Germany leads push against EU’s ‘associate membership’ label for Canada
https://www.politico.eu/article/germany-leads-push-against-canada-eu-associate-membership/Open linkView original on lemmy.worldSyndicated from the fediverse. Read and engage on the original instance.
View original on lemmy.worldhttps://www.politico.eu/article/germany-leads-push-against-canada-eu-associate-membership/Open linkView original on lemmy.world
11 replies
I sense some serious the German business model™ is threatened vibes
Merz is in Trump's pocket
For fucks sake, the incompetent black rock manager chancellor cosplayer should just go lick some eggs already…
He never was a manager for BlackRock - nobody sane would give him operative control over anything they value. He had a "
we pay you for political access, don't touch anything" cushy position as the chairmen of their supervisory board.I'm very sorry!
I'm German and this grumpy emulation of a chancellor is almost as bad as the orange guy on the other side of the ocean. Ours is as detached from reality as the orange dude, just not as demented yet. He's just genuinely a bad person.
Also seems hell bent on getting the AfD more power…
Fucking Germany man… they keep finding new ways to screw over the rest of Europe for over a century now
So is Canada seeking preferential treatment or what? The article doesn't really explain, just quotes complaints from diplomats from countries opposing the "alliance" and how bad the economical impact will be, but it's still not clear what the problem is.
They are using the term "Associate member" to define the relationship but it has never been defined what that means and doesn't exist in any eu treaty. Also it could cause confusion with the existing EU term "association agreements".
That part i understood but again why the pushback? It's not like they can't put it to a vote on how to call it, they can call it the intercontinental treaty or some shit like that.
The German pushback stems imho from Merz belonging to the CDU, whose political core can be summed up as
In their mind they just need to wait out the Orange Man and then most things can just go back to how they were before. They don't want to make Him angry in the meantime, which the "associate member" label would certainly lead to.
EDIT: Ursula von der Leyen is imho actually pretty far removed from her party's stance on this.