EU-Canada 'Love Story' Needs More Than Warm Words, Senior MEP Warns
The European Union must turn its offer of associate membership to Canada into a meaningful partnership that goes well beyond trade, Tobias Cremer, the European Parliament's standing rapporteur on Canada, has told Euronews. He said the planned status should include an institutional framework formalising closer ties.
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen invited Canada in September to become the EU's first associate member, but gave little indication of what the unprecedented status would mean in practice.
Geopolitical upheaval has drawn Brussels and Ottawa closer together. Canada is embroiled in a trade war with its traditional US ally, while the EU is struggling to keep Washington on its side over Ukraine.
The two sides are due to meet at a summit in Montreal at the end of next week, with agreements expected in several areas, including critical raw materials and digital cooperation.
Cremer, a German socialist MEP, said Canada and Europe have for months been great at writing each other love letters and saying how much they want to work together. But now, he said, is really the time to get serious and turn that love story into concrete commitments.
Associate membership, he added, must mean the closest possible partnership the EU can offer to a non-European country, and since Canada is probably the most European of non-European countries, that should be very close.
Cremer insisted the relationship must amount to more than a trade deal plus. There must be a new quality to the relation, he said.
He called for a pragmatic approach involving sectoral agreements covering trade, defence, digital cooperation, the Arctic and students, but also for going further and embedding those initiatives into something more enduring, a common institutional framework of coordination and cooperation.
One suggestion was that Canada could participate as an observer in the Council of the EU, where national ministers meet. He also called for the creation of a formal parliamentary partnership assembly.
Such a body could follow the model of the existing EU-UK Parliamentary Partnership Assembly, which brings together 35 members from each side twice a year for sessions that can focus on specific policy areas.
On the UK, however, Cremer described it as a European country for which, if it wishes, the ambition should not be associate membership but full membership. UK Prime Minister Andy Burnham recently floated the idea of rejoining the EU, with polls showing a majority of Britons want to return to the bloc.
Cremer also argued for closer cooperation not only with the UK and Canada, but also with countries such as Australia and South Korea, saying most of the world wants 21st-century politics focused on collective security, shared interests and mutual respect rather than might is right. The Montreal summit will now show how far that call turns into practice.
