Canada’s prime minister, Mark Carney, has been advocating closer alignment with “middle powers” since January in the face of recklessness in Washington. But what should worry another middle power, the UK, is that it was Brussels that came up with Wednesday’s big reveal in Strasbourg. To a standing ovation at her State of the Union address, Ursula von der Leyen said she wanted to open the door to Canada becoming the EU’s first “associate member” in a push to forge new links among allies in “an openly hostile world“.
The European Commission president’s deal could be seen as an “earthquake” offer said Joel Reland, of UK in a Changing Europe, thought it remains “deliciously vague”. But it also sets Canada apart from the UK, which could, once upon a time, have had some sort of associate membership with the EU were it not for the drive for a clean break Brexit. The last time associate membership of the EU was mooted was in relation to Ukraine as an off-the-books novel way of bringing Kyiv closer to the bloc without become a fully fledged member state.
New partnerships, von der Leyen said, were needed “in the cold fragility of today’s world” and in the face of an increasingly assertive China. Just moments earlier she spoke about the need for the EU to diversify urgently its supply of critical raw materials and rare earths currently dominated by China allowing it to follow Japan and stockpile said minerals needed for everything from the car to the defence industries. It is not a new subject – after all the EU has been grappling with China’s export surplus since 2023 and it introduced the Critical Raw Materials Act as far back as 2024.
The prospect of an enhanced relationship with Ottawa is one that Keir Starmer might have dreamed of. Canada has something the EU desperately needs – rich supplies of CRM and rare earths – and the EU has something Canada urgently wants: new market for products it can no longer sell into the EU in the face of a trade war with Donald Trump. Speaking before von der Leyen’s speech, Tobias Cremer, a German social democrat MEP, said a new deeper relationship between the EU and Canada could be a blueprint for other countries, including the UK.
Bernd Lange, the influential chair of the European parliament’s international trade committee, said associate membership could “become a model for close transcontinental partnerships with democratic countries against the new model of the law of the strongest”. After Iceland’s rejection of membership of the EU, Fabian Zuleeg, the chief executive and chief economist of the European Policy Centre, suggested it was time that the EU developed new models, beyond the European Economic Area, that might offer “partial, gradual or associated membership options”. Reland said the vagueness of the offer extended to Canada could be promising for the UK’s hopes for a similar offer.
In the current political climate in the UK, it is difficult to envisage a world in which Andy Burnham would encourage any associate membership of the EU. He has a steely focus on domestic issues and it keen to avoid going down any Brexit wormholes. The UK is seeking a reset with the EU, but the goals in the first year were modest and have yet to be achieved.
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