Carney says EU and Canada to define associate membership after Montreal summit

Leaders from the European Union and Canada met in Montreal for the final day of a two-day summit, BBC News reported. EU chiefs António Costa and Ursula von der Leyen held talks with Canada's prime minister, Mark Carney. According to BBC News, deeper ties with Europe form part of Carney's strategy to reduce Canada's economic and security reliance on the United States during the ongoing trade war.

BBC News reported that the two sides were set to announce a series of deals later that day. John Manley, a former Canadian deputy prime minister and former foreign affairs minister, told BBC News that Donald Trump was a big factor in the push, but that Canadian governments had long talked about diversifying trade. Manley said around 80 percent of Canada's exports had gone to the US and that the figure was now down into the 60s. He said a large part of that was oil exported to US refineries on the Gulf Coast, and that excluding oil, goods and services exports had already diversified over the past two years. He added that any benefit to consumers would take longer.

At the end of the summit, Carney said the EU and Canada would spend the coming months defining the scale and scope of a new form of EU membership for Canada, according to BBC News. He insisted on using the term associate membership even though the joint declaration dropped it and instead referred to an ever-closer association short of full membership. BBC News reported that Germany was said to have pushed for the term to be removed from the joint statement. Carney said the name did not matter and that sovereignty did.

BBC News also reported that Carney said the two allies were learning to withstand shocks together in the shadow of Donald Trump. The joint statement said the two sides would elevate talks on AI, defence and critical minerals, BBC News reported.

Jeremy Kinsman, a former Canadian ambassador to the EU and the UK, told BBC News that Trump was the impetus for closer institutional ties, though Canada had sought such a relationship for decades. He said the EU and Canada were now seized with the same challenge of coercive economic policy from Donald Trump. He argued that association without accession could be a model for other middle powers such as the UK, Japan and South Korea.