Former German Foreign Minister Gabriel proposes Canada's EU membership
Der frühere Bundesaußenminister Gabriel hat vorgeschlagen, Kanada in die EU aufzunehmen.
You're viewing a single thread.
This would be a nightmare for Canada. Their regulations are all aligned with the US. Products would need to be adjusted, processes would need to be changed, entire product stocks would need to be offloaded. And it would make lots of Canadian products unexportable to the US.
Even something as simple as eggs have incompatible regulations in Europe and North America.
Ukrainian regulations were/ are all aligned with Russian ones, take a guess how the future looks like for that arrangement.
And after 3 years of negotiations and Ukraine being probably the fastest country to adapt their laws in the history of enlargements they are still nowhere near close to be aligned with the EU on internal market rules.
The point isn't that it's fast nor that it's easy, but that it is entirely doable if you just want it to be done
If Trump pulls through with his plans to invade Canada and Greenland, the only Canadian products exportable to the US are artillery grenades and bullets anyway.
The White House has been looking a lot more burnable than it did in the past tbh
Am American, would love Canada to go to EU standards and have America suffer of follow suit.
But aren't our standards, like, communism?
Yeah, I was thinking that, if Canada's standards are so similar to the US's, the problem is adjusting to the new ones, and not the difference between them per se.
There is a UKCA standard that has likely aligned some of Canada’s goods with EU regulation (given the UK’s current close alignment to EU regs).
Well washing the natural protection layers off from eggs and then having to cool them is pretty stupid, so it's obvious who should adjust their standards
similarly stupid is not washing the eggs and then still refrigerating them because people assume it’s necessary because they see it in stuff from the USA even though it wasn’t like that for their entire life and everything was fine
Well it's illegal (in the EU) for stores to refrigerate them as that would risk condensation forming when consumers transport them back home. Once at home refrigerating them is perfectly fine, in fact cartons might come with both "best before" and "to be refrigerated by" dates: If you want to keep them longer, put them in the fridge, if not, don't bother.
this is absolutely what i wish they’d do here (australia)
Is refrigerating unwashed eggs harmful in any way though?
No. Actually it is recommended by our German consumers association (Verbraucherzentrale), to store the unwashed eggs in the fridge at 2 - 6 °C ( 36 - 43 °F) for up to 4 - 6 weeks. However, the 'eggs' compartment in the door is not suitable, as when the door is opened, water may condense on the shell and spoil the protection layer.
other than being a waste of electricity it’s not
It's not much of a waste. The fridge is going to be running anyway, with or without the eggs, isn't it?
supermarkets don’t just have empty fridges running though… if they didn’t have eggs there, they’d fill it with other produce that they’d sell (and wouldn’t likely fill it with things they wouldn’t sell: supermarkets like spoilage even less than energy waste), or they’d not have that section refrigerated
Products would need to be adjusted
O no what a nightmare
When your economy is geared to exporting mostly to a country that will not accept products made according to the new rules it is.
For the regulations, I think slowly changing them to fit to EU standards, so industries can catch up, would be the best.
As for exports towards the US, aren't there already institutions (like the Trade and Technology Council) used by US and EU for trade to be efficient despite regulation and standard diferences?
Of course, I don't much about anything, so I'm mostly throwing stuff at the wall and see what sticks.
Would Canada be obliged to switch to 230V mains electricity, or could it keep 110V?
Guyana has 120/240V 50/60Hz depending on where you are so, no, not even France has a unified grid.
Looked it up,no,they wouldn't. There are provisions for these cases (same for the UK and Ireland with their driving sides) in these regulations and most EU regulations in that regard are based in ISO anyway.
They might get funding for it from the EU, though,so it might be a fun thing to calculate the costs. Very likely it would be cheaper for Canada to slowly transfer away from it, anyway, as the rest of the world is not using it and with the US putting tarrifs on,it might be the better option.
Tbh, the "EU regulations" are often not that bad actually for the smaller user(and I work in healthcare where the medical device regulations seem nightmarish at first - once you understand them they are FAR easier than what we had before and FAR cheaper to follow than the US rules. My former employer - the world leader in their field- e.g. refused to sell in the US for that reason).
Retooling the entire country would be a shit show at best, and prohibitively expensive, so they'd likely stay at their current spec. Also, energy trade is quite profitable, and for geographic regions it makes sense to keep standards aligned.
It's not about selling electricity, it's about having a single market for electrical devices. There's no single market if most products don't work in one country. Even different AC plugs are only allowed because adapters are cheap and using different plugs for Ireland and Italy is a minor change in the production line.
Italy and Denmark are only different for earthed plugs, IIRC. Outside of the former British Empire, unearthed plugs within the EU are standard.
Nah Italian sockets have a different prong spacing. It's close enough for europlugs to fit but those are only for low amperage applications.
You grossly misunderstood what the single market means - there are of course absolutely different local regulations and customs that are used. Ireland (and the UK before they left) drive on the other side of the road, trains systems vary by nation, even electrical standards do - the single market in terms of norms means that they just have to all follow a general market admission will follow the same rules - e.g. a product needs to fully comply with the basic marke wide ruleset.
You do realize that many companies offer multiple or variable power supplies addressing different input voltages and frequencies, right? Most consumer electronics are functionally identical, they just have a varying types of charging cable mains adapters. Larger appliances and tools are a different story, but more manufacturers are offering variability in their equipment.
Most and all are different things.
If you want to be pedantic, have at it.
If only it was realistic to export electricity from Canada to the EU.
It's theoretically possible with HVDC (high voltage direct current), as the AC -> DC -> AC transmission conversion allows linked grids to not have their AC waves synced, though that distance would probably be stretching the boundaries of distance.
Not really, no. There's a link in the works between the UK and Iceland, hopping to Greenland and then to Canada would actually be shorter distances. Mostly it hasn't happened yet because Iceland isn't much of a fan of it, they enjoy their cheap electricity and don't want to plaster their whole country in geothermal. Cable length isn't an issue.
I didn't even think about that one as an effective barrier to trade. That would be a shit show of epic proportions. The most realistic solution would be to make all products dual voltage to protect the single market, either directly or through a transformer in their power cable, but that would increase costs for everyone.
The problem with slowly is that a Canadian membership is being discussed as an answer to Trump threat to torpedo the western economy during this year. It would be more productive to focus on what trade agreements can be done in that timeframe instead of focusing on a goal that would take decades.
Better slowly and supported by trade agreements than not at all (even with the trade agreements). Even if the US doesn't devolve into a dictatorship/autocracy.