Why Carney continues betting big on Europe

When European Union officials Ursula von der Leyen and Antonio Costa recently joined Mark Carney on the docks of Montreal’s Old Port for the Canada-EU Summit, Canada’s prime minister presented closer ties with the EU as a good deal for Canadian households.

He argued a closer relationship promised more choices and lower costs for families at a time when American tariffs are causing pain on both sides of the Atlantic.

In April 2025, my colleague, Léandre Benoit, and I argued that the newly elected Carney would pursue a pragmatic and globally engaged liberalism, definitively aligned with Europe. The Montreal summit confirms that alignment.

The meeting’s firmest commitments concern democracy, while much of its economic measures are still to be carried out. With autocracies gaining ground around the world, and with Trump’s United States no longer a reliable ally — although that may shift with the Democratic rout in the U.S. midterm elections — Canada and the EU have found in each other stable liberal partners who take democracy seriously.

WHAT MONTREAL DELIVERED

On the economic side, the results of the summit are quite modest. Of the 20 measures announced, two are concluded agreements: one is a digital trade agreement and the second is a treaty that lets the European Investment Bank finance Canadian critical minerals projects.

The remaining measures are promises to be negotiated, for example on the Erasmus+ education program and on LNG exports. For a summit sold as offering relief for household budgets, few of these announcements will have an impact on Canadian kitchen tables any time soon.

Left out of the final statement was the most ambitious and symbolic proposal: Carney set June 2027 as the deadline for Canada to become the European Union’s first “associate member,” a category that exists nowhere in EU law.

ALLIES IN DEFENDING DEMOCRACY

The associate membership process is driven by shared values. Canada, one of the few established democracies to have avoided democratic backsliding, has strong institutions where no reforms are needed before it qualifies to be a partner of the EU.

Even though the details of associate membership are still unclear, the partnership’s significance is in “elective affinity,” as Carney had set out in Strasbourg in September when addressing the European Parliament.

So far, security and defence are where these shared values have produced concrete results. The joint statement warns that hybrid threats now target Canadian and European institutions, and it promises an early-warning system against foreign interference and disinformation.

This is a clear acknowledgment that Russian aggression goes beyond Ukraine and that defending democracy has become a matter of national security. In the current global context where holding states accountable via international bodies is under threat — for example, the recent American sanction of the International Criminal Court — both the EU and Canada need each other more than ever in protecting their liberal values and their security.

The joint statement stretches Canada’s commitment along Europe’s whole eastern flank through the EU Common Security and Defence Policy, from the Arctic to the Black Sea, and frames it as a reinforcement of NATO.

BEYOND THE BALANCE SHEET

While a Canada Pulse Insights poll found that 73 per cent of Canadians support the idea of closer ties with the EU, the status of “associate member” is a problem in Europe.

Germany and several other member states oppose the label. At home, Conservatives argue that the summit produced zero tariff removals or trade-barrier eliminations, and they’ve also raised concerns about what the agreement would mean for Canada’s independence and sovereignty.

Judged on tariffs alone, the critics might have a point — after all, the EU cannot undo U.S.-imposed trade penalties. Diversifying away from Canada’s top trading partner demands both political will and time. In the meantime, the summit’s true value lies in the political message it sends.

By offering a country outside Europe a place close to its family, the EU is saying that being European is as much a matter of values as of geography. If the process works, it could become a model for other partners outside Europe. For Canada, the membership would make clear to the U.S. and Canadian voters that the country has other partners and options beyond its southern neighbour.

The Montreal summit gave Canada a safe harbour on the other side of the Atlantic. What holds the two partners together is a shared conviction that democracies must stand together as autocracies gain ground, beyond trade deals.

By June 2027, we’ll know whether that conviction survives the doubts of some European capitals and whether Canada becomes the EU’s first associate member in name as well as in spirit.

» Katerina Sviderska is a PhD candidate in politics at the University of Cambridge.

» This column was originally published at The Conversation Canada: theconversation.com/ca