EU Floats Canada Becoming the Bloc's First 'Associate Member' | Hacker News Reader

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

bloomberg.com

83 pointshelsinkiandrew170 comments

As stated by Carney, this is not exactly true, but something like this has been expected. From a legal and sovereignty standpoint, EU membership of any kind does not make sense. A novel bloc of nations centered around military and economic cooperation that includes the EU and Canada however, does.

It certainly does not make sense seeing as Canada is not in Europe.

Mostly a semantic concern in the name given the shared interests and concerns both have in a number of things including the Arctic. It's more a "North Atlantic" group of nations view both sides seem to be taking, but you know, without the US.

And a fairly serious geographical one.

The Eurovision song contest includes Australia in its member nations. Mindblowing I know, but it's possible for a thing to transcend its name.

One could argue that it is European by founding and history though.

Founded by Europeans, still mostly populated by people of European ancestry, with laws written by Europeans and based on European ideas.

European isn't just a geographic descriptor :-)

I suppose. America is a much more mixed bag, while Canada at its core is still British, Scottish, and French. Enough cities have a certain sterile and organized appearance more common in Europe than the US. Not sure how else I'd describe it, but maybe Canada is a bit more "monolithic"?

> Canada at its core is still British, Scottish, and French

Have you been to Canada any time in the past few decades? Around half of the population of Toronto, Canada's largest city, is foreign-born. And I promise you it is not predominantly British or French people.

Yes, I'm from here. Toronto is not a reflection of an entire country, and I would not compare Manhattan or a foreign military base as representative of the rest of another country either.

Here are two quotes from Statistics Canada, to provide some food for thought.

"In 2021, more than 8.3 million people, or almost one-quarter (23.0%) of the population, were, or had ever been, a landed immigrant or permanent resident in Canada. [...] Just under 6.4 million people born in Canada had at least one foreign-born parent in 2021, representing 17.6% of the total population" [0]

In other words, as of 2021, about 41% of the population were either foreign-born or had at least one foreign-born parent. In large cities where most people live, it is even higher.

And the future does not look any more British or French, either.

"In 2024, more than two in five newborns (42.3%) in Canada had a foreign-born mother (i.e., a mother who was born outside Canada), a proportion that has nearly doubled in just over a quarter of a century (22.5% in 1997)." [1]

"According to Statistics Canada's recent population projections, immigrants could represent from 29.1% to 34.0% of the total population by 2041." [0]

[0] https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/daily-quotidien/221026/dq221...

[1] https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/91f0015m/91f0015m2025004...

> British, Scottish,

You do realise that British implies Scottish don't you? On which island do you think Scotland is located?

You could argue even more effectively that it was British by founding and a British colony, with a big influence from the French. And we know what happened with Britain and the EU.

Britain, too, is European. They were even a part of the EU at one point ;)

20 NATO members share no border with the Atlantic, and 5 are entirely landlocked.

Portugal is not part of the Benelux. Poland is not part of the Western Union. Ireland is an island. Yet here we are, because we have enough in common that we would rather cooperate than compete.

French Guiana is a fully integrated member of the European Union and is in South America.

Because it’s a fully integrated part of France.

There's a big company named after a fruit that doesn't sell any fruit at all.

1) what everyone else replied; but also 2) where do you think Europe is? You're probably wrong, cf. https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Europa#/media/Datei:Mitglieder...

I think there is a lot of value there for other advanced economies in Asia, namely Japan, Korea, Taiwan and Aus/NZ.

With the US self-destructing these countries need a new plan. They are routinely being pushed around by China and need a counterweight.

Who knows, maybe after all the doom and gloom the EU might just win by default because the other world powers have become so unattractive the rest of the world rallies around them?

When everyone goes crazy, a boring place that respect the law and fair exchanges feels much more welcoming.

And it's not even "novel" in the sense that this group already exist, except so far it was gravitating around the US, and it might just reorient to gravitate around someone else.

Bienvenue aux canucks

The other day in a Dutch geopolitics podcast (Boekestijn en de Wijk) it was mentioned that if there's one country that could be added to the EU "at the stroke of a pen", it would be Canada. In terms of state of the democracy, shared values, etc. And I agree with that perspective. But at the same time I thought that if there's one way to get into conflict with the current US administration - who declared EU their only adversary in the US National Security Plan - this is it. It would be like a mirror image of Russia feeling encroached by NATO, but then in the Western hemisphere. And perhaps a red cloth invitation to the frothing bull(ies) of the Trump administration to invade their neighbor.

Then that means Canada must build overwhelming firepower clearly and mine the border to hell, build anti aircraft systems everywhere and take whatever steps needed to prevent and repel an unprovoked invasion, just like it is logical for Ukraine to do the same to protect itself from Russia.

This seems to be what Canada and Europe want from each other. Both have interests in repelling other powers that deserve to have their economic and military capabilities weakened, and both seem to be able to help each other on expanding economic base, energy security, food supply, and resource availability/manufacturing capability with existing intellectual and trade property that will distance them from the US MIC.

The US-Iran war is very unpopular and it's not even that the US is winning it.

Going against Canada would mean .. what? Having tanks roll in Toronto downtown? Assuming it would be a military success, which isn't guaranteed after what happens in Iran,that would be unpopular beyond anything we've seen.

Tough words, that's the worse we may expect from the US gov realistically.

> Tough words, that's the worse we may expect from the US gov realistically.

Trade wars and sanctions can get very nasty too. I don't know about Canada, but most of the EU runs on US Big Tech to name just one sensitive sector.

It's a two way street; sanction on big tech is also the big weapon the EU has against the US if need be and that we kept threatening but never activating.

Which doesn't mean it's easy or won't hurt like hell, but this is a continent that just cut most of the gas cord lines in record times despite massive pain and cost, if it came down to it we would simply because if it comes down to this and we don't then we're done.

Short time it would damage us pretty hard, but long term it would be another net loss for the US.

America is a big importer of toilet paper from Canada. :-)

The UK could sell them Izal instead, they'll fold in months ...

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cx2we30p661o

How? They stopped making that stuff years ago.

They whole point of that article is that it's a weird, curious thing from the past that doesn't exist any more.

> I don't know about Canada, but most of the EU runs on US Big Tech to name just one sensitive sector.

That's true, right now. The way things are going though the EU is spurred to finally cut the cord with US Big Tech because of the security risk.

It didn't used to be like that before Trump got into power. Trump is bad for business because he's an unreliable partner that's turning on his allies.

From what I read about what they wanted Canada to sign (the "new deal" Canada walked out of), they want to give them strict conditions and no abilities to make new deals with someone else to make them fully dependant. So the goal was not really military conquest but economic stranglehold. All the while apparently asking to tone down their minorities including the french one.

There is an alternate timeline where Canada signed that, and it looks much bleaker for them down the road.

This “at the stroke of the pen” idea is fantastical. Actual Canadians would have next to no interest in this. Whole provinces of Canada don’t even want to be part of Canada so their appetite for having the EU parliament and Commission anywhere near them would be slim to none. Having 250million Europeans eligible to migrate to Canada would similarly be dead in the water even if a few people in Toronto and Quebec might warm to the idea of going the other way.

This is not really true. It's an extreme fringe minority in Canada that is massively misrepresented in US media, and largely propagated by AI bots.

The context in the podcast was that EU was too picky in their reform criteria for inclusion for current candidates on the European continent, but that Canada as a modern country would sail past and pass the exam. The ease with which these experts concluded it would make sense for Canada to join struck me, because impact on geopolitical relationship with US was imho too easily overlooked. It is a sentiment I hear more often now, in the news.

> But at the same time I thought that if there's one way to get into conflict with the current US administration - who declared EU their only adversary in the US National Security Plan - this is it.

That would be the icing on the cake.

Between the US and China, the EU is the future, but they need to federalize then leverage that to implement a top notch military and economy.

Carney can see this and wants a piece of the action. The question is if the EU can escape its parochial myopia and see it.

Hopefully Russia will do something even stupider and precipitate the existential crisis that the EU desperately needs to get off its ass.

> but they need to federalize

That's not happening or if it did they'd lose a third of the members doing it.

> If it did they'd lose a third of the members doing it.

As a federalist, that would be fine for me. Make a two speed europe. EU stays primarily a trade block that the "federal EU" is in.

Go ahead, make my day.

> they need to federalize

"Shit Americans say"

The EU is NOTHING like the US. The difference between each member is the same as the difference between the US and Mexico, not like the difference between California and Utah.

It's utter ignorance to suggest that the EU could one day become a single country.

Nevertheless that exact plan is in the minds of every higher-up running the EU. Individual counties are an anachronism that will eventually be got rid of if the EU is to continue.

The UK is a "country of countries" - with fairly significant differences between some of the component parts - maybe the EU could become something like that?

You realise how many wars and how much bloodshed over how many centuries it took for that to happen in the UK?

The political union of England and Scotland was achieved without bloodshed and largely because folks in Scotland wanted a financial bailout to cover the utterly disastrous Scottish colonial efforts in Darien.

How about Northern Ireland?

Personally I expect NI to peacefully unify with the Republic of Ireland at some point in the next 20 years? Or maybe not - all depends on how people vote rather than fighting?

I feel like you might not know much about the peace process in NI. If you’d like to see a return to things getting blown up and catholics being gunned down by loyalists, then suggest conducting a vote on joining Ireland and leaving the UK.

Repeating that part would be unnecessarily detrimental, especially given that right now "become a country" would require majority support from everyone to even get started.

Also, the general area was basically at war most of the time from the Etruscan era to the formation of the EU, and the EU is (amongst other things) an attempt to be at peace, so it would already be a similarity even without repetition.

It also reflects how Europeans increasingly feel about the EU, especially young people who don't see or live within national borders and very much enjoy those freedoms. They are the future and what the EU will eventually become.

Yeah, an English-speaking mess.

English is indeed the de facto common language of the EU, spoken by almost all young people. It's a great thing, English is the global language. Don't know why you think it would be a mess, but your comments seem to be fairly negative towards the EU.

“A single country” is pretty vague. For some definitions the EU already is one, for other definitions the EU can never be one.

What we do need is doing more things on the EU level. E.g. there’s no point in all member states building a nuclear umbrella or a space program. Some taxes also work better on an EU level because capital flows freely in the union and makes taxation hard for individual members.

You've obviously not a (patriotic) European. You also don't understand that Europeans are more similar to each other than they are to the rest of the world. Ask one how many views they share with Americans, Asians or Africans.

I am European first and foremost, I have an ethnic nationality which is secondary and almost irrelevant. In my mind Euorpe is actual a large collection of regions, which hold more meaning for inhabitants than nation states. But we all love our European brethren no matter who they are.

This is complete nonsense and absolutely no European considers themself European first and their own country's nationality second. You're neither European, nor American, nor Asian or African or anything else, you're clearly a bot.

Somebody with the username "nutjob2" probably chose the username because he has opinions outside the Overton window.

But in my experience there definitely are Europeans with that view. WW2 left some deep impressions about the dangers of nationalism, especially in Germany. That led some to consider themselves Europeans first.

I would even suspect Carney would want to eventually be the head of the EU (he also has European citizenship)

Stranger than fiction.

Why? Seems the US doesn't like democracy anymore and the EU for all its faults still does. I can see Japan joining too and potentially South Korea, Philippines, and others who are concerned about the state of the world and want to work together rather than drive the world apart.

I think the world would be jumping into alignments like this if the US hadn't spent the last 80 years building a "nuclear umbrella" for the "western alliance" with itself in the centre.

I bet many countries would prefer to disassociate with US foreign policy right now if they weren't security dependent.

I expect after this destructive episode in history has played out, if we're all still alive and free in another decade then there will be alternative umbrellas.

If I’d said to you last year “Hey! I bet Canada is going to join the EU! No, of course not as charter-violating full member, as a newly invented ‘associate member’!” You’d probably have said “That’s both crazy and oddly specific, the chances of that have to be approaching zero”.

That’s why.

Yes but also "associate member" is, despite specificity, less surprising than full membership would have been.

Same as economic gravity meant that Brexit didn't disconnect UK from EU it only made trade harder, neither this kind of deal nor full membership can be much more than a band-aid for Trump's BS, it won't fully compensate for the harm he and his administration are doing to Canada.

Further cooperation between the EU and Canada has been talked about for a decade or so (see CETA). Just because it is news to you, it doesn't mean it is news.

I doubt Japan can join (on their own). They're essentially a US colony in all but name, so they'll need to be allowed by the fatherland.

Reality doesn't need to be plausible; we're all characters in each other's first-person narratives, with no access to the voice of an omniscient narrator.

I mean, it's only what the US is doing that's strange.

It's a country with tons of raw resources and a large consumer market, they're the "dream partner" for the large blocks (USA/China/EU, and Japan/India a bit behind). You buy their resources, they make a lot of money from it, you turn it into a final product and you make a lot of money from the value added, everyone is happy.

It's really weird that the US is suddenly not happy about this arrangement, and for resource-starved EU it's a golden opportunity; of course we will happily buy if the US doesn't want to anymore. That's why there is so little friction showing up (there will be more later, of course, but relatively little), why Canada can get so many deal quickly with everyone during this turnaround, it's that obvious of a win for everyone involved.

(as usual, the key blocking point that will need lots of work will be food, even more than it is with the US, I wish we could scrap that entire part to get a v1 going quickly but alas it's not how trade deal work)

> (as usual, the key blocking point that will need lots of work will be food, eve more than it is with the US, I wish we could scrap that entire part to get a v1 going quickly but alas it's not how trade deal work)

I mean food/dairy/autos (which is also a major EU issue) have been 90% of the issues with Canada/USA trade for decades too so I have my doubts of them figuring it out any better.

I guess Canada is way more motivated then ever before as rapid souring of the relationship with the USA from this point would be a near economic collapse for them.

CETA (the existing EU/CA one) is also being bogged down in some country including my own (France) because of some food issues, so I think everyone involved knows.

And while you're correct about Canada being extra motivated at the moment; so is the EU. It's such an absurd situation that we know the "urgent pivot need" might slow down a lot if adult come back in charge in the US. Same reason why so many want to sign so quickly, it's like gold on a platter AND Canada win too, you don't spit on that offer.

Trump knows it too, which is why he talks out of both sides of his mouth. He wants to decrease the trade deficit with Canada, but he wants to increase imports of oil and critical minerals and other raw resources. That's the majority of American imports from Canada, thus the source of the deficit.

Would it not make sense to perhaps invite the UK to be an associate member first? We’re right on the doorstep.

You don‘t want to have any level of association with us, as you‘ve made clear repeatedly over many years, involving many insults.

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

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

If your country initiated a divorce, it makes no sense for the other party to invite you again. You should have to request first and show to them eg with a vote you won't again flake out in a few years.

The UK will likely be welcome back right after everyone's confident Leave (be that Tory, Farage, or whoever the even worse party that Musk now supports are) definitely won't win a general election for at least another generation.

Well the issue there then is that Farage’s Reform party seem likely to win that election. The current ostensibly-left-wing Labour government also have absolutely no appetite for rejoining either. Even the coalition of anti-growth eco-warriors and islamists which is the contemporary Green Party don’t say much which is a real surprise because it seems like such an easy vote-winner for them. Finally, it seems strange that the EU should pretty-well require the governments of its potential members to be left-wing or centrist, especially as this demand is now causing constituents of the EU to start to swing to the hard right too.

Far right wing and nationalism caused two world wars in european soil. May or may not be related. And right wing parties themselves generally hate the EU, so nobody is asking for it anyways.

[flagged]

Please keep nationalistic flamebait off HN, regardless of how provocative the topic is or you feel it is.

From https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html:

"Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive."

I agree with your moderation in general, but this time I need some help to understand what did I say that was nationalistic. People from different nationalities are broadly approaching this subject of international cooperation according to their country of origin. And that is flamebait?

Generalizations about people from countries A, B, C are almost certain to end in flamewar. Opinion is certain to be split in every country, and you can't know where all the commenters are from, even if a few people happen to say so.

I'd also say that "I think it is telling" (without saying what the tell is) and "while Americans explain to us" have flamebait overtones that point in a polarized, if not hostile direction. This is not the curious conversation we're trying for here.

I wrote a reply linking to some recent polls, but deleted it in favor of this:

"Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith. "

Thanks Trump

Canadian government seems to be denying this.

Carney himself used these exact words couple days ago. This is coordinated.

Do you have a citation for that? What was the exact quote?

BBC https://www.bbc.com Carney eyes 'unique alliance' with EU as trade war with US intensifies

WSJ https://www.wsj.com/world/europe/canada-alliance-eu-carney-2... Mark Carney's Audacious Bid to Make Canada an 'Associate Member' of the EU

That's the coordination here. Which may have misfired, too:

https://www.ft.com/content/2e2e0c1e-51d6-49e2-9f4a-6ef793908...

I agree that he has used the term "unique alliance", but he seems to dislike the term "associate member" and is denying it as it is playing poorly among some segments of canadian society (mostly right wing)

Not exactly misfired, the title is somewhat clickbaity, 5 diplomats pointed to several aspects of difficulties with Ceta - nobody really "rebuffed" anything. The article is also somewhat hostile to the EU in general, is that a common notion on the FT?

Anyways here's an archived link https://archive.is/RtfFb

What I found:

>>> "We're not looking to become a member of the European Union," Carney said Sunday evening on the red carpet of the Toronto International Film Festival. He attended the festival shortly after giving a speech to kick off the two-day Canada Investment Summit, which begins Monday.

>>> "What we are looking — and will begin discussions for — [is] a unique alliance with the European Union. We share the same values, we have the same priorities and we have very complementary strengths."

https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/canada-european-union-eu-me...

Which is kind of my point. A unique alliance is not the same as becoming an associate member.

Being the EU's first associate member is by definition unique.

What do you define "associate member" as? Your definition is as good as Carneys.

If the people in charge call it that, then its that. If the people in charge aren't using that terminology, then it isn't that.

Carney has said Canada is not looking to become a "member" of the EU. Meanwhile, "associate member" is an entirely new thing that has yet to be defined. These aren't incompatible statements.

It appears more accurate to say that Canada and the EU want to work together more closely than they do now. There will be something more than CETA. Perhaps more shared standards on food, etc.. Likely more military procurement cooperation. Perhaps something akin to NATO style military cooperation, just in case NATO implodes*. Perhaps there will be some cooperation in trade disputes as well.

I suspect there is recognition that middle powers like the EU, Canada, Australia, etc. can do a better job of cooperating without everyone joining the EU and giving up an uncomfortable amount of sovereignty. Slightly more cooperation than currently exists may be all that's required for middle powers to do a better job of standing up to the supers.

_________

*NATO imploding is unlikely, but it's always good to have a fallback.

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