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Comment by nolok | Hacker News Reader

It's a bit funny saying all the naysaying comments, "this is just a name", "you have an ocean between each other", ...

Yeah, it's only a name, that name represent a reciprocal want to work closer together and do something. What, how, we will figure it out, the fact that people on both side of the exchange are all for it says so.

We're not idiots we know there will be hurdle, on one side you have the federal country that managed to convince the french Quebec to stay and on the other you have 27 countries who managed to convince each other to work together, we will figure it out.

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I have a feeling that this "made up name/category" will be a pretext for fast-tracking whatever they want to do with Canada-EU relations without the other members voting on it since the last one they tried to do is 10 years on and still pending.

Who are "the other members" in your message? Because if you mean all the 27 of course their government has to give approval, just like they did for the last one too

But that's what i mean by this new category, its so they (EU brass) can circumvent the approval process. That's what I suspect.

But they can't? That's not how this works? Who do you think can do anything in name of the EU, beside either the parliament, or a body made of the named representative of each government?

There is no "they" in the EU that can do anything that isn't also constituted either equally or proportionally by each and every member.

Specifically I think this will be true around defence procurement: Canada was just added as the first non-EU state in the EU SAFE defence agreements, and just did a major booth at the International Defence Industry Exhibition EU defence trade show. They decided to buy new subs from Germany instead of Korea, and have slow-played the new fighter acquisitions and will potentially replace at least some F35 orders with Saab Gripens. And they have a new deal to start manufacturing Ukrainian designed military drones in Canada (partnership with Ukraine announced last week iirc?).

If getting this status helps simplify process and costs of EU<->Canada military procurement, then it will be a clear win for both sides given the current desire to reduce dependence on US defence providers.

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