Thread

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

693 points · 905 comments · hackernj

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. 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.

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