• @sv1sjpOP
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        910 months ago

        I have a lot of things that I want to buy from Japan without extra fees. Let them in!

        • DarkThoughts
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          610 months ago

          There’s definitely a lot of interesting companies in Japan that I’d love to import stuff from.

    • @[email protected]
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      610 months ago

      Ukraine, Moldova, and the Western Balkans, but not Georgia or Turkey

      That’s the second sentence of the article. I would also like to see Norway and Switzerland, maybe even Scotland coming around to it.

    • @[email protected]
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      510 months ago

      Ukraine, United Kingdom, Norway, Serbia, Montenegro, Albania, North Macedonia, Moldova, Belarus (once the idiot is dead), Russia (once the idiot is dead)

      • Nerd02
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        410 months ago
        • Ukraine: would be nice but it’d break the current farming subsidies program
        • United Kingdom: just a matter of time
        • Norway (and might I add Iceland and Switzerland): I’d love nothing more than this but we both know they won’t for different political reasons. Never gonna happen under the current treaties.
        • Serbia, Belarus, Russia: fuck no
        • everyone else: as soon as they respect the Copenhagen criteria, sure
        • @[email protected]
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          310 months ago

          I think you underestimated the bloody minded xenophobic national pride that dragged the UK out of the EU. It will be a long time before the political will to even try and rejoin emerges. Even then I suspect it will be hesistent as there’s no way the EU will give us the same deal we had last time.

          • Nerd02
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            210 months ago

            Maybe I do. But I’ve already seen polls that appeared to be favouring (albeit marginally) the UK rejoining the EU. And this is only after a handful of years.

            Please don’t take it as an offense, that’s not how I mean it, but I think Brexit showed that the UK needed the EU more than the EU needed the UK, so I expect those numbers to grow even further as the people realize it.

        • @[email protected]
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          10 months ago

          If Serbia, Belarus and Russia switch to proper democratic rule of law, equivalent to Western Europe, why not? Integration is the best way to prevent wars. Just because they’re barbaric dictatorships now doesn’t mean they can’t get better in the future. Just look at Germany im 1940 versus now

          • Nerd02
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            210 months ago

            True for Serbia and Belarus, but Russia is so big - both in terms of surface as well as population - that it wouldn’t really work with the way the union is currently structured. I’m not even sure if it’s possible to restructure the union in a way that allows Russia joining without them becoming an hegemonic power within the union itself.

      • Echo Dot
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        10 months ago

        I don’t understand why Norway isn’t already in the EU.

        Serbia, Belarus and Russia are a bad idea as their economies barely exist. We don’t want to be supporting them as they try to climb out of the economic black hole of their own creation.

        • Nerd02
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          410 months ago

          Short answer: the Norwegians don’t want to. Why? I think it has to do with both their very high GDP per capita (which IIRC would make them pay large membership fees) and more importantly, the fact that they’d have to follow the EU’s common fisheries policy.

          With the current arrangement they have to follow most of the EU’s laws but not the fishing ones.

          • @hanekam
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            310 months ago

            Agriculture too. We’d have to massively cut tariffs and subsidies and very few farms would survive the transition.

        • @[email protected]
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          210 months ago

          Same reason as Switzerland: they would gain little to nothing but pay stupid amounts of money because they’re very wealthy.

    • Nerd02
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      310 months ago

      Soon we’ll be running out of European countries

      Morocco be like: 👀

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morocco–European_Union_relations

      In 1987, Morocco applied to join the European Communities (the precursor to the European Union). The application was rejected on the grounds that Morocco was not considered to be a “European country” and hence could not join.