The European Union and Canada aim to deepen cooperation on AI, climate, energy and security as they explore the possibility of Canada becoming the union’s first “associate member,” European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said on Thursday.
The term, which many EU countries oppose, has no legal meaning.
Deeper ties to Europe are part of Prime Minister Mark Carney’s strategy to reduce Canada’s economic and security reliance on the US since President Donald Trump imposed tariffs on Canadian goods. Still, Canada’s efforts to draw closer to the EU risk angering Trump as trade talks between Canada and the US continue.
“Our idea is simple: it is an association without accession,” von der Leyen said in a speech in Montreal at a Canada-EU summit. “We can build a partnership that comes closer to membership than anything we have done before.”
“We can work on everything, from AI and climate to energy or security,” she said.
Canadian and EU leaders, however, dropped the idea of associate EU membership from their joint declaration, seen by Reuters, agreeing instead to an “ever closer association.”
The declaration, which officials plan to make public on Friday, said work to define the Canada-EU relationship would continue until another summit next year.
Von der Leyen first floated the idea of associate membership for Canada six weeks ago, prompting a rebuke from countries led by Germany that argued they could not agree to a concept that had no legal status and had not been fleshed out, diplomats said.
(Reporting by Bart Meijer, Inti Landauro and Maria Cheng; Editing by Rod Nickel)