Donald Trump’s extraordinary threats have angered Canadians and Europeans, and the idea of a new kind of transatlantic alliance is gaining traction

Joachim Streit has never stepped foot in Canada. But that hasn’t stopped the German politician from launching a tenacious, one-man campaign that he readily describes as “aspirational”: to have the North American country join the EU.

“We have to strengthen the European Union,” said Streit, who last year was elected as a member of the European parliament. “And I think Canada – as its prime minister says – is the most European country outside of Europe.”

While he admitted that the possibility of Canada as a full member of the EU “may be aspirational for now”, he wondered if it was an idea whose time had come.

“Canada would be a strong member,” he said. “If Canada would be a member of the EU, it would rank 4th in terms of GDP. It’s part of Nato. And 58% of (working-age) Canadians have college degrees.”

  • acargitz
    3•3 days ago

    Closer integration and cooperation, yes absolutely. Membership, no.

    We don’t need to be anyone’s 51st state and we don’t need to be anyone’s 28th member state.

        • @Nalivai@lemmy.world
          3•2 days ago

          Your comment wasn’t complex enough to merit this question. I was referring to the only part of your comment where it was relevant to. Which is almost all of it.

          • acargitz
            2•2 days ago

            So you’re saying that the EU doesn’t work in a way that allows closer cooperation and integration without membership. That’s factually wrong. This model works for Switzerland, Norway and Iceland.

            Got any more snark?

            • @Nalivai@lemmy.world
              3•2 days ago

              Oh, I have a lot of that, but I’m realising you need everything to be spelled out very thoroughly and subtlety is lost on you, so here we go:
              The EU isn’t an authoritarian institution that you are afraid of, and as Britain’s example showed, the closer you are to being a full member, the better the benefits, and the more you’re trying to play a big boy, the more you’re in the shit.
              Canada doesn’t have the proper ratio of citizens to stored Nazi gold to properly pull off Switzerland thing anyway.
              But sure, closer cooperation is better than no cooperation

              • acargitz
                2•2 days ago

                Britain was already an integrated member that decided to exit. That’s very different from opposing new deep integration.

                We might not have a great Nazi gold to citizens ratio but our resources to citizens ratio is more than Iceland and Norway combined many many times over.

                I never said that EU is an authoritarian institution, you made that up.

                My argument is for keeping our existing sovereignty, such as for example being able to keep our own currency, and our more welcoming immigration policies. Canada doesn’t need the Euro, doesn’t need the ECB, we don’t need the Dublin treaty and we don’t need the Stability and Growth Pact.

                Anything the EU does right (eg the GDPR) we can adopt and adapt for ourselves already. There is absolutely nothing holding us back from becoming better.

                The EU is a complicated institution, parts of it are structurally neoliberal, in the same way that parts of Canadian institutions are structurally colonialist. So we really don’t need the craziness of European politics internal dysfunction. We have enough of that of our own.

                Keep the snark coming.