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Cake day: January 29th, 2025

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  • The law and politics of a hypothetical application by a country geographically outside of Europe

    […] a European state does not mean one limited to the continent of Europe. Before 1985, Greenland was—via Denmark—part of the European Union’s predecessor the European Economic Community (EEC) despite being on the North American continental shelf […] Indeed, the European Union expressly recognises nine “outermost regions”—some as far away as the Indian Ocean—as part of the European Union. And in addition to this there are 13 overseas territories with a special relationship with the EU, including Saint-Pierre-et-Miquelon, which is just off the coast of, well, Canada […]

    In essence, a European state need not, from a geographic perspective, be confined to Europe or even part of Europe. It would appear being European is state of mind […]

    The real answer is not formal, but political. If Canada really wanted to join, and the member states and the European institutions wanted Canada to join, then a way would be found. The definition of “European state” could be fudged […]

    What could […] evolve [as an alernative to Canada’s EU membership] is an entity that joins together the European Union with Canada and other non-members such as the UK, Norway and Iceland—and perhaps even Greenland—and that this entity could be placed on a formal footing. This would be outwith the EU treaties but would complement the EU bloc. And it would not then matter if the “Europe” label applied or not.








  • What an absurdly derailed op-ed. It follows the same whataboutism that is so widespread among Chinese propagandists. Just because there is one traitor in Hungary does not mean that the traitors from China are better. Huawei should have been banned from Europe long time ago, and this ‘incident’ is yet another reason to not trust this company and the totalitarian regime behind it.

    Addition: I hope the bribery nvestigations regarding the corrupt MEPs and Huawei managers will also take into account the relations between Huawei’s lobby office in Brussels and the offices in EU member states like Germany, Italy, France, and all the others. For national member states are important lobbying centers for China.

    [Edit typo.]



  • Russia doesn’t want Ukraine to be the staging ground for an invasion.

    The same Russian propaganda rubbish over and again. No one wants (and wanted) to invade Russia, this is completely out of touch. Russia isn’t afraid of an invasion but of a country like Ukraine (or Georgia, Moldova, the Baltics, and many others) near its borders that strive in a free society. If Russians see there is an alternative state model that gives people a say and hold politicians accountable, it would threaten Russian current dictatorial government. Democracy is Putin’s only enemy.


  • This is, however, not likely to benefit Ukraine in the long term. Ukrainian government agencies have in recent years purged Chinese telecoms equipment like Huawei from their networks since the start of the war.

    Chinese companies routinely provide Russia with high-tech services and equipment that the U.S. and EU ban. In January, [Chinese rival to Starlink] SpaceSail set up a subsidiary in Kazakhstan, a member of the Commonwealth of Independent States and a long-time eager intermediary for Russian sanctions evasion.

    SpaceSail’s ongoing launches are consequently more likely to give Russian soldiers in Ukraine internet services that Ukrainian soldiers have long enjoyed than they are to help Ukraine move beyond Starlink.

    Addition: The headline could easily be misinterpreted imho. What is meant is that China has more satellites in space at the moment which makes it technologically more competitive to Starlink as of now. It would be not a good idea for Ukraine to turn to choose China given the Chinese governments support for Russia in its aggression, however, and this is also what the article eventually suggests.