>The U.S. is indeed working in the direction of creating a similar zone - the North American summit was the beginning of it. So far though, both Canada and Mexico have made the issues to joining too political to make it work. Everyone wants political concessions, concessions, concessions...
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That is one of the blocking issues here as well - in the form of each state can veto important decisions. Also "votes" are not purely based on number of citizens (or perhaps as a controlling vote, amount of money put into EU), giving smaller countries relatively more weight. Ridicolous.