Thread

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

693 points · 905 comments · hackernj

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. 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. 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.
    lII1lIlI11ll · 1789564680 · 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?
    Presumably by "half of the EU" you mean (sometimes) euro-sceptic states like Hungary or Poland? Well, these are not in EU because some illuminati/lizard people tricked them into joining and now won't allow them to leave, like some of their politicians would like you to believe, but because they enjoy billions of subsidies per year.
    740273730191 · 1789565421 · focus · HN ↗
    [dead]
    fidotron · 1789566521 · focus · HN ↗
    There is a strong case that much of the eastern bloc were tricked into joining, by the UK, in order to weaken the Franco-German efforts for ever closer union.
    This was even a joke in the UK at the time. <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZVYqB0uTKlE" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZVYqB0uTKlE
    lII1lIlI11ll · 1789567884 · focus · HN ↗
    Could you elaborate regarding how exactly were eastern bloc countries "tricked" into joining by the UK? And what prevents them from leaving now that the tricksters from UK have long since left themselves?
    fidotron · 1789568796 · focus · HN ↗
    I refer you to the video as to the why and how, keeping in mind that's before the Berlin Wall came down.
    The Brits have a habit of only telling you the precise truth when they think you think they're joking.
    lII1lIlI11ll · 1789569269 · focus · HN ↗
    A clip from a comedic fiction TV series? So much for a "strong case to be made"...
    whywhywhywhy · 1789571949 · focus · HN ↗
    > the tricksters from UK have long since left themselves?
    This wasn’t intentional of the people who started the cogs turning, it was meant to be an empty gesture to get elected, no one expected it to actually pass.
    ricardobayes · 1789567321 · focus · HN ↗
    I would like to make a slight correction: the hungarian public opinion was never, ever euro-sceptic. This was one of the major reason the previous government was voted out, because they didn't reflect the will of the people. Opinion polls regularly poll 70-80% of EU approval despite being decade-long propaganda trying to change peoples' minds, making Hungary de facto one of the most pro-EU countries in EU.
    teamonkey · 1789561348 · focus · HN ↗
    I don’t think Cameron did much serious negotiation on this front. He resigned the evening of the referendum results.
    It was a deliberate choice by his successors to pursue a hard Brexit. A softer Brexit was always possible and likely would have been more acceptable to the EU, as it would have had less financial impact and disruption to trade.
    fidotron · 1789561938 · focus · HN ↗
    That's what happened afterwards.
    The referendum was triggered by a failed negotiation between Cameron and the EU in the first place.
    jeromegv · 1789564745 · focus · HN ↗
    The referendum was triggered by him making a bad political calculation that he would win it and could squash the aisle of his party that was pushing his idea. This was never truly due to a failed negotiation. The hardliners in his party wanted entirely out either way.
    antalis · 1789564967 · focus · HN ↗
    You've got it wrong: "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...
    fidotron · 1789566142 · focus · HN ↗
    There's no planet on which Cameron's visit that time was regarded by anyone on any side as anything other than a failure. Cameron was simply putting a face on it.
    It has pissed off the EU (understandably), pissed off his own supporters, and pissed off his enemies.
    foldr · 1789567405 · focus · HN ↗
    The point is that the referendum was an unconditional 2015 Conservative manifesto promise, and was going to happen anyway, regardless of how Cameron's renegotiations with the EU went (sources here: <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49726666">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49726666)
    The outcome of the negotiations may have affected the course of the Leave and Remain campaigns, but it was not the trigger for the referendum itself.
    theplumber · 1789564999 · focus · HN ↗
    This is was about immigration. I don’t understand why people are still in denial about this. I am pretty sure it would have happened anyway regardless of what economic concessions UK would have got. It’s worth to note that the immigration is still an issue in the UK and the EU and I think more EU members will leave because of this.
    fidotron · 1789565846 · focus · HN ↗
    Exactly. And, let's face it, democracy. Either the people in the UK wanted freedom of movement or they didn't, and they voted on that basis.
    People don't exactly feel they agreed to the Boriswave either, and now when I am back visiting the UK it's noticeably the most racist it's ever been, by a very significant distance.
    I'm in Canada now and Canada has the same dynamics going on.
    nutjob2 · 1789568017 · focus · HN ↗
    > Exactly. And, let's face it, democracy. Either the people in the UK wanted freedom of movement or they didn't, and they voted on that basis.
    It was neither. They wanted freedom of movement that was only one way. In fact they didn't know what they wanted because they were sold a bill of goods when it came to Brexit.
    gizajob · 1789566414 · focus · HN ↗
    I think this is what will kill it in Canada too. There’s maybe only a million Canadian citizens who would be interested in the idea of freedom of movement to Europe. There’s probably 10-20 million Canadian citizens who would be a hard “absolutely no way” to opening their borders to 250 million random Europeans in return.
    bryanlarsen · 1789566936 · focus · HN ↗
    44% of Canadians support re-opening immigration; I'm willing to bet that a larger number would support immigration from EU nations.
    gizajob · 1789567023 · focus · HN ↗
    So you’re saying 56% of Canadians would vote No?
    bryanlarsen · 1789567328 · focus · HN ↗
    > I'm willing to bet that a larger number would support immigration from EU nations.
    Especially if it was a reciprocal right.
    fidotron · 1789569216 · focus · HN ↗
    If it involved being able to leave Canada in perpetuity without an exit tax, which would open the floodgates in a most unintentional way.
    theplumber · 1789602380 · focus · HN ↗
    Yeah but you have to wonder why the EU nations themselves are not very happy with the EU immigration. One part of the answer is that some are more open to out of EU immigration than others. A while ago that was Germany who got 1 million plus of refugees and economic immigrants from Syria , Afghanistan and other non European countries. Now it seems that Spain is that willing to take immigrants and of course also provide them citizenship after 3-5 years. So you may end up with a disproportionate amount of immigrants that come from Europe but are not really European in terms of looks and behaviour.
    gizajob · 1789660453 · focus · HN ↗
    Give it another ten to twenty years and the far right will be in control all across Europe.
    theplumber · 1789768586 · focus · HN ↗
    I never understood this blame on EU as an external entity. If far right wins in most member states then EU itself becomes far right. The EU is MPs elected by the EU people directly and council members which are heads of state elected as well in most countries.
    gizajob · 1789825916 · focus · HN ↗
    >If far right wins in most member states then EU itself becomes far right.
    Yeah… well, then the fun really begins doesn’t it.
    But you know that the EU has this basically leftish centrist ideology of equality mixed in with the neoliberal profit-motive of the soft right. That it’s overt rationalism is politically neutralising rather than centrist, that is to say extreme positions either side do not flourish and are ridiculed as irrational, shouted down, and discarded even if they represent the views of several million people across the bloc. That continued ignorance and attempt at rationalising by a minority of career politicians in the face of an increasingly irrational and polarised base is feeding the right and pushing it into more extreme positions, because at least the right will represent and say what the EU refuses to.
    teamonkey · 1789583499 · focus · HN ↗
    It was about money.
    People were poor, wages had hardly grown after years of austerity following the 2008 crash. A huge campaign pointed the finger squarely at the EU: they are taking our money, they are the reason you’re poor, you would be richer without them.
    People believed them.
    theplumber · 1789603567 · focus · HN ↗
    I have seen it differently. I’ve seen it about immigration, the party driving it being UK Immigration Party. Boris “party” put some economic spin on it but it was fuelled by immigration.
    teamonkey · 1789684714 · focus · HN ↗
    You mean the UK Independence Party?
    nutjob2 · 1789567672 · focus · HN ↗
    A lot of your comments about the EU are borderline bad faith and at least show bias.
    This is an example. The referendum was entirely the UK's choice and had nothing to do with the EU. It offered more concessions than the UK deserved (having already held numerous opt-outs) and they still called the vote.
    One of the effects of Brexit was that EU popular solidarity has noticeably improved while the UK has gone in the opposite direction. That says a lot about Brexit.
    blitzar · 1789561823 · focus · HN ↗
    The UK wanted to maintain its veto over all EU matters (cake and eat it too).
    FrancisMoodie · 1789561860 · focus · HN ↗
    I mean, not really, since the UK was trying to renegotiate an existing deal (which they profited from for decades) towards a deal that would favor the UK more than the EU and would trigger an entire blow-back of other member-states wanting to renegotiate on their EU responsibilities without losing the advantages that this deal brought, whereas the deal with Canada is a new deal where the EU gains better trading and less dependence on the US and Canada gains better trading and more security if their next door neighbor falls apart even further.
    The UK renegotiation was a net loss for the EU, this Canada deal is a deal where both parties gain something.
    Also, the Brexit referendum was a campaign promise of David Cameron that was going to trigger if his conservative party won the 2015 general election. Sure, the relationship between EU and UK had strained over the years, but trying to pin this on the inflexibility of the EU feels a bit misdirected.
    fidotron · 1789562107 · focus · HN ↗
    > Also, the Brexit referendum was a campaign promise of David Cameron that was going to trigger if his conservative party won the 2015 general election
    That is iff the renegotiations with Brussels failed, which they did.
    > The UK renegotiation was a net loss for the EU, this Canada deal is a deal where both parties gain something.
    V. hard to see what Canada gets out of it. All the roadblocks to Canadian trade with the EU today (especially around resources) are internal to Canada and have nothing at all to do with EU status.
    rsynnott · 1789564779 · focus · HN ↗
    > All the roadblocks to Canadian trade with the EU today (especially around resources) are internal to Canada and have nothing at all to do with EU status.
    Presumably under the proposed thing Canada would largely adopt EU regulations. This would make trade (particularly for small businesses) _far_ easier. See the UK for how difficult this can become if you're not in alignment; it's survivable for huge companies (though even some of them had trouble; for instance Marks and Spencers' stores in Ireland literally went empty for a while because they were insufficiently prepared), but if you're a small business importing a bunch of components from Europe and making a thing which is largely sold to Europe, there's a _massive_ difference in bureaucratic overhead between being in and out.
    Even many Norwegian SMEs don't see direct sales to Europe as worth the overhead, and Norway's in the EEA, as close to the EU as you can get without actually being in it.
    fidotron · 1789565199 · focus · HN ↗
    > Presumably under the proposed thing Canada would largely adopt EU regulations.
    Canadian provinces do not agree with each other about trade regulations. They will not surrender this to the federal government, and they certainly won't to the EU.
    Canada isn't actually a single market itself.
    foldr · 1789565016 · focus · HN ↗
    >[The Conservatives promised a referendum] iff the renegotiations with Brussels failed, which they did.
    No. The Conservative party promised an EU membership referendum by 2017 in its 2015 manifesto. That was not conditional on a failure of renegotiations. Nor, indeed, did David Cameron even concede that the renegotiations had failed, so that can’t possibly have been his stated reason for calling the referendum.
    See a summary of the manifesto here: <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/election-2015-32302062" rel="nofollow">https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/election-2015-32302062
    And also <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/jan/10/david-cameron-stay-as-pm-if-i-lose-eu-referendum" rel="nofollow">https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/jan/10/david-camer.... Here, Cameron is directly quoted as saying:
    > My policy is to hold a renegotiation and then a referendum. That is what we promised in the manifesto and then to abide by what the British public say.
    So clearly, there was never any suggestion that the referendum would be called or not called depending on the outcome of the renegotiations.
    FabCH · 1789562235 · focus · HN ↗
    I missed the part where the UK was willing to give up all veto and voting rights and still have freedom of movement.
    Both of which Canada is ok with.
    fidotron · 1789562485 · focus · HN ↗
    I am in Canada. There's no evidence Canada is OK with those things.
    FabCH · 1789563968 · focus · HN ↗
    Fair enough.
    It’s what the newspapers report:
    <a href="https://www.wsj.com/world/europe/canada-alliance-eu-carney-276f1778" rel="nofollow">https://www.wsj.com/world/europe/canada-alliance-eu-carney-2...
    fidotron · 1789565023 · focus · HN ↗
    It's not actually reporting on the substance in any meaningful detail, and no one is, for the relatively simple reason that once it happens every special interest group in Canada will find something to go nuts about.
    dghlsakjg · 1789565023 · focus · HN ↗
    Do you have any sources that aren’t right wing publications from a country whose right wing is actively working against Canada and the E.U.?
    FabCH · 1789579976 · focus · HN ↗
    That sounds like you are looking for the Ground News thing I get advertising for on every YouTube video.
    bryanlarsen · 1789580521 · focus · HN ↗
    Ground News itself is right wing propaganda.
    gizajob · 1789562537 · focus · HN ↗
    A majority of Canadians haven’t decided this in an election, and I doubt that 20 million of them would be on board with it.
    donbox · 1789565700 · focus · HN ↗
    The elected representatives can decide? I mean their Parliament.
    fidotron · 1789566259 · focus · HN ↗
    It sounds constitutional, and if you want to make a Canadian exasperated ask about the history of the Canadian constitution.
    Hint: it's still not been signed by all the relevant parties.
    donbox · 1789569357 · focus · HN ↗
    Curious, What makes ( or would make) this constitutional. I guess, we need to wait for the details.
    [deleted] · 1789563815 · focus · HN ↗
    [deleted]
    georgeecollins · 1789563893 · focus · HN ↗
    Why is the EU obligated to treat every country the same way? Canada presents different economic opportunities and challenges than the UK. Or, if you want to say it was due to politics, who was bashing who?
    gmueckl · 1789564603 · focus · HN ↗
    The explanation is easy: Canada is not on the European continent. The EU can only extend full membership to countries on the continent, so Canada needs a special arrangement. And because there's a whole ocean serving as a reason for this special treatment, it's easy to argue that it won't extend to countries who can become full members.
    gremlinunderway · 1789565083 · focus · HN ↗
    There's actually no continental definition in the EU constitution but yes probably in practice this is correct in terms of perception
    abraxas · 1789564883 · focus · HN ↗
    The UK wanted it the opposite way. They wanted full access to the EU market but forbid the movement of people because they wanted to get rid of the Poles. The EU would never agree to that and rightly so.
    antalis · 1789565259 · focus · HN ↗
    Cameron 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...
    jen20 · 1789565708 · focus · HN ↗
    That is a rather fantastical and revisionist version of why the Brexit referendum was called - which had more to do with a misguided attempt to put the crazy wing of the Conservative Party to bed rather than anything to do with the EU, where the UK had the best deal imaginable already.
    gizajob · 1789566863 · focus · HN ↗
    Nevertheless when put to British voters 50% of them decided that best possible deal still wasn’t in their interests. And that 50% who voted No was more people than even voted in the EU elections (to elect MEPs) before that. So the EU was very much fine with their democratic process seeming like an irrelevance, while at the same time the Brexit vote was actually an example of a democratic process working as it should do. One can argue about craziness or otherwise, but there were at least 17 million crazies at the time and if there was a referendum to rejoin the EU would likely be another 17 million crazies voting no again.
    jen20 · 1789582153 · focus · HN ↗
    > but there were at least 17 million crazies at the time
    Yes.
    > would likely be a different 17 million crazies voting No again.
    Highly unlikely - and turnout on the other side would be dramatically improved. Had the vote been held again the following day, it's likely that the result would have been different. If it were held today, it would be a landslide towards rejoining with the original terms.
    People actually know what they're voting for, instead of falling for make-believe horseshit about how much money could go into the NHS (but didn't) on the side of a bus, with a heavy dose of Russian propaganda on Facebook.
    gizajob · 1789582393 · focus · HN ↗
    I think you’ve fallen into the common trap in believing that there was a simple narrative which can be used to understand the Brexit vote, when the data shows there were 17 million different and varied reasons within a mass resistant to modelling.
    jen20 · 1789587508 · focus · HN ↗
    There were a few categories of reasons.
    The ones that are persistent are "I'm going to vote for anarchy because politics does no good for me", "I'm racist and don't understand that this doesn't get rid of people I really want to get rid of but really want it to so whatever" and "I'm xenophobic and haven't accepted that there isn't a British Empire anymore".
    There may be fringe cases around specific regulations, but those were the main three. People were voting for whatever they wanted Brexit to be, most of which is pure fantasy, not what it actually is, which is a clusterfuck of badness, and zero benefit to anyone.
    I say this as someone _who was a member of the Conservative Party at the time_, though the fact that the candidate in my constituency since 2010 was Jacob Rees Mogg meant I have voted against them in every election since then.
    gizajob · 1789649690 · focus · HN ↗
    You just repeated the same mistake but with more detail.
    jen20 · 1789653539 · focus · HN ↗
    I understand why you’d like to believe that, but it’s simply not true.
    hardbass · 1789627122 · focus · HN ↗
    Of course not. Just by age range, I assume a lot of Brexit voters would have dead and younger voters are probably more EU supportive.
    nutjob2 · 1789648270 · focus · HN ↗
    > And that 50% who voted No was more people than even voted in the EU elections (to elect MEPs) before that.
    This is ignorance or just plain bad faith. MEPs are not the main democratic mechanism of the EU, it's the national governments. This is on purpose, so that both national democracy and sovereignty can be maintained.
    This is the typical of EU misinformation spouted by people who have a problem with the EU. Of course people can dislike the EU all they want, but people who constantly rail against it, with little or no basis in fact, I'll never know. It's not about the EU, it's some sort of bitter obsession or ideological idiocy. Somehow the EU means much more to them than they claim, otherwise they wouldn't spend so much energy complaining about it.
    gizajob · 1789649075 · focus · HN ↗
    But I was a supporter of the EU who noticed this. Like I comment elsewhere, the EU is like Teflon and resistant to critique - when there is an issue or a defect we get comments like yours “yes yes but this isn’t the actual process, that is a governmental/national/commission/parliament issue.”
    It’s not misinformation - it’s a very basic fact about the democratic mechanism we had for electing who represents us in the EU parliament which makes and votes on our laws. The opacity of this process and the general lack of enfranchisement in it is a major flaw but one that the EU was content with, because a simulation of a democratic process is good enough, better even, because it avoids the scrutiny and can be defended by people like you. It’s a basic fact that people did get off their arses and vote to leave in greater numbers than even bothered to be enfranchised in the elections for MEPs. You don’t have to bleat about it or invoke ignorance or bad faith because all you show up is your own bad faith to a fairly basic fact.
    LightBug1 · 1789566671 · focus · HN ↗
    >>> "it's what Cameron was trying to negotiate the UK into when complete inflexibility on the EU side triggered the Brexit referendum."
    "Negotiate" ... is that what you call it?
    David Cameron (and team) were the most inept bunch of wankers this country has had the misfortune of being represented by in living memory (in terms of medium/long-term real impact).
    We had better terms than anyone in the EU and we still fucked it up.
    mejutoco · 1789566927 · focus · HN ↗
    > Cameron was trying to negotiate the UK into when complete inflexibility on the EU side triggered the Brexit referendum.
    You are assigning too much responsibility to the EU here and none to the other actors responsible for Brexit. It borders on propaganda, but I do not want to assume ill intent.
    And Cameron, didnt he say he would guide UK no matter the result and then resigned when Brexit won?
    fidotron · 1789567934 · focus · HN ↗
    Brexit was obviously going to happen a good decade before the referendum, the tension was so obvious. This idea people were conned into voting leave is just utter nonsense - they'd been chomping at the bit for the opportunity for years.
    Now the UK has managed to ramp up the tension dramatically, but without some easy foreign political bogeyman to blame. It's not going to end well either, but it's not clear exactly what the endgame is. This is why the Greens, Reform and Restore are suddenly things.
    foldr · 1789572606 · focus · HN ↗
    >Brexit was obviously going to happen a good decade before the referendum
    Come off it. Neither the referendum nor the referendum result were inevitabilities.
    saulapremium · 1789581580 · focus · HN ↗
    Inflexibility was not the reason for Brexit. It happened because the British population was tricked by being fed misinformation about the EU for years by people like Nigel Farage and Boris Johnson. Little things like "The EU bans bendy bananas" to big things like "Turkey is going to join any day!"
    cmiles8 · 1789560786 · focus · HN ↗
    A) Would never happen.
    B) If it did happen, the US would just say “give us the same deal or you get cut off” and Europe would capitulate immediately.
    usrbinbash · 1789561376 · focus · HN ↗
    Cut the EU off from ... what?
    Technlogy? That would likely result in a US market crash the likes of which has never been seen before. Look at what percentage of the stock market is the magnificent 7. Now imagine what would happen to that if US tech giants were no longer allowed to sell their products/services in the EU. The market is fragile as it is with the AI bubble going on.
    Trade? That cuts both ways, and the US economy and cost-of-living crisis doesn't give them lots of wriggle room.
    Products? China will be all to happy to step into whatever market is thus competition-free, not to mention the impact this would have on US businesses.
    boringg · 1789566754 · focus · HN ↗
    Right....
    embedding-shape · 1789561411 · focus · HN ↗
    > To enable free movement of goods and services the EU insists that the goods and services are produced in an identical regulatory environment.
    Doesn't seem to be true anymore, at least in every case. See the EU-Mercosur agreement for one recent exception to this, the goods we're now importing from South America don't have the same regulatory environment by far, to many of our local farmers.
    klelatti · 1789561844 · focus · HN ↗
    EU - Mercosur is not free movement of goods and services.
    preisschild · 1789564730 · focus · HN ↗
    EU-Mercosur products need to comply with the EU's food safety standards (SPS1)
    rsynnott · 1789564842 · focus · HN ↗
    Canada already has a free trade deal along the lines of the EU-Mercosur one; free movement of goods and services implies a _lot_ more than that.
    ocd · 1789561470 · focus · HN ↗
    A lot of this is about resource access, and that can't be magically conjured. You can have all the industry and business you want to put on paper, but this is a tangible concern for Europe where they require these things from a stable and trusted nation with a similar regulatory and political environment.
    This trade matter is likely going to require a new type of agreement that has some special privileges not extended in any other case for both parties.
    rsynnott · 1789563745 · focus · HN ↗
    Depends what they mean by ‘full’, really. I expect the EC would be happy enough to let them opt out of the euro, say. But maybe not the working time directive.
    soco · 1789566191 · focus · HN ↗
    There are many EU countries not having, some not even planning, to adopt the Euro. So I cannot imagine this being an important discussion topic.

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