Choice quote from Tusk at this meeting:
This is a paradox, listen to how it sounds: 500 million Europeans ask 300 million Americans to protect them from 140 million Russians. If you know how to count, rely on yourself,
Out of curiosity, where’d you get this version of the photo OP? Meloni did do an eye-roll (it appears at something the photographer said, not Trudeau), but most of the press releases went with a more dignified still.
Make Canada Great Again… by making it the 28th member of the EU, LET’S GOOOO!!?
The Avengers. (someone on the radio described it this way) 😆
Trudeau, Rutte and the one brown guy (who is that?) apparently missed the memo on looking miserable.
Edit: It’s Antonio Costa of Portugal.
Meloni looking like she doesnt even want to be there and is so annoyed
Check out that weasel boy amongst the men
What happened to Tusk’s leg?
Skiing accident: https://youtube.com/watch?v=BRAGpX21soE
What a shitty pic for 80% of them. Is that a full blown eye roll?
(I am for this group getting together like this, but what a badly timed photo for a bunch of people who professionally try to look good in photos)
I assume there are multiple cameras from multiple press agencies, so they’re looking all over.
The one you’re talking about probably hadn’t blinked in a minute.
Nah, she just let one rip, sending up a prayer that JT doesn’t catch a whiff before the photo is snapped.
I’m not JT’s biggest fan, but he does consistently carry himself well. He could put on a happy smile in front of Trump ripping a loud, stinky one without even so much as a flinch.
Do I agree with everything he did policy wise? Nah
Do I think he’s kinda gotten a shit break over things kinda out of his control? Yeah, I do, I think he did as good as most leaders did through covid, and a fair sight better than a certain Cheeto.
Sure he puts his foot in it from time to time, but the guy has class. He may be a filthy Liberal, and on the more anti-worker side of things, but I feel like he did quite a decent job representing Canada.
Canada: You know, I’m somewhat of a European myself.
Then Turkey is the “First time?” hanging meme.
Unpopular take maybe…
Canada does not need to join the EU to increase trade and partnerships. More trade agreements and joint projects. The EU is a complicated political structure and joining it is unnecessarily complicateted.
And yet another Reddit staple arrives: The popular unpopular take.
Absolutely correct. There are plenty of mutually beneficial arrangements short of full membership. And an EU membership application process typically takes decades. We need solutions now.
Whatever you guys wanna do. I support canada being eu but if yall dont want it trade agreements is also good.
Trade agreements now, possible membership eventually, since that’s how long the process usually takes anyway.
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They don’t need to join it as a full member to have trade and economic benefits. Simple (!) alignment with standards and regulations will allow free access to the market and free movement of people.
Is there any reason to not join the EU if we want to align standards, regulations, and allow free movement?
The only thing I can think of that would be a hard change would be our dollar. We could possibly negotiate to keep that though - I don’t know if the EU is still making exceptions like that or if that was just at the beginning.
Mainly just that we’ll need to align stuff for like a decade before we can do it. Using the Euro and joining the Schengen is non-optional, although it’s one of those EU things where there’s a lot of chaos in actually enforcing that. Speaking of the Schengen, that would mean our own trade deals with the US are definitely dead and the border has to get much more serious, since it’s now the border between the US and every country in Europe.
It would also make Kosovo and Bosnia butthurt if we got in first, so there’s a chance they’d just deny it on geographical grounds - we could qualify as substantially European, but only could.
All in all, I think it’s a great aspirational goal, at least, because “substantially align regulations on control of tomato leaf miner pests” isn’t quite so catchy.
The EU and US standards are very different and products for one can’t necessarily be shipped to the other and vice versa. Examples for food include massive differences for colourings, preservatives and the like. Europe will not accept chicken washed in chlorinated water or bright froot loops. Health traffic lights are also going to be different.
While it’s possible to have 2 production lines, 1 for each economic zone, that’s expensive for producers and shippers.
Someone please correct me if I’m wrong, but I’m pretty sure that Canada’s food standards with regards to dyes and preservatives are already far closer to the EU standard than the American.
I can only imagine what radioactive things get put in American food if that’s true. Our stuff is still plenty fluorescent.
I don’t think anyone in this picture seriously expects Canada to officially join the EU. The US would never allow such an interference with its manifest destiny. But we can make a close partnership even closer.
Not in the picture, but other folks in this posts comments are taking this possibility too seriously
Would Canada be interested in joining the EU? Might make sense considering what a bad neighbor the US has become.
Linking the recent CBC article.
Actually, I think there was multiples on the subject, but here’s one. TL;DR sure, but it’s not a switch you flip and there’s a lot of useful things we have to get closer to the EU on first anyway.
At first glance it sounds good but joining the EU officially is unnecessarily complex. It would make more sense to join Europe similar to Iceland and Norway.
Which isn’t actually mutually exclusive - kind of the opposite actually.
Sorry I think it’s too early for me to understand what you mean haha.
Aren’t Iceland and Norway in the Schengen area, but not actually in the EU?
And a bunch of other related agreements (Norway at centre left):
Arguably, as it has worked out, being in the EU is like the capstone of aligning with Europe in those other ways. To get closer to Europe you get closer to joining the EU, even if you never actually do.
That infographic is fantastic
Wikipedia has them for a bunch of regions, actually. Ours is way more of a clusterfuck.
I would love to join the EU, my grandpa immigrated to Canada from the Netherlands after WW2 but Netherlands doesn’t offer citizenship to grandchildren ):
Would be nice to have the freedom of travel to the EU and vice versa if anyone wants to come over and visit Canada.
Canadian here, everybody I know would love this
Another Canadian here… yes please.
I’m not opposed to it!
I’m sorry but I I have to agree
And Canada does have a land border with an EU country - Denmark. Canada and Denmark had a long standing border dispute over Hans island featuring multiple armed raids. It was resolved in a mature and sensible fashion to just divide the island. Good for all involved.
The only ‘dispute’ I know about on Hans island was the Whisky Dispute, which was resolved peacefully after years of soldiers ‘claiming’ the land by stealing each other’s flags and leaving booze for each other. More like a very lazy game of capture the flag if you ask me.
Are these the armed raids you refer to?
Yes. The raids were mostly to not to forfeit their territorial claims, booze left as a sorry for the trouble gift.
multiple armed raids
I mean…technically…sure. But the two armed groups were never actually there at the same time. They simply came at different times to swap Whiskey and Schnaps.
And to lower the other’s flag
Taking whiskey and leaving fucking schnapps is the real crime here.
Welp, now the Danes are going to vote no.
Hahaha. All in good fun. We’re basically cousins at this point.
And another (and older) maratime border with France.
It was resolved in a mature and sensible fashion to just divide the island.
Along the obvious seam that was there the whole time.
I’d hate to be the custom’s agent posted there.
Canada also has land in France. The Vimy Ridge memorial is officially Canadian territory, granted by France.
France also has St. Pierre and Miquelon that shares a border with Newfoundland.
Maritime border. They are a couple km off the coast.
As a Canadian… we didn’t know this was an option. But hell yeah, we’d join the EU.
It would be terrible for our country, just look at the impact the mere thought of tarrifs has had on our economy. A full renegotiation of the US Canada trade border would be chaos.
Europeans are cool and I wish we had your public transit, but EU membership of a NA country will never happen.
You’re getting downvoted. But I agree with you.
Canada can accomplish most of its goals regarding diversifying its trade away from the U.S. without having to go to full EU status.
But I sure wouldn’t mind having some of those lovely French nukes sitting on our southern border right now. If full EU membership is what it takes for that to happen, so be it.
A full renegotiation of the US Canada trade border would be chaos
But that is precisely what Trump is demanding now. Even though he tore up NAFTA and renegotiated the deal in his first presidency (I am sure I remember him saying it was the greatest trade deal ever signed and the greatest win for
TrumpAmerica).
This Canadian would be happy to join.
I think the EU is waiting to see if we get PP or not since we’re on the brink of stupidity like the US was. If we elect a PM interested in being a civilized member of the global stage, I think we’ll be invited in.
hungary will block it probably
I’m doubtful full membership will ever happen, and even an EEA Norway-style agreement where we adopt 75% of the EU’s laws without representation but keep our fishing and agricultural policies (pre-requisites for the Atlantic and Prairie Provinces to agree), would take decades to be negotiated, signed and ratified with all the dysfunctional, proportional representational governments in Europe right now.
There’s been discussions about “associate membership” in the EU to bypass the European-ness requirement, but I don’t think that’s gotten any traction.
I would be grateful for any kind of free movement agreement that gains traction right now, even with CARICOM or MERCOSUR.
Nonsense those countries with proportional representation are more stable and perform better on a variety of issues.
They score higher on the democracy index than we do.
Of course you’re getting downvoted, this is the rational answer.
I would be happy if we at least could ratify CETA finally. Sheesh
At the very least, Canada should be allowed to participate in the Eurovision song contest!
You beat me to it!
I was going to post this with the caption “Democracy’s last stand” or something similar.
with so many foreign troops fighting for russia in ukraine, there is zero justification for european troops not to be fighting with the ukranians as well. zero. every day that uk & france aren’t mobilzing and deploying troops to ukraine is just more european stalling until complete abandonment
I mean, there’s great reasons not to have nuclear powers directly fighting each other.
This is not accurate, there a lot of different peoples fighting in the war but conflict within Ukraine is fought under Ukrainian and Russian flags only. North Koreans are deployed in Kursk region of the Russian Federation.
Edit: Korean under NK flag, they have military engineers deployed in donas region in support role but i think they are actually under RF flag
But technically Russia already popped the cherry on this, I will agree… if NK can deploy into Russia for combat operations why would not an EU state do the same?
nUclEaR wAr🤡
I think for the longest time the worry was that it would potentially be a NATO conflict. With Trump throwing everything out and them threatening to pull the US out of NATO I do sort of hope that gives Europe a reason to fight.
Pack your bags and go to the front yourself otherwise don’t advocate for more troops to be sent there thanks.
That’s what some people did.
Yup, and that’s dope. Especially because they aren’t actually our troops that way and won’t escalate things to a direct war.
I wonder if they all coordinate their suit and ties for unity.
everyone wearing a suit get to show you how much braindead and corrupted they are
Why isn’t King Corruption there then?
who’s that?
I trust your ability to use context clues to figure it out.
Based on his other comments I wouldn’t bet on that.
You’re putting far too much trust in a tankie.
Tankies are people too.
Are they really though? 🤔
What are you doing here? Looking by your profile, you try to fish for downvotes? I hope you are a bot and not waste real lifetime - like me giving you attention. Turn around buddy, it is not to late.
Good lord, 1,400 comments, and the first quick scroll is exclusively downvote farming. That’s not even dedication, at this point it’s outright not understanding why people would want to communicate online
What are you doing here?
I’m commenting on a post and pointing out that by wearing the same useless and unpractical “uniform” you are conforming to stupidity.
