Uncharted Territory: EU Negotiations and Canadian Economic Policy

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The CBC’s Chris Hall recently reported that Canada and the European Union (EU) are preparing to release the final details of a Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement. The announcement will be made on September 25, effectively ending a negotiating period that has lasted a staggering 10 months. According to the report, Prime Minister Stephen Harper flew to Brussels to sign an agreement-in-principle with EU President José Manuel Barroso, and the text of the full agreement will be made public as part of a formal summit to be held between the two sides in Ottawa. In today’s post we briefly examine postwar Canadian economics in an attempt to postulate the positive and negative implications of the pending Canada-EU free trade agreement.

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The Borderland: Between Russia and the Rest

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In early December 2013, we wrote about the controversy surrounding Ukraine’s decision to sidle alongside Putin’s Russia rather than sign agreements with the European Union that would allegedly bring the country closer to European integration. Over the last few months, the controversy has evolved considerably from a string of peaceful protests to violent unrest. The official response has escalated in turn, leading to violent clashes in the streets and hundreds of casualties since mid-January of this year. The most recent developments, however, have raised the stakes significantly as both Russia and Ukraine mobilize their militaries for war and a weary diplomatic community scrambles to ease the tensions.

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Canadian and EU Integration: No Easy Road

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Last week we explored some issues involving EU integration and Kiev’s decision not to sign the historic EU Association Agreement, which some argue would have put the Ukraine firmly on the road to prosperity. In light of the recent riots in the Ukraine’s capital—and the harsh government reaction to them—this post looks at some of the difficulties North Americans have when conceptualizing EU’s endless objective of expansion.

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Overstretching the EU's Overstretched Boundaries

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In this post, we suggest that given such severe financial crises, the EU should place a moratorium on the accession process. Croatia, which became the twenty-eighth member of the EU last month, brings with it a series of new challenges whilst other EU countries try to remedy their own. The post raises an important question: has the EU overstretched its boundaries?

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