Trade, resources and digital ‘cooperation’ sound harmless – until you look at the fine print
I’m trying to spend a few weeks back in Canada for some peace and quiet from the usual European drama. Just my luck that Queen Ursula would follow me here, circus and all.
She hadn’t even landed in Montreal for the EU-Canada Summit, and already everyone around me was saying that Canada’s “associate membership” had been canceled. They’d heard that countries like France and Germany objected to the idea, even as Von der Leyen was saddling up her broom for a trip across the Atlantic.
Someone even asked me if that meant that we’re now kicked out of Eurovision. I had to explain that the title never existed in the first place. EU treaties refer only to association agreements. It’s just the usual sort of branding that von der Leyen, the unelected EU chief executive, likes to roll out, much like her endless riffs about unity, as though dissent weren’t an actual virtue in a functioning democracy.
Or like the way she talks a good game about sticking it to Russia while simultaneously celebrating the €977 million spent this winter alone on gas purchases for Ukraine – much of which comes from Russia via Hungary and Slovakia. The EU writes cheques to Kiev. Kiev pays Hungary and Slovakia, who then pay Moscow.
Those middlemen exist mainly so that Queen Ursula can maintain a certain public image while engaging in more practical considerations behind the scenes, albeit at considerably greater expense to the European taxpayer.
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