Carney downplays concerns about EU ‘associate member’ label at summit

Prime Minister Mark Carney says whatever name is used to describe the new, deeper alliance with Europe he is pursuing is not important. What is important, he says, is that it will strengthen Canadian sovereignty.

Carney made the comments at a much-anticipated summit with European leaders in Montreal today, where the idea of Canada becoming a so-called associate member of the European Union is part of discussions.

“What’s in a name?” Carney suggested, arguing that the name does not matter and that deeper ties with Europe are good for Canada, whatever the new partnership is called.

“What matters is the complementarities of our two jurisdictions strengthen our sovereignty,” Carney said.

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen first floated the idea of Canada becoming the EU’s first associate member — a term that has no legal meaning.

“Our idea is simple … it is an association without accession,” von der Leyen said.

She says geography means Canada could never be a full-fledged member of the union, but the relationship could be much closer than it is now.

“We can build a partnership that comes closer to membership than anything we’ve done before,” von der Leyen said.

However, the term associate member has been rebuked by several European nations, including France and Germany, who say they cannot agree to a concept that has no legal status or has not been fully detailed.

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“An association agreement is usually what a country would sign in order to get in line for joining the European Union,” said Mark Manger of the Munk School of Global Affairs at the University of Toronto.

Manger says it is clear membership is not on the table and that this alliance is supposed to be something new, but what exactly this new collaboration would entail is unclear.

“They need to get a better feel for what is actually possible … and that’s very much the domain in which these talks are right now,” Manger said.

Carney and von der Leyen discussed the potentially tighter partnership across several sectors.

“It means close alignment on policies,” von der Leyen said. “We can work on everything from AI and climate to energy and security, you just name it.”

Carney pointed to “various strategic autonomies, critical minerals, energy, other aspects, AI.”

Since Canada and Europe already have a free-trade agreement, Manger says this deal will not do much on that front: “They’re just saying we’re going to work towards full implementation because as it turns out it’s being provisionally implemented because several European countries haven’t ratified it yet, among them Italy and France.”

Carney says the U.S. will ultimately see the benefit of tighter ties between Canada and Europe. U.S. President Donald Trump has suggested Canada’s proposed EU arrangement could be considered a hostile act and threatened tariffs on Europe if he considered it unfriendly.

But he also claimed today that Canada has been treating the U.S. much more nicely since he implemented his tariff regime.

The two-day summit also included a business round table with leaders from both sides of the Atlantic.

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