Summit communiqué drops ‘associate membership’ term amid European resistance
Canada and the European Union signed several new agreements in Montreal on Friday and set a deadline of next year to fully define a partnership that Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen are calling associate membership of the EU.
The 21st EU-Canada summit produced accords on investment, digital trade, competition, supercomputing and border security. “Our societies are being shaken by new storms: the upheaval caused by climate change, the erosion of democratic norms, the weaponization of trade,” Carney said at a news conference at the end of the summit. “In the coming months we will determine the full substance, scale and scope of this new form of membership.”
The partnership was forged in a matter of weeks out of the two sides’ separate conflicts with President Trump: Canada is embroiled in a deep trade fight against Washington, and Europe has bristled at the Trump administration’s thawing relationship with the Kremlin. The two sides are seeking closer economic and security ties, including joint programs to secure raw material supply chains and collaboration on space satellites and other research. Trump warned last month that he could consider Canada’s deeper integration with the EU a “hostile act” and threatened to impose tariffs on Europe if it was done with “bad intentions.” Canadian and European officials say the plans aren’t aimed against Washington.
Carney came to power last year vowing to reduce Canada’s reliance on the U.S. as Trump imposed tariffs and threatened to make Canada the 51st state. Canada sends two-thirds of its exports to its southern neighbor, and Carney has made doubling exports to non-U.S. markets by 2035 a key goal. Speaking at Davos, Switzerland, in January, he called on the so-called middle powers to “act together” against unnamed superpowers or risk being “on the menu,” and he often describes Canada as the “most European of non-European” nations. He has leaned heavily on relationships built during his tenure as governor of the Bank of England and his career as a Goldman Sachs investment banker.
Associate membership would be a status with neither precedent nor definition in the 27-member bloc. The Wall Street Journal reported in September that Canadian and European officials were discussing the possibility, and Carney traveled to Strasbourg last month to endorse the new partnership. “Canada cannot become a full-fledged member of the EU because of geography,” von der Leyen said in Montreal on Thursday. “But we want to bring our relationship to the highest level possible.”
Some of the projects laid out at the summit clearly aim to reduce dependencies on Washington. One plan is to build new undersea cables that would prevent all cables going through the U.S. Another will permit the European Investment Bank, the EU’s finance arm, to work in Canada, with a focus on joint investments in Canadian critical materials and their exploitation.
The two sides also plan deeper Canadian involvement in the EU’s student-exchange program and the European Galileo space satellite program, and broader Canadian participation in the EU’s $100 billion Horizon Europe research program. Von der Leyen said the two sides would also work on mutual recognition of professional qualifications, opening opportunities that even EU partners such as the U.K. lack.
The EU sees greater cooperation with Canada as the first step in building a broader alliance of like-minded global democratic allies, such as Australia and Japan, to increase economic security and independence. The drivers of collaboration have become more intense in recent weeks: Canada remains entrenched in a trade war with the U.S., and European allies have reacted with dismay to the Trump administration’s decision to permit diesel imports from Russia. Elon Musk’s decision to slow down a military-grade version of Starlink relied on by Ukraine’s armed forces has highlighted what von der Leyen called the “instrumentalization of dependencies.”
On Friday, as the EU and Canadian leaders capped two days of meetings in Montreal, the Trump administration welcomed Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, who is sanctioned by the EU and the U.S., to a G-20 foreign ministers meeting in Atlanta.
The plans have run into political resistance on both sides of the Atlantic. After the Journal’s September report, Canadian officials started publicly backing away from the idea of associate membership amid criticism from conservative opponents that such an arrangement would erode Canadian sovereignty and subject the country to burdensome regulations and unchecked migration. Polls show deepening ties with Europe has broad public support in Canada.
Carney has offered various formulations of the potential relationship, including “alliance for the future,” while emphasizing that the name is much less important than the substance. On Friday, however, he fully endorsed the term “associate membership,” and he has said that any deal will be put to a vote in Parliament.
In Europe, some major governments have pushed back against the idea, worried that it could undermine the benefits of being in the EU. Opposition was strongest in Berlin after Chancellor Friedrich Merz saw other governments knock back his pitch for associate membership for Ukraine.
That resistance forced EU and Canadian officials to drop the associate membership term from this year’s summit statement. The communiqué instead committed the two sides to define “the concept of an ever-closer association of Canada to the EU, short of full membership itself.”
Trade irritants between the EU and Canada could also complicate the plans, including the failure of nine EU member states to fully ratify a decade-old EU-Canada trade agreement.