MONTREAL — There’s one thing the European Union and Canada want to avoid with their new alliance: stoking new fury from Washington and Beijing.
Officials have been under pressure to check off everything they said they would do at the last summit and on Friday will unveil the areas they plan to focus on over the next year, as they intensify their transatlantic cooperation. But don’t expect a parade of new deals.
“Canada has objectives where they need our technology — so you can build a beautiful relationship if you focus on it,” one senior EU official told POLITICO about shared challenges in diversifying away from the U.S. and China. The official was granted anonymity to speak candidly about sensitive diplomatic negotiations between Brussels and Ottawa.
One of the core EU interests in Canada, the official explained, is a chance for the bloc to diversify its supply of critical raw materials and sources of energy to further reduce its dependence on China and Russia, respectively.
“They have most of what we need,” the official said about Canadian minerals. “There’s also a huge opportunity to bring Canadian fossil fuels and gas to the EU.”
Prime Minister Mark Carney dismissed the controversy over whether the EU should label the relationship with Canada as an “associate membership,” saying on Thursday it was a sideshow to what’s been billed as a landmark summit.
Earlier this week, Germany, France, Greece and other countries opposed the definition in a joint EU-Canada statement to be issued in Montreal. That came after European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen put forward the “associate membership” label in September.
But Carney told reporters on Thursday that the new alliance wasn’t “a marketing exercise” and that the name doesn’t matter. “What matters is that the complementarities of our two jurisdictions strengthen our sovereignty, strengthen Europe’s sovereignty, various strategic autonomies, critical minerals, energy, other aspects — AI,” he said.
A tricky political road lies ahead as Carney and von der Leyen make moves to draw the EU and Canada closer in a partnership that doesn’t include its southern neighbor. They’ll need to tiptoe forward with an “association without accession” work plan in the last years of the U.S. President Donald Trump’s time in office.
Diplomatic balance
Montreal’s historic Fairmont The Queen Elizabeth hotel was a hub of summit activity on Thursday, beginning with a morning spectacle of von der Leyen heading out of the hotel in runners, taking staff out for a walking meeting. EU commissioners and Canadian Cabinet ministers sailed in and out of the hotel’s perfumed lobby, greeting colleagues.
Jet-lagged Europeans, along with Canadian officials and lobbyists, commiserated over what they saw as poor summit organization, spread across multiple locations.
The debate over membership semantics became a luncheon laugh line when European Council President António Costa endorsed Von der Leyen’s offer to Canada before joking the final designation is “subject to revision”
Then, between servings of frisée salad and roast salmon, Costa struck a diplomatic balance.
“Tomorrow, the European Union and Canada will launch an alliance for the future of Europe,” he said, invoking German Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s preferred label and a term Carney has also used to describe the relationship. But Costa also backed von der Leyen’s “ambition” of Canada as an “associate member” of the EU, admitting the term might not matter in the end.
By mid-afternoon, Carney seemed to come around to the term, recognizing the work underway to deepen relations as “an alliance for the future, with Canada as an associate member, between Canada and the European Union.”
The two sides are expected to announce a wrap on talks on a new digital trade agreement on Friday, ending negotiations that were launched in the spring. Other anticipated outcomes include an agreement between the European Investment Bank and Canada, geared to allow the bloc to fund Canadian critical minerals projects.
Eleven EU commissioners in town to “further an agenda” is no small accomplishment, Canadian Finance Minister François-Philippe Champagne told reporters. “It’s a historic moment that we need to seize.”
AI and energy companies are expected to be major beneficiaries of an enhanced EU–Canada relationship, making the absences of European Energy Commissioner Dan Jørgensen and Canadian Energy and Natural Resources Minister Tim Hodgson noteworthy.
Zoya Sheftalovich contributed to this report from Montreal.
