EU Chief Backs Canada’s Push to Become Bloc’s First Associate Member
Category: News & Politics
Via: hallux • 2 months ago • 25 commentsBy: Laurence Norman in Berlin, Amanda Coletta in Strasbourg, France, and Joe Parkinson in Lisbon WSJ
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
The European Union’s top official said she would work to make Canada the bloc’s first associate member, a major shift indicative of the new ties traditional U.S. allies are forging with each other in the face of hostility from the Trump administration.
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said Europe needed to tighten its cooperation with like-minded democracies, in particular Canada, to retain the continent’s sovereignty and tackle threats from what she called “an openly hostile world.”
“We must urgently reimagine our partnerships. And build global coalitions for our resilience and democracies,” she said in her annual address to the European Parliament in Strasbourg, France, where Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney was in the audience. “I would like to work with you on opening the door for Canada to be the first associate member of the EU,” she added.
The Wall Street Journal recently reported that Canadian and European officials were discussing the prospect of associate membership —a new category of relationship with the bloc. European and Canadian officials have said that while full membership of the EU is off the table, they want the closest possible relationship. The prospect of a new economic and defense alliance between Europe and Canada speaks to how the idea of “the West,” long centered on U.S. military and economic power, is shifting.
Among the ideas being discussed are the integration of supply chains in critical economic sectors, including defense, the possibility of joint European and Canadian cloud and data centers, greater Canadian energy flows to Europe and cooperation on AI and digital rules. Carney has confirmed that there are also discussions on certain types of mutual visa-free travel and work arrangements.
The details are still being sketched by technical working groups on both sides for what the Canadian leader has told his aides will be nothing short of reorienting an economy and a society that for half a century has been dominated by the U.S.
But serious obstacles to a much deeper relationship remain. Countries with access to the EU’s $21 trillion single market have to follow its rules, pay into the EU budget and allow freedom of movement for its workers. Canadian officials have said they aren’t willing to sign up to all those terms.
The EU has in the past had a rigid approach to cooperating with non-members, always keen to ensure members got a better deal than countries outside the bloc. However, some EU officials and leaders are starting to argue the approach is weakening potential alliances necessary to fend off security threats and protect the continent’s sovereignty.
In her comments Wednesday, von der Leyen said that the EU and Canada should deepen their tech alliance, integrate their defense-industrial base and work together on energy, critical minerals, AI and economic security. The two sides enacted a free-trade agreement in 2017, which has seen commerce grow by 75% in less than a decade, but in a sign of the threats to a far deeper coordination, 10 EU nations are still to ratify it.
“This is a partnership not against anyone else, but for our common strength,” she said.
Both the EU and Canada have seen tensions flare with Washington since President Trump’s return to office. In his second term, the president has alarmed European leaders by ending support for Ukraine and working to ease relations with the Kremlin. New U.S. tariffs on European exports and a push to take over Greenland, an autonomous Danish territory , have also seriously tested trans-Atlantic relations.
Since becoming prime minister, Carney has embarked on an ambitious plan to diversify trade away from the U.S. amid Trump’s tariffs on Canada and repeated musings about using economic coercion to make it the 51st state. Europe has been central to those plans, and he has often called Canada “the most European of the non-European nations.” Canada was the first non-European nation to join Security Action for Europe, the bloc’s defense procurement instrument.
“Canada is deepening and widening its relationship with the European Union to strengthen our sovereignty, improve affordability, opportunity and security for Canadians while safeguarding our way of life,” Carney’s spokeswoman said after von der Leyen’s speech. “We welcome President von der Leyen’s proposal…This is a unique, positive approach that we will define together.”
In Canada, the prospect of associate membership in the EU has drawn criticism from opposition lawmakers, who have argued that it risks weighing businesses down in regulations and red tape and amounts to a loss of sovereignty. Such a decision, they argue, shouldn’t be made without consulting Parliament.
“The Saskatchewan farmer and the Atlantic fisherman did not choose a Brussels agrifood regulator that has never even seen our prairies or coasts,” Conservative Party leader Pierre Poilievre said in a social-media post this week. “We will NEVER be the 51st U.S. state. And we will NEVER be the 28th EU state.”
But polls show Canadians are strongly supportive of closer European ties. A poll this week from Abacus Data found that more than 80% of Canadians support strengthening links with Europe while Canada remains outside of Europe, with a majority saying they feel Canada has more in common with Europe than the U.S. Nearly half said they backed Canada becoming an EU member state.
Von der Leyen will meet later with Carney, who will give his own address to EU lawmakers Thursday.
The European Commission president pitched the new alliance with Canada as part of a swath of proposals to strengthen Europe’s security and sovereignty at a time when relations with the U.S. are strained, Russia continues its war in Ukraine and is carrying out sabotage in Europe and trade tensions with Beijing are deepening. Russia denies involvement in acts of sabotage.
Von der Leyen also called for a new EU equivalent of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s Article IV protocol, where any member can summon an emergency meeting because of an evolving threat. And she took an idea that has been advanced by France and Germany previously for a European Security Council leaders group, which would include non-EU members Norway, the U.K. and Canada as well as top EU leaders.
“This is even more urgent now, given the nature and scale of the risks at play,” she said.
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Time to reap the consequences of having elected Trump ... enjoy ... @!@
The damage Trump has done to the USA is immeasurable.
Once upon the EU was an economic rival of the US. Canada' middle class was as strong as Americas. Those days are long past. Two flailing economies sticking together and begging China to exploit them. Sad to see how far they've fallen in 20 years.
Other than perhaps a gun under every pillow Canadians lack for nothing Americans have. Enjoy the 'rantings and ravings' of your 'leader' as he sinks America ever deeper into his (soon to be yours) mire.
now you know why we have guns under our pillows ...
Are all those commie dust-bunnies still lurking about dressed up as scary shake-in-your-booties socialists?
it would be so much easier for maga scum if the commies, marxists, and socialists were all brown too ...
I find it hilarious how often poorly educated rightwing conservatives whining about how bad things are in America whenever a Democrat is in office and whining about low pay and lack of jobs and just bitch, whine, bitch about how terrible things are, also like to tell other countries how much better they are than them. And, of course, these conservatives have no fucking clue what's actually going on around the world because they only experience it through their right-wing media, OANN & Fox News screens being hand fed every digested rightwing media talking point with a baby spoon (because they're fucking babies) . But those are the very dimwit dipshits who think everyone must really want to know what their spastic regurgitated opinion about foreign countries is and how inferior the rest of the world is from their hyper-curated conservative perspective.
Interesting. You said all that and you didn't prove him wrong.[✘]
there's plenty of maga scumbags on youtube crying about the price of gas, groceries, and how their savoir fucked them over ...
FAFO maga ...
What's to prove wrong? Some rightwing conservatives' opinion? It's moronic on the face of it.
Nope, just angry word vomit and name calling. .
At least that post lacked the usual deranged fantasies about trumps body parts.
All his cavities were occupied by the Trump crisis management team. It is incredibly amusing to watch them run around like a bunch of talentless clowns trying to cover for such a worthless human being if we can even call it human. So, to all those defending the indefensible, keep it up! If being the laughingstock of America where every patriotic American with more than half a brain is either laughing at them, pissed at them or feeling sorry for them was their goal, then they nailed it, mission accomplished.
If you can't then just say you can't. No harm in that.
Just another day in liberal land.
It's called the land of the free and the home of the brave, unlike the disgusting, perverted swamp where the reich wingers want to live.
Magas --
Reich wing hero, Dylann Roof --
That is the party of Trump. But we can't really expect those who worship a liar to be honest in their comments, so they'll deny, deny, deny till the cows come home.
You're the one who made the claim that Canada's days of a strong middle class were "long past". I called your opinion stupid on the face of it and now you're asking me to disprove your baseless opinion. Not that I'm surprised when its clearly coming from the metaphorical mental discount bin at the Dollar store.
So go ahead and prove that Canada's middle class isn't strong and won't be getting stronger based on facts, or you can continue with the stupid song and dance that so many conservatives stupidly break into when caught in a logic corner that just makes them look stupid and weak.
Well, I wasn't referring to that part of Liberal land but...
you need to recheck your fkng source.
Apologies, Sean was the one making the unproven claim that you are apparently continuing to defend. But a dodge to semantics wasn't unexpected. You're just the guy claiming I should be required to disprove an unproven claim, which is of course exactly who I was replying to in my last comment.
Sucks when that happens doesn't it. But then again, you haven't proven it as "unproven". You just went on another rant.
They just keep getting farther and farther out on that branch that the GOP is furiously sawing away at on Trumps behalf, so idiotic schoolyard responses are all they've got. But that is to be expected when you're not dealing with the sharpest tools in the shed. And sadly, a dull tool is actually far more dangerous to work with than a sharp one.