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Comment by temporallobe | Hacker News Reader

My understanding is that an EU member state has to physically be in Europe unless they are an “extension” of a state already in the EU. I get that it’s supposed to be an “associate” state but I’m fascinated by what kind of legal hoops they’re going to jump through to make this happen.

They did make an exception for Cypress, so I suppose there’s some kind of precedent.

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Canada has a sea border with France.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint_Pierre_and_Miquelon

And a land border with Denmark.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans_Island

Also, I think the constraint to be in the EU is that it has to be "an European country". It's relatively vague.

Is it a land border? Because if they are separated by a stretch of sea, well, the same is true for Canada and mainland France.

By that logic the UK doesn't have any neighbors other than the Republic of Ireland.

The UK has a land border with Spain in Gibraltar

Checkmate, I'll give you that one.

Someone else pointed out Canada also has a land border with Denmark: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49741686

What about Australia? New Zealand? Japan? Maybe Indonesia (I don't know maybe it has something on the Asian mainland).

Gibraltar is not strictly speaking part of the UK

All laws are made up. An associate member, not a full member, can be whatever we want it to be.

Some laws are easier to change than others. Constitutions in particular are often made hard to change on purpose.

If there is a will, there is a way. It can be changed (Russia), reimagined (The US Supreme Court) or simply ignored.

All of the things like free trade and free movement could presumably be negotiated separately, they’re just creating an omnibus deal and slapping a fancy label on it.

Not the same, but the Canary Islands are part of Spain, and are clearly in the African continent, geographically speaking.

In any case, I believe the EU can accommodate Canada or other like-wise counties. One of the goals for the EU is to unify smaller sovereign regions to have a greater power and be able to sit on the table having leverage with the bigger states layers. Growing by anexing Canada would increase that power.

Vimmy Ridge memorial is also forever given for the use of Canada by France after WW1, it is administered by Parks Canada. So we technically control land in Europe.

I like to tell people I grew up 10km from Canada, in northern France.

I admit I'm not a whole lot of fun.

You should move to one of those fancy pants islands France has off the coast of Canada, sire some kids, and add more confusing tales.

Laughed out loud at this!

It would be funny if the solution is for Greenland/Denmark to annex Canada as a workaround on paper.

*Cyprus

Not really, as long as it’s majority white nation and shares European culture, they are fine with it

> majority white nation and shares European culture

well, not for much longer lol

Mainstream politicians refuse to even acknowledge the problem

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