The European Union is planning to make e-commerce platforms such as Temu, Shein and Amazon Marketplace liable for dangerous or illegal products sold online, the Financial Times reported on Saturday.Customs reforms would oblige online platforms to provide data before goods arrive in the EU, allowing offici
There’s been talks on Turkey joining, which is mostly outside of Europe, but it’s not even close. With Canada it doesn’t make much sense, it’ll always be closer to US. Maybe something resembling NATO or UN could be introduced, uniting all the still sane countries, but that would be short lived given how hard it is even for UN and NATO to function in the current political climate and rising alt right movements all around Europe - I don’t think any country or organization is truly safe from those.
The point of eu is less about geographical location, and more about increasing cooperation and trade. It’s evolved to more than that, but Canada joining is no different than any island nation already in the eu. Ireland, Cyprus, malta are all seperate from continental Europe. Canada trades heavily with the USA, but that relationship is not currently positive. The USA would have less ability to force conditions on Canada if they were part of the eu. Instead of being the smaller trading partner beholden to America, the become part of an equally larger bloc. No tariffs would be possible without tariffs on all. And likewise, reciprocal tariffs would be imposed by all states. Trump in his first term tried to negotiate terms with Germany. He couldn’t grasp the collective nature of the eu when Merkel deflected him on multiple times.
I think there is likely less upside on trading for Canada, than, say, Iceland or turkey, but there is still benefit, as a smaller country beside a larger one, that’s their biggest trading partner. Those benefits are minimal for Iceland, but moderate for turkey. For each country it’s a different list of pros and cons.