789567426 · focus · HN ↗
    Not really! People think everything is about the EU, but that's like an American thinking everything is a UN decision.
    rich_sasha · 1789563096 · focus · HN ↗
    It’s effectively the same as what I mean - or a part of it. You fix this with either better "alignment” (ugh!) ie conviction of going in a particular direction, leading to a consensus. Or in turn, a conviction that the veto is bad and needs to be curbed for the overall benefit of everyone.
    mike_hearn · 1789581304 · focus · HN ↗
    That's not been true for a long time. About 80% of EU laws are passed by qualified majority voting.
  2. hermitShell · 1789561492 · focus · HN ↗
    There are deeper structural problems when you look at the incentives inherent to government driven society.
    While I do appreciate and even support the idea that the immense wealth available on planet earth should be more evenly distributed, and people should mostly be focused on raising families, deepening their philosophy, and perfecting their craft... (some societies in Europe are pretty laid back in terms of hyper-productivity culture)
    Regulation is possible without paralyzing industry. Laws about the internet are possible without stifling freedom. Central planning is possible without crashing the economy so bad you end up with a regime change. It all comes down to execution and for the most part, it's been a series of failed experiments.
    As much as I want a happy future for Canadians and Europeans, I just don't see the odds being super favourable.
    rich_sasha · 1789564180 · focus · HN ↗
    Dunno. My impression is that with the EU, we pick its suboptimal parts and compare them to what they could be with optimal execution.
    We don’t look either at the successful parts, not at the world where it is wholesale gone. My gut feeling is that EU members are, on the whole, much better off for being in than out. One natural experiment is the UK - opinions differ, but the drastic accumulation of problems coincides with Brexit timings.
    I’m all for improving the EU! And for sure there are bad bits. But when your car AC is doing badly, you don’t write off the car. You try to fix the AC…
    hermitShell · 1789583066 · focus · HN ↗
    People sometimes call EU the sleeping giant. Big potential compared to the actual results.
    I'm more aware of what Canadian government does with its tax dollars. And I'm just assuming that the EU is similarly quite expensive for what it achieves, and the budgets only change in one direction.
    rich_sasha · 1789583808 · focus · HN ↗
    EU budget is actually quite small - about 1% of GDP.
    That’s very small compared to EU members states national budgets, which sit at around 35% of GDP, apparently. Canadian federal government apparently spends 18-20% of Canadas GDP, topped up by local governments.
    This is all very apples-to-oranges but doesn’t support the thesis that EU budget is particularly bloated.
8. mitxela · 1789562286 · focus · HN ↗
  The EU shouldn't become the US. EU countries are sovereign, with the practical right to completely ignore what the EU tells them to do, and this is a good thing for now. If an EU country legalizes weed, federal troopers do not march in, arrest all the weed dispensary owners and march them to federal prison because those things don't exist.
  1. softwaredoug · 1789562673 · focus · HN ↗
    Ok but you have to accept that means an EU country works with a hand tied behind its back.
    In the US I can start a company and instantly have a market of 350M. Start a company in an EU country, then try to expand to another country, it’s a nightmare. That company will have a lower upper bound on market size.
    The EU might be a success in coordinating on regional issues, but I don’t think it’s yet an asset to the European economy.
    mitxela · 1789562857 · focus · HN ↗
    Do you propose forcing 27 groups of people to become 1 group just so it's easier to sell them things?
    Culture in Europe is more on sustainable business rather than hypergrowth, but you can expand to other countries too. You just have to have a business strategy catering to all the groups you want to cater to.
    I think it's good the supermarket chains in France and in Germany are mostly disjoint sets, it keeps competition around. Pan-EU Supermarket Inc would be bad.
    softwaredoug · 1789562989 · focus · HN ↗
    I’m just telling you the tradeoffs you’ve chosen. You can’t be an economic superpower in the current regime.
    Without your own “hypergrowth” you’ll always be dominated by the hypergrowth of competitors like the US and China. You’ll be in orbit of other powers instead of creating your own gravity.
    Where am I wrong?
    Waterluvian · 1789564582 · focus · HN ↗
    To pivot a bit from the point above: I'm not sold on the core premise of the need for "hypergrowth." I think the American economy has been an incredible engine for productivity and I mostly agree that there's a lot of things that get in the way of the same in the EU and other countries. But I look around the U.S. and wonder what exactly the goal is if it's not actually giving everyone safer, more comfortable lives.
    mitxela · 1789567455 · focus · HN ↗
    I don't think they are bad tradeoffs. I think there are problems that need to be fixed but the core principles are fine.
    foldr · 1789638940 · focus · HN ↗
    Didn't the US also used to lecture China on how it would never be an economic superpower if it didn't adopt liberal democracy and US-style free market capitalism?
    I think the world is less and less interested in the concept of securing economic growth by copying the exact US economic and political model. Different parts of the world are going to figure this out in different ways.
    dpc050505 · 1789658595 · focus · HN ↗
    When you take the eurozone as a block it puts it only second to the US in terms of GDP, with much better QOL indicators. I don't know how you can think this doesn't place it very much within the realm of economic superpowers.
    Being a superpower doesn't mean much to the americans that live in a town that looks like Gummo. There's a lot of them.
    mitxela · 1789782472 · focus · HN ↗
    Do you propose forcing 27 groups to become the same just so it's easier to sell them things?
    bryanlarsen · 1789583676 · focus · HN ↗
    It's a mixed bag. A European or Canadian company generally builds products for export from day one, giving them a market size of 8B and avoiding surprising and expensive footguns the American company hits when trying to expand outside America.
    bean469 · 1789723364 · focus · HN ↗
    > In the US I can start a company and instantly have a market of 350M. Start a company in an EU country, then try to expand to another country, it’s a nightmare.
    This is not exclusive to the US, though. NordVPN is an example - it launched in Lithuania and now has global reach, and thousands of EU companies have went that path as well. I am not saying that it is on par with the US on this metric, but let's not pretend that such things don't happen in the EU, because they do.
9. tokai · 1789562349 · focus · HN ↗
  You guys are clueless. Just because you don't understand the org and why it isn't exactly like the US doesn't make your vague misplaced opinions valid.
10. Waterluvian · 1789564420 · focus · HN ↗
  What alternative is there? The Americans are not an option anymore. It seems sensible to me that we want to get very close to one major power, and more close to everything else. Diversification.
11. usernametaken29 · 1789564851 · focus · HN ↗
  > 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 sounds economically successful... or not?
  1. goalieca · 1789565639 · focus · HN ↗
    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.
12. bryanlarsen · 1789649990 · focus · HN ↗
  It might not be a good thing, but it's likely the best thing. Canada does not have a lot of good options. Doing nothing is a far worse option.
13. gdilla · 1789656465 · focus · HN ↗
  ok, but Carney has always said it's better than being continually threatened and betrayed by Americans. He's right. I agree that it'll be hard to be beneficial to the EU and Canada, will take decades, but the cost of doing nothing is higher. And people are forgetting this isn't just economic but there's security aspects as well.
harhargange · 1789557224 · focus · HN ↗
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.
1. NuclearPM · 1789557360 · focus · HN ↗
  Blackberry is a sustainable business?
  1. bpye · 1789557608 · focus · HN ↗
    Blackberry might not be, but RIM are still around, QNX is still in use.
2. musha68k · 1789559917 · focus · HN ↗
  [delayed]
  1. PyWoody · 1789562997 · focus · HN ↗
    You might want to look into Gretzky's political beliefs before "importing" him.
    [deleted] · 1789564728 · focus · HN ↗
    [deleted]
3. alibarber · 1789562497 · focus · HN ↗
  From having worked extensively in it, the VFX industry, apart from being near to Hollywood in terms of time zone, is surely just a tax rebate competition. Which is actually very non-EU philosophy; member states cannot simply subsidise local industries from tax revenue - it is a single market, other members have to have equal access to your market as your local companies.
  Of course there's plenty of ways around it. In the case of film production, if the script calls for the characters to be in a specific location - then it's now a cultural asset that the government can fund with rebates. The person writing the script is of course aware of this and the incentives available.
4. whywhywhywhy · 1789571496 · focus · HN ↗
  I mean Blackberry is long gone and missed its full potential, VFX industry only exists there temporarily because of tax credits, once a better deal is offered elsewhere all that will up and leave that’s how that industry works.
  So neither of these are good sustainable examples.
  1. morkalork · 1789575954 · focus · HN ↗
    The VFX industry is in dire straits here
5. raydev · 1789602493 · focus · HN ↗
  From a shadow-of-its-former-glory-20-years-ago company to a budding industry reliant on dollars from outside Canada?
neom · 1789557380 · focus · HN ↗
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. :)
1. dmos62 · 1789557594 · focus · HN ↗
  > as long as we don't need to be involved in their regulatory or legal regimes
  EU has such a bad name in these circles. As a EU citizen, I cherish these same regimes.
  1. Autious · 1789557781 · focus · HN ↗
    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.
    nonethewiser · 1789558189 · focus · HN ↗
    PPWR is an obvious one. Its such a dysfunctional law that they actually told people to ignore it.
    mitxela · 1789561446 · focus · HN ↗
    Programmers keep thinking law is if/then, it's not, it's a set of instructions to judges, which may contain obvious errors or conflict with other instructions, which is why we allow humans to interpret them instead of computers.
    nonethewiser · 1789616725 · focus · HN ↗
    Do you grant that there are poorly written laws?
    Are you defending PPWR? Not in spirit but actual implementation?
    It will never get so-far as the judge because the EU has already admitted the law cant be followed and arent going to be taking people to court over it.
    Regardless of the intent, it's an abject failure.
    fidotron · 1789558323 · focus · HN ↗
    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.
    bryanlarsen · 1789563060 · focus · HN ↗
    Provincial trade barriers basically only exist in two areas: liquor and labor licensing.
    graemep · 1789558424 · focus · HN ↗
    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.
    jeltz · 1789559809 · focus · HN ↗
    Having health with VATMOSS too my experience is that it was trivial to implement. Maybe your country fucked up the rollout? Here in Sweden I had zero issues.
    graemep · 1789560645 · focus · HN ↗
    Its not the country, its the implementation cost for small businesses. In particular the ceiling for registration was so low that even micro-businesses with minimal cross border sales had to comply.
    Its would have been trivial for a big business, but it was not for small businesses.
    fc417fc802 · 1789560970 · focus · HN ↗
    > too strict for small businesses and non-profits
    Maybe just calibrated poorly. Small enough and IMO the only important rule is no sharing with others. That should always be strictly enforced. But why worry about how some small timer handles my personal data or if I can make various requests of him? The stakes are too small to matter.
    neom · 1789558486 · focus · HN ↗
    ...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 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]<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dairy_and_poultry_supply_management_in_Canada" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dairy_and_poultry_supply_manag...
    Jackpillar · 1789564701 · focus · HN ↗
    You're on a tech-focused Silicon Valley based news forum. Most people here think if you're not carte blanche allowing your Ai companies unfettered hyperscale economy-threatening death spiral infrastructure investments for a nebulous end goal that benefits a small minority with undertones of civilizational collapse and mass unemployment then you're a over-regulatory nanny-state that is crushing innovation.
  2. jorvi · 1789557829 · focus · HN ↗
    Yup. Oh no, my meat isn't pumped full of hormones and vacuums aren't allowed to be hearing-damagingly loud. The horror..
    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.
    ocd · 1789558137 · focus · HN ↗
    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.
    SyneRyder · 1789560287 · focus · HN ↗
    I don't mind countries setting their own rules for the food they want to consume, and for sure the EU can be overly bureaucratic.
    On the other hand, the US is the only country I've been to where I have purchased milk in a completely sealed plastic container, and it was rancid when I opened it. Upstate New York is proud of their local and organic produce, but they are selling rancid milk in stores like that's a normal thing. That was a shock as a visiting Australian.
    next_xibalba · 1789566320 · focus · HN ↗
    > purchased milk in a completely sealed plastic container, and it was rancid when I opened it
    I've lived in the U.S. for 40 years in 8 different states and twice as many cities. Never once have I experienced this.
    wateralien · 1789564270 · focus · HN ↗
    Oh no, my Haribos aren't full of artificial colours.
    swiftcoder · 1789565457 · focus · HN ↗
    I remember a delightful trip to Canada, where I ordered a hamburger, and they'd only let me have it well-done. I asked why, and the waitress says "The beef comes from the US", with a grimace...
  3. Grombobulous · 1789557839 · focus · HN ↗
    How dare the EU try to preserve competitive open markets. We can’t have capitalism in the leveragist serfdom economy!
  4. lawn · 1789558270 · focus · HN ↗
    As a Swede I have a bunch of grievances with the EU but when I look at the US I can't help but feel how lucky I am to live on this side of the pond.
    graemep · 1789558925 · focus · HN ↗
    I am British, pro-Brexit, and still prefer France to the US as a neighbour. I would have always said that - its not just Trump.
    mcv · 1789559066 · focus · HN ↗
    Exactly. The EU has plenty of faults, but I don't see anything better. Improving on the EU is better than abandoning it.
    WarmWash · 1789567170 · focus · HN ↗
    Keep in mind, social media and western online dialogue is extremely US centric. If every country was a house, the US is where everyone meets to party. So every spec of dust spawns endless content for everyone to dig into. Nevermind that people who have the most time to spend on social media, dictate the narratives that are popular.
    The reality is that the US better if you have money (like white collar salary man level) and (much) worse if you are an odds-and-ends gig economy type worker (like an influencer).
    From the vantage point of a ~75% income bracket home, moving to Europe is almost purely downsides (conventionally, some people give up everything for their dream to live in a cold dank cave)
    dmos62 · 1789631222 · focus · HN ↗
    You can't make that generalization. What you describe will be different city to city, not to mention country to country. Further, privacy and safety regulations (which are EU-wide) will not be available in US, independent of income.
2. ajuc · 1789557769 · focus · HN ↗
  > 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.
3. FabCH · 1789557897 · focus · HN ↗
  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."
  1. post-it · 1789558150 · focus · HN ↗
    Canada will be competing in Eurovision 2027 in May. :)
    SyneRyder · 1789559599 · focus · HN ↗
    Also, being a European Broadcasting Union (EBU) "Associate Member" is the name for the mechanism that allowed Australia, Canada and other countries to be admitted into Eurovision.
    If you've been around the ESC scene, you know there's a lot of embassy involvement (parties in embassies are a thing), the scene is catnip for those interested in politics, the politically active, and to some extent politicians. Eurovision is also one mechanism for discussions of economic development. Hosting the contest is usually an excuse for upgrades to public infrastructure.
    And there's Eurovision Asia starting in November. South Korea is an Associate Member of the EBU, for example.
    <a href="https://www.ebu.ch/news/2026/03/bangkok-to-host-first-ever-eurovision-song-contest-asia-in-2026" rel="nofollow">https://www.ebu.ch/news/2026/03/bangkok-to-host-first-ever-e...
    fidotron · 1789560490 · focus · HN ↗
    > If you've been around the ESC scene
    This is a euphemism on par with attending parties in parts of the SFO AI community.
    embedding-shape · 1789560634 · focus · HN ↗
    Having been around both, the ESC isn't nearly as drug-fueled as the other, for better or worse.
    pantalaimon · 1789562769 · focus · HN ↗
    Only if you don't count alcohol
    SyneRyder · 1789567845 · focus · HN ↗
    Ahh, that one time the Belarussian delegation tried importing so much alcohol into [host country] to give away for free to everyone at the artist party, that it was all seized at the [host country] border and caused a minor diplomatic incident. The free chocolate branded with the artist's face made it in though. Fun times.
    And that wasn't the year that Belarus sent "I Love Belarus" as their Eurovision song.
    SyneRyder · 1789568269 · focus · HN ↗
    lol, this took longer to land with me than it should have, being the token "not in the target demographic" guy. And now I know more than I wanted to know about the AI scene ;)
    rsynnott · 1789564871 · focus · HN ↗
    > Eurovision Asia
    _Terrible_ naming.
    SyneRyder · 1789567334 · focus · HN ↗
    You'd think so, and I intuitively agree.
    But the concept has floated around for over a decade under several different project names - Asiavision, Our Sound, ABU Song Contest. Somehow "Eurovision Asia" is the one that got countries to sign on and participate. There's a stronger political statement in Asian countries participating in "Eurovision" than in "Our Sound". It surprises me, but 2026 has brought a lot of global cultural & political shifts.
    The American version was "The American Song Contest", hosted by Snoop Dogg & Kelly Clarkson, with US states competing against each other. Most Americans don't even know it ever happened.
    Russia has its own rival "Intervision Song Contest", which the US participates in. Something something global cultural shifts.
    guiriduro · 1789560257 · focus · HN ↗
    Unless genocidal regimes are excluded, I wouldn't bother.
    mitxela · 1789561222 · focus · HN ↗
    So no France, Germany, Australia, or UK
    isgb · 1789561394 · focus · HN ↗
    Doubtful, Eurovision only accepts countries actively participating in extermination/genocide campaigns.
  2. wewewedxfgdf · 1789558250 · focus · HN ↗
    Freedom of movement with the EU and no border with the USA hm....
  3. paganel · 1789558330 · focus · HN ↗
    > and legislative integration
    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.
    throw0101c · 1789558577 · focus · HN ↗
    > Does Canada's agricultural output follow EU's (quite strict) norms?
    Which output specifically? To take one example, the Dijon mustard coming out of France is mostly from Canadian mustard seeds:
    * <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dijon_mustard#2022_shortage_in_France" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dijon_mustard#2022_shortage_in...
    b112 · 1789562429 · focus · HN ↗
    I want to know the person who grows the celery seeds.
    I bought a box 37 years ago, a tiny little box, and I've been using it to season soups, almost weekly that whole time.
    There can't be more than one guy that grows those seeds, for the entire planet! So my questions are, first who is this guy, and second is the in the EU?
    Also, has anybody else noticed this?
    noir_lord · 1789559239 · focus · HN ↗
    It's not an insurmountable problem if they don't have compatibility on standards
    It'll just take time to reach an agreement both sides can accept and it's in some ways simpler than something like the EU-Mercosur agreement since one "side" is a unified country rather that been two trading bloc's negotiating.
    It's fascinating watching the world re-align so quickly (by diplomatic/negotiation standards).
    justincormack · 1789560308 · focus · HN ↗
    EU signed a free trade agreement with Canada but its never been ratified
    rsynnott · 1789571105 · focus · HN ↗
    It's provisionally in force, though (fairly standard for EU trade agreements, which take _forever_ to fully ratify).
    embedding-shape · 1789560914 · focus · HN ↗
    > Does Canada's agricultural output follow EU's (quite strict) norms?
    It might not be as strict anymore, as the EU-Mercosur Agreement seemingly ended up relaxing a bit on the strict norms and regulations. Many farmers were/are protesting this agreement exactly because the farmers in South America would compete against local farmers who are more strictly regulated.
    So, seems we're a bit flexible on that front, when push comes to shove :)
    Sharlin · 1789561439 · focus · HN ↗
    It has become pretty clear that even the mainstream right wingers of the EU appear to be ready and willing to drop or loosen all kinds of annoying ethical, environmental, and consumer protection regulations at a moment's notice if it helps large corporations make more money.
    rsynnott · 1789567991 · focus · HN ↗
    "Single market (but food treated specially)" wouldn't be unprecedented; Switzerland was basically like this for a long time.
    Working Time Directive may be more of a sticking point, though Canada doesn't seem _that_ far away from aligned with it anyway (big difference would be on paid time off, where Canada's way under the minimum).
    bryanlarsen · 1789570273 · focus · HN ↗
    AFAICT many EU nations let stat holidays count towards the paid time off allowance. Ontario has 9 stat holidays. 10 paid days off guaranteed + 9 stat holidays is pretty close to the 20 required by Europe's paid time off guarantees.
    rsynnott · 1789571021 · focus · HN ↗
    Which countries are these? The UK used to have a derogation which allowed them to do this, and Malta has some weird thing, but otherwise I wasn't aware of any exceptions?
    bryanlarsen · 1789572055 · focus · HN ↗
    France too, but since they set their minimum at 30 + May 1st it basically comes out in the wash.
    rsynnott · 1789579318 · focus · HN ↗
    I think that’s a non-issue, then, as the requirement is only four working weeks.
  4. unsupp0rted · 1789558431 · focus · HN ↗
    [delayed]
  5. shevy-java · 1789558542 · focus · HN ↗
    > no payments into each others budget.
    > 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.
    graemep · 1789558801 · focus · HN ↗
    UK does not pay.
    The EU is likely to develop a military at some point and has some defence cooperation. if you do not trust the US, that means you cannot rely on NATO, which means you need some alternative.
    > Right now it seems to me that e. g. Carney, and Leyen, use this more as promo-tour.
    I agree. It might be meant as a threat to influence US policy.
    ifwinterco · 1789559856 · focus · HN ↗
    That could be a european Nato though, doesn't mean you need literally one EU army
    graemep · 1789560557 · focus · HN ↗
    Yes, and it might be a good idea. It should probably not be part of the EU though - there are a number of non-EU countries you would want in a European NATO such as the UK, Norway and Iceland.
    vintermann · 1789559883 · focus · HN ↗
    Israel's public broadcaster is a long time member of the European Broadcasting Union, which has nothing to do with EU, and honestly not all that much to do with Europe either. EBU organizes Eurovision. Why Israel's public broadcaster wanted to be part of EBU I don't know, cultural identification with Europe I guess? You'd have to ask them.
    But either way that's not the scandal. The scandal is that Russia's broadcaster got kicked out for Russia doing bad things (fair enough) but Israel's was kept in despite their government doing even worse things.
    jeltz · 1789560300 · focus · HN ↗
    Yeah, the scandal is about different members being held to different standards. Why are Azerbaijan and Israel allowed to stay while Russia got kicked out? Especially since Azerbaijan and Israel both have manipulated the voting in addition to waging wars.
    vintermann · 1789560462 · focus · HN ↗
    Yeah, Azerbaijan is another which is often forgotten. Honestly, it seems Eurovision is mostly interesting for countries that need PR help. I'd be happy to see the whole thing go, it's outlived what little purpose it had.
    mitxela · 1789561403 · focus · HN ↗
    Because Russia is an enemy of Europe while Israel is an ally.
    flohofwoe · 1789561722 · focus · HN ↗
    > ...while Russia got kicked out?
    For starters, neither Israel nor Azerbaijan threaten Europe with nuklear annihation on a nearly weekly basis.
    throw-the-towel · 1789563673 · focus · HN ↗
    Europe was created on the explicit premise of opposing Russia.
    mschuster91 · 1789562105 · focus · HN ↗
    Simple, for one the ITU region assignment, there's a bunch of other countries in Africa and Asia that are in the European Broacasting Area and thus eligible to join the EBU.
    The other thing more applies to other sports like soccer, most Arab countries (but especially Iran) will not accept having to work with Israel because it would require them to accept Israel as a legitimate country.
    2muchcoffeeman · 1789559966 · focus · HN ↗
    > 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.
    Eligibility to compete is not based on country, but my membership to the European Braodcasting Union of which Israel is a member, and Australian SBS is an associate member and was allowed to compete as a special case.
    Don't bring Eurovision into it. Learn to lighten up and have some fun instead.
    embedding-shape · 1789561014 · focus · HN ↗
    Agree, any country in the world should be able to participate in ESC, as long as the country agrees with peace, love and understanding. So yes, please ban Israel as soon as possible, together with any other countries that don't share these three very basic principles, that seemingly is easy for all the other participants to follow.
    2muchcoffeeman · 1789594236 · focus · HN ↗
    I get that they’ve done dodgy things in the past.
    And I agree that they should behave in a consistent manner.
    But it’s a song contest…
    Cyph0n · 1789561439 · focus · HN ↗
    > Don't bring Eurovision into it. Learn to lighten up and have some fun instead.
    So then why was Russia kicked out?
    greenavocado · 1789561744 · focus · HN ↗
    > Learn to lighten up and have some fun instead.
    Easy to say if you haven't experienced the killings
    ngruhn · 1789561743 · focus · HN ↗
    > > Common defense was already agreed anyhow.
    > Where and how?
    NATO presumably
    FabCH · 1789562635 · focus · HN ↗
    NATO, but also more importantly SAFE 2026.
    Canada gets significantly better deal than any other non-EU country.
    fangspire · 1789561758 · focus · HN ↗
    [flagged]
    tomhow · 1789625710 · focus · HN ↗
    Whatever this is meant to mean, please don't post it here. It's absolutely not what this site is for. <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html">https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
  6. bayindirh · 1789558696 · focus · HN ↗
    Being an Associate Country (or Associate State) doesn't guarantee visa-free travel (ask how we know), yet I'm sure that Canadians will get it served on a silver platter.
    FabCH · 1789580205 · focus · HN ↗
    You are confusing the current „candidate members“ with the new „associate member“ that doesn’t exist yet and is basically something Canada will get first.
    Among other things, they mentioned „recognition of professional qualifications“ in their speeches today, which is the first step in freedom of movement, so the direction is there.
    Also, visa free is a third thing, which already exists for Canada/EU. Neither needs a visa to travel to the other.
  7. bluecalm · 1789558824 · focus · HN ↗
    >>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.
    This version of EU integration is more popular than EU itself in significant part of EU right now.
    ChrisRR · 1789559687 · focus · HN ↗
    This was one of the stupid things that was touted as a benefit of not being in the EU during brexit.
    That we'd still have to comply with EU rules if we wanted to trade with them, but we wouldn't have any vote in those rules
    Fnoord · 1789561651 · focus · HN ↗
    Well, the Brexit campaign was manipulated by a state actor (or rather: 'a criminal actor disguised as a state'). None of the alt-right nationalism is in the long-term benefits of the country. This is globalism, the end game. You either team up, thereby reducing your costs, or you get swallowed. Ask Ukraine, Tibet, Hong Kong how it worked out for them not belonging to a bigger team. So divide and conquer is a logical move for the opponent, and it happens to align with alt-right. There is also documented evidence of external influence in these. A medium such as Follow The Money has documented such in various of their articles.
    whisperenjoyer · 1789567103 · focus · HN ↗
    > Ask Ukraine
    The whole political course of Ukraine in the last ~20 years is mostly about teaming up with EU and NATO, isn't it?
    rsynnott · 1789567832 · focus · HN ↗
    ... No. Not until this: <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolution_of_Dignity" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolution_of_Dignity
    bryanlarsen · 1789568117 · focus · HN ↗
    Yanukovych was elected in 2010 promising "economic modernisation, greater economic ties with the EU, and military non-alignment." (<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viktor_Yanukovych" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viktor_Yanukovych). His backsliding on those promises is what caused the Revolution of Dignity. I think the OP's statement is roughly accurate.
    dragonwriter · 1789568296 · focus · HN ↗
    Nope, not the part between the NATO bending to Russian demands not to extend Membership Action Plans to Ukraine and Georgia in 2008 (followed immediately by the Russian invasion of Georgia)—when Ukraine abandoned pursuit of NATO membership—and the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2014 (after which it resumed pursuit to of NATO membership.)
    The resumption is sometimes tied to the Revolution of Dignity preceding the Russian invasion, and even occasionally claimed to be a reason for the invasion, but the decision to abandon the neutrality position was well after and a response to the invasion rather than the other way around.
  8. DanielHB · 1789558889 · focus · HN ↗
    How is this different from the EEA (Norway/Switzerland/Iceland)?
    moeadham · 1789559277 · focus · HN ↗
    EEA you have to follow rules but get no say in said rules.
    embedding-shape · 1789559399 · focus · HN ↗
    To "join" the EEA both sides/parties of it has to agree, so yes, members do have a say, it's beneficial (and should be) to both parties of the agreements.
    QuantumNomad_ · 1789559423 · focus · HN ↗
    Will Canada have to follow the rules? Will Canada have a say in the rules?
    gizajob · 1789562673 · focus · HN ↗
    Follow, yes. Say, very little.
    icantevenhold · 1789559545 · focus · HN ↗
    Reductive to the point of untruth
    mitxela · 1789561302 · focus · HN ↗
    Like me when I sign up for Hacker News or Twitter.
    embedding-shape · 1789559328 · focus · HN ↗
    [delayed]
    FabCH · 1789562369 · focus · HN ↗
    Jurisdiction of ECJ and boring normative stuff like languages on packing.
  9. klelatti · 1789559328 · focus · HN ↗
    > 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 it without budgetary contributions.
    fidotron · 1789560403 · focus · HN ↗
    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.
    corford · 1789561057 · focus · HN ↗
    >inflexibility on the EU side triggered the Brexit referendum.
    That's a bit of a stretch
    fidotron · 1789561741 · focus · HN ↗
    It's literally what happened.
    Cameron was trying to reduce the scope of EU integration with the UK (esp freedom of movement), with the threat he didn't want to use of a referendum, the EU said no (as the other commenter explained partly to disincentivize others, but also because they thought he was bluffing and people would never vote to leave), so the referendum was held.
    thih9 · 1789561995 · focus · HN ↗
    To be fair, freedom of movement is one of the core principles[1] of the EU.
    Restricting that is a tall ask, I wouldn't describe refusing that as being inflexible.
    [1]: <a href="https://european-union.europa.eu/principles-countries-history/principles-and-values/aims-and-values_en" rel="nofollow">https://european-union.europa.eu/principles-countries-histor... "Freedom of movement gives citizens the right to move and reside freely within the Union."
    gizajob · 1789562472 · focus · HN ↗
    I kind of made a point like this in the other thread - during Brexit it was a very hard No from the EU that they couldn’t negotiate on key points such as freedom of movement, and countries are either IN and have everything the EU comes with, or they’re out. Now, it seems, that Canada is being offered a favourable half-in arrangement simply because they’ve never before been involved. Seems pretty bizarre and arbitrary for the EU, but also totally standard for the EU because it’s bizarre and arbitrary.
    foldr · 1789563320 · focus · HN ↗
    This potential deal for Canada comes with compromises which would obviously be unacceptable to the UK (e.g. no full voting rights).
    gizajob · 1789563550 · focus · HN ↗
    Likely as unacceptable to Canadians.
    rsynnott · 1789564539 · focus · HN ↗
    EEA nations (Norway, Iceland etc) have found them acceptable, and preferable to fully joining up.
    thunderfork · 1789565041 · focus · HN ↗
    It's fine by me (sample size 1 Canuck)
    fidotron · 1789563658 · focus · HN ↗
    Does anyone actually know publicly what is and isn't the deal for associate membership?
    At least here (in Canada) I'm not seeing any concrete details.
    jeromegv · 1789564811 · focus · HN ↗
    No, nothing public, we are all speculating. But we can surely guess at 99% that Canada would get no voting power, being that we are in North America and Canada isn't interested in that kind of arrangement.
    drdexebtjl · 1789563749 · focus · HN ↗
    The crucial distinction is which half is in which “half-in” agreement.
    They are not offering Canada conditions that the UK would have wanted.
    Jackpillar · 1789564469 · focus · HN ↗
    Not sure why its so difficult for you to understand the obvious goal of taking a hardline stance on leaving the EU as a member state vs onboarding possible partnerships, members, etc. You're looking at this backwards.
    grumbelbart2 · 1789565022 · focus · HN ↗
    Cameron wanted to split the four freedoms. Canada does not, from what I can read.
    antalis · 1789565084 · focus · HN ↗
    That's wrong, he did get what he wanted before the referendum: "After the deal had been approved, Cameron described it as giving the United Kingdom "special status within the European Union" and immediately declared that both he and the UK Government would campaign for a "Remain" vote in the referendum within a "reformed European Union"." <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2015%E2%80%932016_United_Kingdom_renegotiation_of_European_Union_membership" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2015%E2%80%932016_United_Kingd...
    rjsw · 1789567176 · focus · HN ↗
    I think that the EU would be in worse shape today if the UK had followed most other members at the time and restricted freedom of movement to it for the countries that joined in 2004 and 2007. It would have been nice to have got some credit for that.
    Sharlin · 1789561131 · focus · HN ↗
    The UK already enjoyed a large amount of unique concessions as a full member. The rest of the EU was right not to give in. Also, game theoretically it's of course more important to not make leaving (or threatening to leave) the union seem too lucrative. No such problem in negotiating tighter integration with nonmembers (and in retrospect, many of the old WP countries should've joined as something like associate members at first…)
    fidotron · 1789561525 · focus · HN ↗
    This is the other part: if associate membership is a thing then won't half of the EU start thinking that's their future?
    Sharlin · 1789561706 · focus · HN ↗
    > Also, game theoretically it's of course more important to not make leaving (or threatening to leave) the union seem too lucrative.
    Because you simply wouldn't be offered the option of just deescalating your full membership to an associate membership. If you want to leave, you leave fully, and then in time we can discuss what happens next.
    fidotron · 1789561816 · focus · HN ↗
    This makes being involved as little as possible but no more far more attractive than being bound too tightly together though.
    Almost like many of the EU states were misled into their current situations.
    Sharlin · 1789562251 · focus · HN ↗
    How so? Many EU states have benefited enormously from being on the receiving side of EU subsidies, which obviously would be out of the question without full integration.
    fidotron · 1789562729 · focus · HN ↗
    It literally privileges people in countries outside the EU by giving them more rights than those inside.
    Which many people inside the EU would observe seems completely consistent with EU behaviour.
    Edit to add: "Being misled" would refer to the way the EU was sold to many participants in earlier decades as an economic union, and not an all encompassing political one, with it simply ratcheting that way. Whenever objections occurred referenda would simply be repeated until the populations complied. It's far from the exercise in democracy that proponents promote. (This is distinct from saying it is _all bad_).
    Sharlin · 1789562995 · focus · HN ↗
    Your position seems so astonishingly alien that I don't even know how to start replying. It seems biased against the entire concept of how human cooperation works.
    fidotron · 1789564001 · focus · HN ↗
    My position is hardly rare. Iceland didn't join at least partly because they were suspicious of intentions regarding fishing.
    Human cooperation does not mean misleading your compatriots into deals that you then ratchet up ever further until it becomes completely intolerable.
    There are reasons that in the long run flexibility wins.
    rsynnott · 1789564416 · focus · HN ↗
    > It literally privileges people in countries outside the EU by giving them more rights than those inside.
    Mostly, like, the right to have, say, your own standards on chemical safety, tho. That is generally not something that most people would _want_; it basically just means you lose your job because import/export becomes, if not impossible, at least bureaucratically expensive enough that people will just buy from elsewhere.
    johannes1234321 · 1789563587 · focus · HN ↗
    There is always the debate around "Europe of two speeds" - where there is a deeply integrated core of nations, maybe even going towards "United States of Europe" and the others tightly associated, but not fully integrated.
    Of course the set of countries and level of integration depends on whom you ask
    gizajob · 1789566259 · focus · HN ↗
    It would be towards “The United States of Germany”, not Europe.
    rsynnott · 1789563908 · focus · HN ↗
    Maybe, and that might actually be okay from the EC’s pov. There’s a fairly old proposal for a ‘two speed EU’; a core that accelerates towards near-federalism with a more eurosceptic periphery.
    fidotron · 1789564133 · focus · HN ↗
    Right. The oddity now is the euroscepticism is rooted in the countries previously considered the core.
    I am of the view the UK should never have joined as a full member, and it would have been better to establish the two speed membership way back then, allowing France and Germany particularly to engage in further integration without mutual interference involving the UK.
    soco · 1789565478 · focus · HN ↗
    Let's face it, UK never was "full member", for all means. But that's beside the actual point: the German/French euro-skeptics see their countries paying the eastern block a lot of money, sees that same block totally ungrateful about it (ooga booga colonialism), but at the same time don't notice their own employers happy to have such markets at their fingertips - because said markets grab also jobs at their expense, again something the eastern block actively ignores. At the same times the ruling parties everywhere won't touch a running system (even when it's barely running) to not lose their hard won privileges, and the rightwing grows claiming imaginary but heartwarming solutions.

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