EU backs away from 'associate member' offer to Canada as Montreal summit opens
A draft summit statement seen by The Guardian offers Canada "an ever closer association" with the EU instead, after member states objected.
The European Union has backed away from its offer to start talks with Canada on becoming an "associate member", according to The Guardian. The paper reported that member states disagreed over the idea just as an EU-Canada summit was set to begin in Montreal.
A draft joint statement for the end of the summit, which runs Thursday and Friday, was seen by The Guardian. It does not announce a work programme on associate membership. Instead, it says the two sides would work to define, by the 2027 EU-Canada summit, "the concept of an ever closer association of Canada to the EU, short of full membership itself".
According to The Guardian, an earlier draft had included at least two references to Canada as an "associate member".
The offer came from European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen. In last month's state of the union address, she announced that the EU would consider "associate membership" for Canada. The Guardian said the announcement surprised nearly everyone, EU capitals included.
The declaration had been hailed as a landmark in EU history, the paper reported, because it offered a non-EU country such close ties to the bloc. It was also seen as a sign that Canadian prime minister Mark Carney's call at Davos in January for "middle powers" to work together was paying off.
Pushback followed on political and legal grounds. Because "associate status" has no definition, diplomats asked whether Canada could join the European Council, legislative bodies or decision-making processes without a vote. At a meeting on Monday, EU ambassadors looked for a diplomatic way to withdraw the offer without embarrassing von der Leyen, The Guardian reported. Italy is understood to have suggested keeping the commission's wording and leaving the definition until later. Germany went further and proposed "an ever closer association of Canada". It argued that associate membership should be kept as an interim step for prospective candidate countries such as Ukraine or Montenegro.
“Nobody was consulted about associate membership apart from [Von der Leyen's] closest staff, it would seem. Many member states, including Germany, were not happy. This is all about fixing the plane while it is flying.”An unnamed diplomat, quoted by The Guardian
US president Donald Trump had called the proposal "laughable". He said the US might stop trading with Europe "on many things" if he interpreted the move as a "hostile act".
Carney has said Canada has no interest in formally joining the EU. On Tuesday he described the summit as the launch of further formal negotiations that will take place over another year. "The good news is it doesn't matter about specific names or nomenclature," he said. "What matters is the difference it will make to the lives of Canadians."
Several questions remain open. The Guardian's report rests on a draft, and the final statement is not due until the summit ends. What "ever closer association" would mean in practice has not been defined. Under the draft, that work is set to run until the 2027 summit.
