Keep in mind that right now there is in fact no such thing as an EU Associate Member status and this just a declaration of intent from von der Leyen.
Assuming there is genuine and lasting will from the various EU countries to actually create this, after the experience with the mess that was Switzerland and its special status, any EU Associated Member status will probably be designed as a standard thing rather than a hack for Canada like a hack was done for Switzerland, so it will probably take a while, plus these kinds of thing require unanimous approval of all EU member states (so it’s perfectly possible that countries with Russia-aligned governments like Slovakia will veto it).
At the moment this seems to mainly be talkie-talkie from von der Leyen, and this ex-German Defense Minister who left that post under a dark cloud is not exactly the most competent and serious EU Commission head we ever had or even somebody who genuinelly pushes back on America’s moneyed interests.
It might make more sense for Canada to be an EEA member (an already existing association with the EU that allows non-EU member nations to be in the Single Market) though within of the Single Market even via such a mechanism requires uniformization with EU product and service regulatory norms (don’t really want bleeched chicken or consumer chemical products following a “allowed until proven dangerous” regulatory approval process like in in the US) which I believe would be problematic for Canada right now since the norms they follow are aligned with US regulatory norms, not with the - far stricter - EU norms.
If there’s something I learned during the whole Leave debate when I lived in Britain is that seamless access to a highly integrated Products and Services market like the Single Market is nowhere as simple as “lets tell people what they want to hear” politicians (like von der Leyen and the UK Brexiters) portray it.
As you correctly point out, it’s probable that Canada’s associate membership will result in an EEA-lite relationship with the European Union. I can see the engagement being sectorial.
It’s going to be very hard for the Canadian economy to escape Washington’s regulatory power (Quebec’s French language consumer regulation being actively disputed by the US in trade negotiations is illustrative of this), but an associate membership will set up pathways of closer integration with the EU than having a simple bilateral relationship. It will probably also give Canada more leverage in future talks with the United States (and Mexico).
Obviously, none of this would have happened had Trump not pursued maximalist trade war aims coupled with an inflammatory rhetoric about Canada’s sovereignty. Canada ending up closer to the EU as a result of this (“integrated” within the EU!) is no doubt among the worst American soft power debacles of the postwar era
I would think that now that the alliance is established, any new members who joined could join as limited or associate members for the first X years as the country transitions to full EU membership. Politics takes time and there are likely specific legal frameworks Canada (or any given new EU country) would need to adopt.
It takes a long time to integrate with the EU Single Market even without having to actually design an entire new form of association, which is what an EU Associated Member would be.
All you have to do is look at the time it took to negotiate the British Exit Treaty which established their relationship with the EU after Leave, and this was a nation which started with regulatory norms entirelly aligned with the EU ones and wanted to be free to set their own norms on some domains, so a much simpler situation than trying to come up with a semi-convergence standard for countries following completelly different norms which aren’t trying to fully converge with EU norms to become EU members (the latter being a process that usually takes more than a decade, by the way).
So far all we have is the kind of rosy and incredibly vague talkie-talkie from a particularly incompetent salesman-type on the EU side, well before the “technical” people even just start looking into how to actually do it.
There being true will amongst the EU countries for this (which I believe there is: in the various countries here I lived in, the perception of Canadians is very positive), I suspect this “EU Member Association” from von der Leyen will in practice just be a fancy name for broad trade treaty on Products, rather than something akin to the EEA association.
Doesn’t mean that Canada and the EU can’t further converge and the thing turn into much more in the mid and long term, though, just don’t expect this talkie-talkie to yield anything genuinelly significative (rather than just loud politician proclamations about something which in practice is nothing special) in a year or two.
Keep in mind that right now there is in fact no such thing as an EU Associate Member status and this just a declaration of intent from von der Leyen.
Assuming there is genuine and lasting will from the various EU countries to actually create this, after the experience with the mess that was Switzerland and its special status, any EU Associated Member status will probably be designed as a standard thing rather than a hack for Canada like a hack was done for Switzerland, so it will probably take a while, plus these kinds of thing require unanimous approval of all EU member states (so it’s perfectly possible that countries with Russia-aligned governments like Slovakia will veto it).
At the moment this seems to mainly be talkie-talkie from von der Leyen, and this ex-German Defense Minister who left that post under a dark cloud is not exactly the most competent and serious EU Commission head we ever had or even somebody who genuinelly pushes back on America’s moneyed interests.
It might make more sense for Canada to be an EEA member (an already existing association with the EU that allows non-EU member nations to be in the Single Market) though within of the Single Market even via such a mechanism requires uniformization with EU product and service regulatory norms (don’t really want bleeched chicken or consumer chemical products following a “allowed until proven dangerous” regulatory approval process like in in the US) which I believe would be problematic for Canada right now since the norms they follow are aligned with US regulatory norms, not with the - far stricter - EU norms.
If there’s something I learned during the whole Leave debate when I lived in Britain is that seamless access to a highly integrated Products and Services market like the Single Market is nowhere as simple as “lets tell people what they want to hear” politicians (like von der Leyen and the UK Brexiters) portray it.
As you correctly point out, it’s probable that Canada’s associate membership will result in an EEA-lite relationship with the European Union. I can see the engagement being sectorial.
It’s going to be very hard for the Canadian economy to escape Washington’s regulatory power (Quebec’s French language consumer regulation being actively disputed by the US in trade negotiations is illustrative of this), but an associate membership will set up pathways of closer integration with the EU than having a simple bilateral relationship. It will probably also give Canada more leverage in future talks with the United States (and Mexico).
Obviously, none of this would have happened had Trump not pursued maximalist trade war aims coupled with an inflammatory rhetoric about Canada’s sovereignty. Canada ending up closer to the EU as a result of this (“integrated” within the EU!) is no doubt among the worst American soft power debacles of the postwar era
I would think that now that the alliance is established, any new members who joined could join as limited or associate members for the first X years as the country transitions to full EU membership. Politics takes time and there are likely specific legal frameworks Canada (or any given new EU country) would need to adopt.
It takes a long time to integrate with the EU Single Market even without having to actually design an entire new form of association, which is what an EU Associated Member would be.
All you have to do is look at the time it took to negotiate the British Exit Treaty which established their relationship with the EU after Leave, and this was a nation which started with regulatory norms entirelly aligned with the EU ones and wanted to be free to set their own norms on some domains, so a much simpler situation than trying to come up with a semi-convergence standard for countries following completelly different norms which aren’t trying to fully converge with EU norms to become EU members (the latter being a process that usually takes more than a decade, by the way).
So far all we have is the kind of rosy and incredibly vague talkie-talkie from a particularly incompetent salesman-type on the EU side, well before the “technical” people even just start looking into how to actually do it.
There being true will amongst the EU countries for this (which I believe there is: in the various countries here I lived in, the perception of Canadians is very positive), I suspect this “EU Member Association” from von der Leyen will in practice just be a fancy name for broad trade treaty on Products, rather than something akin to the EEA association.
Doesn’t mean that Canada and the EU can’t further converge and the thing turn into much more in the mid and long term, though, just don’t expect this talkie-talkie to yield anything genuinelly significative (rather than just loud politician proclamations about something which in practice is nothing special) in a year or two.