Canada EU offer puts UK reset ambitions under spotlight

UK reset goals ‘modest and have yet to be achieved,’ Guardian finds

A Guardian analysis published Wednesday examined what European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen’s proposal to make Canada the European Union’s first “associate member” could mean for the United Kingdom’s effort to reset relations with Brussels. The analysis, written by senior correspondent Lisa O’Carroll, considered whether the Canada offer could become a template for a future UK-EU relationship or instead underscored how Britain’s clean-break Brexit had limited the options available to London.

Von der Leyen used her annual State of the Union address in Strasbourg on Wednesday to propose that Canada become the EU’s first “associate member,” a category she framed as a way to forge closer links among allies in “an openly hostile world,” the Guardian reported. The proposal drew a standing ovation in the European Parliament, where Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney was in attendance. Carney has advocated closer alignment with “middle powers” since January in the face of what the Guardian described as “recklessness in Washington.”

Von der Leyen said new partnerships were needed “in the cold fragility of today’s world” and in the face of an increasingly assertive China, the Guardian reported. Moments earlier, she spoke of the need for the EU to diversify urgently its supply of critical raw materials and rare earths currently dominated by China, allowing the bloc to follow Japan and stockpile minerals needed for industries from automotive to defence. The Guardian noted that the EU has been grappling with China’s export surplus since 2023 and introduced the Critical Raw Materials Act in 2024.

The analysis emphasized the mutual economic logic of the offer: Canada possesses rich supplies of critical raw materials and rare earths that the EU has been seeking to diversify away from Chinese dominance, while the EU offers Canada new market access for products it can no longer sell into the EU in the face of a trade war with Donald Trump, the Guardian reported.

The last time associate membership of the EU was mooted was in relation to Ukraine, as an off-the-books method of bringing Kyiv closer to the bloc without making it a fully fledged member state, the Guardian reported.

The analysis placed the Canada offer against the UK’s reset with Brussels. The UK could once have had some form of associate membership with the EU were it not for the drive for a clean-break Brexit, the Guardian noted. The prospect of an enhanced relationship with Ottawa is one that UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer “might have dreamed of,” the Guardian reported. The UK is seeking a reset with the EU, but the goals in the first year “were modest and have yet to be achieved,” the Guardian assessed.

Joel Reland, of UK in a Changing Europe, told the Guardian the European Commission president’s deal could be seen as an “earthquake” offer but said it remained “deliciously vague.” Reland wrote on Wednesday that any deep Canadian integration into the EU market would take “very heavy work to negotiate a defined set of treaty-bound rights and obligations.” Cooperation is more likely, at least in the short term, to focus on “more vaguely constructed alliances for ‘prosperity’ and ‘security’,” which aligns with the UK government’s desires, Reland wrote. The vagueness of the offer to Canada could be promising for the UK’s hopes for a similar offer, he added.

The Guardian wrote that in the current UK political climate, it is difficult to envisage a world in which Andy Burnham would encourage any associate membership of the EU. The paper described Burnham as having a “steely focus” on domestic issues and being keen to avoid going down any “Brexit wormholes.”

Speaking before von der Leyen’s speech, German Social Democrat MEP Tobias Cremer said a new deeper relationship between the EU and Canada could be a blueprint for other countries, including the UK. Bernd Lange, the influential chair of the European Parliament’s international trade committee, said associate membership could “become a model for close transcontinental partnerships with democratic countries against the new model of the law of the strongest.”

After Iceland’s rejection of EU membership, Fabian Zuleeg, the chief executive and chief economist of the European Policy Centre, suggested it was time that the EU developed new models, beyond the European Economic Area, that might offer “partial, gradual or associated membership options.”

The offer to Canada suggests “the bigger ambitions for relations with the EU the better,” the Guardian concluded.

Additional reporting was provided by Jennifer Rankin.