Canada’s potential EU ‘associate membership’ needs to be defined - and trigger projects - to be taken seriously

Canada is the talk of Brussels.

Until Mark Carney became Prime Minister, Canada barely registered with European Union and European Commission parliamentarians and officials. When it did, it was often for the wrong reasons. Canada was the source of the world’s dirtiest oil; it was effectively a protectorate of the United States and had scant interest in boosting trade with the EU; and its hockey squads routinely beat the Europeans in international competitions.

Today, the EU sees Canada as a potential strategic, economic and security partner as Mr. Carney’s vision of middle powers joining forces – laid out in his milestone Davos speech in January – shows tentative signs of coming together. The prospect has lit up Brussels. Hundreds of EC and EU representatives, including about 10 EC commissioners for defence, digital sovereignty, trade, energy, financial markets, critical metals and other areas, are prepping for the Oct. 29 and 30 Canada-EU summit in Montreal.

It is not the first Canada-EU summit – they date back to the 1990s – but the most important one by far. Europe wants more Canada. The goal is to recruit Canada as the EU’s first “associate member” or similar status – the precise wording is a work in progress.

But it could be a dream too far.

Some of the member-states’ EU ambassadors have already rejected the term, in good part because they don’t know what it means. “Associate member” exists nowhere in the EU treaties that bind the countries together into the world’s biggest single trading bloc. “The term hasn’t been defined,” said Tobias Cremer, a German member of European Parliament (MEP) who is the rapporteur for Canada-EU relationships. “The vision is the closest possible partnership that the EU can offer to a non-EU country.”

The Montreal summit will attempt to shed light on the term and promote the potential for a long-term, deep alliance that will bring the two sides together on everything from AI investments and Arctic sovereignty to energy security and satellite launches.

It won’t be easy. Both the EU and Canada are notoriously bureaucratic. They are foot-draggers on major projects and divided internally (after all, Alberta just held a referendum on independence and Quebec has re-elected a sovereigntist government). The EU, for better or for worse, is a regulation factory and member-states can be fractious. Its decision-making and policy process is incomprehensible to outsiders, even to many insiders. The dullest guest at the dinner party is the guy who knows the difference between the EU, the EC, the Council of the EU and the European Council.

Another factor potentially working against Canada is social, electoral and economic upheaval in the EU, which could drop the Canada-EU file to the bottom of the to-do list as domestic priorities take precedence.

Paris and Milan have been besieged by student protests and riots over rising prices for everything from housing to schooling. French bond yields are climbing into crisis area as France’s debt load and budget deficit widen. Far-right populism is on the rise. The pro-Russia, anti-immigrant Alternative for Germany (AfD) has emerged as the country’s most popular party, is winning state elections and could see the ouster of centrist Christian Democrat Chancellor Friedrich Merz. In France, the highly nationalistic, anti-immigrant Marine Le Pen is leading the polls ahead of next year’s presidential election.

While there is no evidence that either she or the AfD are in favour or against Canada forging a tight alliance with the EU, they simply may not care enough about the issue to lend it political traction.

More worrisome for both sides is that the EU’s love affair with Canada seems more alleged than real, at least at this point. Nine EU countries, including heavyweights France and Italy, have yet to ratify the Canada-EU trade agreement, known as CETA, which has been provisionally in force since 2017 – trade in agriculture is a major sticking point. Canada and the EU are fighting over the imminent implementation of the EU’s Deforestation Regulation (Canada wants a carveout).

One senior EC official told The Globe that the EU likes Mr. Carney more than it likes Canada and Mr. Carney will not be prime minister forever. The Globe is not naming the source because he was not authorized to speak on the matter.

But if there is any time in recent history that Canada and the EU could benefit from deeper ties, it is now. The theory is that they have common threats. In short, they are United States, Russia and China.

The United States, under the erratic and volatile Donald Trump, has hit both Canada and the EU with punishing tariffs, encouraging them to find reliable trading partners elsewhere on the planet. Mr. Trump wants to make the Canada the “51^st state” and his MAGA lackeys promoted Alberta separatism. He wants to buy Greenland, part of Denmark’s realm and the EU’s by extension. Russia is a threat to Canadian Arctic sovereignty and the EU’s integrity as Russia’s hybrid warfare hit the EU’s, and NATO’s, eastern flank.

China is a massive economic peril to both, more so to the EU. Many Chinese industries are heavily state-subsidized and their now high-quality, relatively inexpensive products – electric vehicles, green-tech and telecoms equipment, among them – are flooding Western markets and threatening manufacturing employment. “China and the U.S. have become very unpredictable for us,” said German MEP Hildegard Bentele, who is Parliament’s representative on the EU critical raw materials board. “Canada is a very good candidate to become a reliable partner.”

Jonathan Wilkinson, Canada’s ambassador to the EU, would not specifically say that Mr. Trump was the driving force behind the mutual coddling. But there is no doubt a Canada-EU embrace would have been unimaginable in the pre-Trump era.

“We live in a world right now where there are two hegemonic powers, China and the United States, both of whom are acting in a manner that pursues their own interests,” Mr. Wilkinson said. “Is this in part a response to the changing nature of global politics? Of course it is. But the flip side, is that by getting together we can advance our interests and our common values.”

The genesis of “associate member” is already lost in time.

Mr. Wilkinson said that the concept of forging a tighter alliance predates Mr. Carney’s Davos speech. Earlier this year, Canadian diplomats in Brussels were talking about an “enhanced partnership,” with the EU, though it’s not clear whether the term originated in the Canadian mission or the EC headquarters.

The idea evidently captured the imagination of EC President Ursula von der Leyen. In her Sept. 16 State of the Union address at the European Parliament in Strasbourg, France, she went into full Canada mode and invited it to become an “associate member” of the EU. Mr. Carney was in the audience and, the next day, addressed Parliament.

The “associate” invitation appeared to catch some Canadian officials and diplomats, Mr. Wilkinson among them, by surprise. After Ms. von der Leyen’s speech, he suggested the term was premature. “We’ve been talking a lot about different ways in which you can describe the work we’re doing,” he told reporters. “I think we’re actually a ways away from actually from landing on actually what is the best way to describe it.”

Mr. Carney’s office and the EC have made it clear that “associate” membership will in no way lead to full EU membership – a legal impossibility for a non-European country – or a half-in-half-out approach, like Norway’s. Norway is a non-EU member that joined the European Economic Area, a status that grants it access to the EU’s single market at the expense of shunting thousands of EU laws and regulations into national law and contributing to EU cohesion grants. Canada wants none of that. It would not look good to reject Mr. Trump’s 51^st state lunge only to leap into the sovereignty-robbing embrace of the EU.

The Montreal summit will attempt to put some flesh on the bones of the concept, though no one is expecting a breakthrough. The effort more likely will be billed as a work in progress. While it’s possible that “associate member” will make it into the final text, with a target date for Canada to achieve that status, less ambitious wording, such as a commitment for the two sides to “work toward a structured alliance,” seems just as likely.

But timing is everything and Mr. Carney’s idea of pushing middle-power democracies together appears to have captured the EU’s imagination and could lead to other countries, including Ukraine, Japan and Australia, entering the fold. “Canada’s associate membership in the EU adds a political dimension that is absent from CETA,” said Mark Camilleri, CEO of the Canada-EU Trade and Investment Association in Brussels. “This transatlantic relationship needs to be institutionalized and this effort can do that, not with a new treaty, but with processes that bake in ambition and link businesses.”

The summit will have two broad goals. The first is to make progress on, or complete, transatlantic initiatives already underway: One of these initiatives is bringing CETA into full force; another is finishing the tweaks on the Digital Trade Agreement, which is expected to be formally signed in Montreal, handing the summit a solid win from the onset.

The second goal is defining “associate membership,” which Mr. Carney has called the “alliance of the future,” and laying out priority areas to be pursued. According to a draft communiqué that could change before or during the Montreal summit, the two sides will commit to “a deeper, more integrated and strategically aligned relationship. The full scope of this associate membership will be defined by the 2027 Canada-EU Summit.”

Carney, von der Leyen urged to draft ‘middle power’ charter at Canada-EU summit

The possibilities seem endless; they also seem destined to be hard won – and expensive. The apparent goal is to accelerate potential projects of mutual benefit that would enhance economic and regulatory sovereignty and competitiveness.

All of which raises the question: Does the EU need to bestow Canada with special status to get there?

Canada has few manufactured products that the EU covets. The EU doesn’t need Canadian cars, petrochemicals or many pharmaceuticals beyond medical cannabis. It does want, and is getting, Canadian-made business jets and their military derivatives, including the Bombardier-based Saab GlobalEye surveillance jet, De Havilland-made water bombers and some industrial machinery.

What the EU really wants from Canada is in the ground: Natural gas, specifically liquefied natural gas (LNG); critical metals such as copper, nickel and lithium to propel its electrification drive; and defence products as both sides rebuild their militaries.

Canadian LNG is a priority for the EU. Russian gas supplies to the EU plummeted after Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022. Some Russian LNG and pipeline gas are still entering the bloc but are to be phased out next year. The United States has taken up much of the slack. About 60 per cent of the EU’s LNG comes from the United States and Brussels, sensibly, wants to diversify the bloc’s energy sources.

But Canadian resources are traded on the global market. If the EU wants them, it just has to pay for them like anyone else. It doesn’t need Canada as an associate member to sign a contract. As for defence, that file is already on the shelf. Canada earlier this year formally joined SAFE – the Security Action for Europe program – which gives Canada equal access to the EU’s military procurement program and financing platform. Canada was SAFE’s first non-EU member.

Still, “associate” status could speed up the transatlantic co-operation effort, especially if it’s applied to the regulatory and financial spheres. The draft communiqué says Canada and the EU will co-operate to make it easier for businesses and investors to operate across the Atlantic in order to “increase cross-border capital flows, strengthen financial market integration, and improve opportunities for consumers, financial institutions, businesses and investors.” These efforts, it adds, will help “mobilize capital for strategic sectors and support long-term economic growth and competitiveness.”

Regulations in certain areas could be aligned to allow easier trade in certain products. For instance, were Canada to accept EU car safety standards, European-made cars would not have to be modified before they were shipped to Canada.

Ditto for regulation on resources extraction and financial and digital services. Since CETA is largely in place, the effort would require decluttering the permitting and environmental processes. Given the complexities of overlapping government jurisdictions and Indigenous claims in Canada, and the difficulties of getting unanimous buy-in among 27 EU countries, this process could take years.

Easing out transatlantic investment flows could be somewhat easier. The European Investment Bank, which is owned by the 27 member states and is one of the world’s biggest development banks, wants to set up an office in Canada to focus on critical metals and perhaps energy projects, maybe in partnership with Canada’s enormous pension funds. It could, say, finance a copper mine with Teck Resources of Vancouver, on the condition that the output goes to the EU. The EU fears being overly dependent on Chinese-controlled critical metals supply chains and sees Canada as a necessary diversification in this industry.

In the end, associate status will take on real significance only if real money for real projects – from energy and mining to AI data centres and defence – is committed. When potential billions are put on the table, politicians, regulators and bankers on both sides of the Atlantic will make sure that Canada’s formal association is clarified, takes shape and boosts investment. Until then, it’s largely a symbolic political exercise, though a bold one in the age of Donald Trump.