Canada has been invited to become the first “associate member” of the EU by the European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen.
In an unprecedented offer, von der Leyen said on Wednesday that the EU and Canada “see the world with the same eyes” through shared democratic values and common approaches to many big issues, from AI to climate breakdown, the Ukraine war and geopolitics.
Speaking in the presence of the Canadian prime minister, Mark Carney, at the European parliament in Strasbourg, she said: “We want to bring the relationship with Canada to the highest level possible. We must urgently reimagine our partnerships. So, I would like to work with you on opening the door for Canada to be the first associate member of the EU.”
Carney, who is due to address the parliament on Thursday, has called for a “unique alliance” with the EU as Canada seeks to reduce its heavy dependence on US trade.
He later tweeted: “Canada and the EU are natural partners, united by shared values.”
The EU and Canada are due to hold a summit in late October to develop the future relationship.
Canada and the EU already have a trade deal and numerous bilateral agreements, but have been moving closer since Donald Trump returned to the White House and raised tariffs on both old allies, while repeatedly talking about Canada becoming the 51st US state and lambasting the EU.
Von der Leyen said the existing EU-Canada trade deal would be upgraded to an “alliance for the future” to create a “common prosperity and economic security space”.
She said the two sides would also create a tech alliance, integrate defence industrial bases and make the Arctic a “flagship joint project”. EU officials are especially interested in Canada’s energy and natural resources. Von der Leyen pitched joint work on energy, critical minerals, batteries, AI, quantum computing, cybersecurity and economic security.
The offer of associate membership is certain to raise questions among other EU allies, including the UK, which has long sought a more flexible approach from Brussels.
The 27-member EU has never had an associate membership category, although it has close ties with Norway, Iceland and Switzerland, allowing deep economic integration with these countries, who follow many EU rules.
It remains to be seen what associate membership means, including for Canada’s relationship with the EU single market. When the UK was negotiating its departure from the bloc and post-Brexit relationship, EU officials repeatedly said there was no status that enabled a foreign country to be half in and half out of the single market.
The phrase itself took EU insiders by surprise since von der Leyen had not used the term when she briefed senior EU diplomats ahead of her speech last Friday.
One EU diplomat said member states were “generally very supportive of ambition” in the EU-Canada relationship, but had been slightly worried in recent weeks that von der Leyen was overpromising on Canada. “‘Associate membership’ sounds like a nice headline but in reality 10 member states have still not ratified Ceta,” the person said, referring to the EU-Canada trade agreement that was agreed 10 years ago. A second EU diplomat described associate membership as “an empty phrase”.
Carney’s approach to dealing with Trump has however attracted widespread praise among MEPs.
Last month, Carney announced he was breaking off trade talks with the US, saying Canada would not be subjugated, and then introduced retaliatory tariffs on billions worth of US goods. By contrast, the EU last year accepted 15% tariffs on many European goods while dropping its own duties to avoid a trade war with Trump.
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Javier Moreno Sánchez, a Spanish socialist MEP, who leads the European parliament’s Canada delegation, said “for sure” the EU had lessons to learn from Carney’s approach, because “Trump respects people who are strong”. He added: “Canadians are the most European people outside Europe and that is the key point for the development of our relationship.”
Martin Leng at the Brussels Institute for Geopolitics thinktank said a world in flux was “pushing the EU towards far greater flexibility in its relations with third states”.
He said von der Leyen’s speech, with its focus on different sectoral areas of cooperation “points to the ambition and strategic breadth of the associate membership which the parties have in mind but also suggests that, in reality, Canada’s ‘membership’ may consist of ‘plugging in’ to existing programmes and frameworks, such as the European Defence Agency, rather than joining the union in any traditional sense”.
Roland Paris, the director of the Graduate School of Public and International Affairs at the University of Ottawa and a foreign affairs adviser to the former Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau, said the term “associate member” has taken too much focus and “doesn’t really matter” in the long term.
“My hunch is that von der Leyen was hoping to rally supporters of much closer cooperation with Canada by using that label. In the end, what I expect is that we’re going to see a collection of agreements rather than membership in any institutional sense,” he said.
Carney’s decision to formalise close ties with Europe however prompted outrage from Conservatives at home.
Pierre Poilievre, the Tory leader, posted on social media that he feared Canadians “struggling to pay their rent” would have to pay more taxes “to fund the European Union’s heavy bureaucracy”.
“The welder from Welland didn’t elect a Eurocrat to regulate our steel. The farmer from Saskatchewan and the fisher from the Atlantic provinces didn’t choose a Brussels food regulator who has never seen our prairies or our coasts,” he wrote. “We will NEVER be the 51st American state. And we will NEVER be the 28th state of the European Union.”
Another, Jamil Jivani, posted that Conservatives “will NEVER support Mark Carney’s Liberal plan to have Canada join the hopelessly run, over-regulated, and self-destructive EU”.
Paris said no Canadian leaders “would be interested in formal EU membership if it involves subordinating Canadian law and regulatory structures” to Europe.
“I don’t think that’s on the table right now. There has long been a bipartisan push in Canada to deepen trade connections between Canada and Europe,” he said. “We’re now seeing now is a logical extension of those trade discussions into other areas.”
