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'Associate member' or 'unique alliance,' Carney jets to EU in search of new and deeper ties
OTTAWA — Some have called it an “associate memberships.” Others, a historic deeper partnership. Prime Minister Mark Carney described it as a “unique alliance.”
No matter what it’s called, one thing is for certain: Carney is heading to the European Parliament this week with the intention of pitching a whole new relationship directly to elected representatives of the massive block of 27 European countries.
On Tuesday, Carney will leave Toronto and fly to Strasbourg, France, to hear EU President Ursula von der Leyen deliver her annual “State of the European Union” speech at the European Parliament on Wednesday. He will also make a quick in-and-out trip to the U.K. to meet new Prime Minister Andy Burnham.
He will then deliver his own speech to EU representatives on Thursday, one a senior government official said will serve to deliver a message that Canada wants to “create a deeper alliance” on a range of files including trade, defence and “people-to-people” ties (culture, travel, etc.).
“I don’t expect any massive deliverables,” said the source, who requested anonymity to speak candidly. “If you’ve paid attention to anything the prime minister has been saying for the last 18 months, none of what he will say in his Strasburg speech is going to be a surprise.”
While many expect Strasburg to be a redux of Carney’s now-famous Davos speech last January, in effect it’s just setting the table for a much bigger feast for the prime minister: a EU-Canada Summit in Montreal in late October.
The summit is where Carney’s government is expected to start putting ink to paper, signing agreements that aim to facilitate travel mobility for Canadian workers, students and travellers to the EU, increase collaboration on artificial intelligence and get more Canadian energy to Europe.
All of this happening amid the failure of trade talks and an escalating war of tariffs and words with U.S. President Donald Trump since last month.
As Carney told Bloomberg on Monday, the new relationship with the U.S. isn’t going to be “solved” in Strasbourg, but “it’s the start of a process, a high-ambition process” leading to the October summit.
As a sign of the importance of the summit to Carney, he put it in the hands of his “personal representative” to the European Union: John Hannaford, the former clerk of the privy council (the government’s top public servant).
“I think that’s where the formal announcements would be made,” said Senator Peter Boehm, a retired longtime Canadian diplomat and unofficial advisor to many in Carney’s government.
The Strasbourg speech Thursday, he noted, will allow the prime minister to impress a sense of urgency on the notoriously slow EU bureaucracy.
“I think in fact he has to do that because, if the level of ambition is to be realized, and the bureaucracy has to to operationalize that both in Brussels and in Ottawa, you’ve got to talk fairly loudly,” Boehm said.
Carney will also use it to spell out to Canadians what the government’s intentions are vis-à-vis the EU.
That’s exactly what Marc Camilleri, the co-founder of the Canada EU-Trade and Investment Association, hopes to hear from Carney at the European Parliament.
“What I’d like to see is really this flushing out of this idea of what does it mean to be a trusted partner in this new world of of economic uncertainty,” he told National Post.
The last Canada-EU summit in June 2025 “reoriented” the relationship between both countries, Camilleri said. It set the stage for the deepening alliance and launched negotiations for Canada to become the only non-EU to join the Security Action for Europe (SAFE) agreement, a European defence procurement program.
What do we know as of now of Carney’s intentions for a deeper alliance with the EU, itself grappling with major issues such as mass migration, soaring energy costs, the looming threat of a Russian invasion and the rise of far-right populist parties?
On Saturday, the Wall Street Journal published an eye-popping scoop: Carney was seeking such a deep new alliance with the EU that there were talks of creating a new, “associate member” category for Canada.
Reaction online was swift, with some observers celebrating the novel move while critics, including Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre, panned any talk of Canada becoming a member of the union.
“We will NEVER be the 51st U.S. state. And we will NEVER be the 28th EU state,” Poilievre wrote, accusing Carney once again of being out of touch.
Shortly after the Wall Street Journal report, the prime minister and his office swore up and down that talk of any form of EU membership is overblown.
“We’re not looking to become a member of the European Union,” Carney told quizzical reporters on the red carpet of Toronto’s International Film Festival (TIFF) Sunday evening.
“What we are looking, and will begin discussions for, (is) a unique alliance with the European Union,” he added.
Various sources say the idea of pushing for a new “associate member” position within the EU has been passed around the Prime Minister’s Office for months now, and even made its way briefly into the draft of at least one of his speeches in Europe this year. But with Carney’s comments at TIFF, that idea — or at least the branding — is likely dead.
So whether it’s as an “associate member,” a part of a “unique alliance” or a signatory to a “deeper” partnership with the EU, Carney promises that what is to come with the block of nations is “above and beyond” a trade deal.
Carney has spoken of increased collaboration on trade, energy, space, artificial intelligence, defence and improved mobility between Canada and the EU.
On the latter point, he’s specifically mentioned easing mobility for labour (facilitating workers’ movement between countries), students and researchers.
According to Boehm, that could mean that eventually Canadians are going through the same security gate at European airports as EU residents, for example.
But the possibility of increased labour mobility from the EU — a key irritant in the U.K.’s Brexit debate — raises hackles in Canada. For example, Conservatives said Carney “must be absolutely clear that he will not make matters worse by importing Europe’s immigration crisis.”
And what about full EU membership one day? On that, Boehm and Camilleri are categorical: no.
“Membership would not be in our our interest because of the tremendous regulatory burden that it would bring, and it would also circumscribe our ability to act in a sovereign way,” Boehm said.
National Post
cnardi@postmedia.com
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