{"id":5058,"date":"2026-10-31T15:00:49","date_gmt":"2026-10-31T15:00:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/globalnigerianews.com\/index.php\/2026\/10\/31\/associate-eu-membership-for-canada-not-a-short-term-project-expert-national-globalnews-ca\/"},"modified":"2026-10-31T15:00:49","modified_gmt":"2026-10-31T15:00:49","slug":"associate-eu-membership-for-canada-not-a-short-term-project-expert-national-globalnews-ca","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/globalnigerianews.com\/index.php\/2026\/10\/31\/associate-eu-membership-for-canada-not-a-short-term-project-expert-national-globalnews-ca\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Associate\u2019 EU membership for Canada not a \u2018short-term\u2019 project: expert – National | Globalnews.ca"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Prime Minister Mark Carney has laid out a timeline that would see Canada sign an agreement on a new partnership with the European Union<\/a> in the next seven months, if all goes well.<\/p>\n

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Carney said Friday that Ottawa and Brussels are working toward the \u201cdeepest possible partnership short of accession\u201d that would see Canada become \u201cthe European Union\u2019s first associate member.\u201d<\/p>\n

He said in the coming months, the two sides will meet to \u201cdetermine the full substance, scale and scope of this new form of membership.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Commission, championed the idea of associate membership in Strasbourg, France, last month. On Friday, she said she believes in building a partnership with Canada that \u201ccomes closer to membership than anything we\u2019ve done before.\u201d<\/p>\n

Even though top EU officials are enthusiastic about closer ties with Canada, the talks won\u2019t necessarily be a walk in the park. The European Union is far from politically united on the idea.<\/p>\n

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Achim Hurrelmann, co-director of the Centre for European Studies at Carleton University, said it could prove difficult to negotiate that status, especially in the short term.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m not sure if a status with that name can be established for Canada any time soon,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt seems that von der Leyen and Carney have decided to just press ahead with the use of this term and use the momentum that\u2019s there on both sides for Canada-EU relations to make this a reality. But in the EU, that often can be quite difficult because once all of the member states get involved \u2014 we saw that in negotiating the summit declaration \u2014 then the entity is able to move only very slowly.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Carney and EU officials met for a summit in Montreal on Thursday and Friday, where they agreed on a joint statement promoting what they called a \u201cCanada-EU Alliance for the Future.\u201d<\/p>\n

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The joint statement commits the two sides to working to \u201cdefine by the 2027 EU-Canada Summit the concept of an ever-closer association of Canada to the EU, short of full membership itself.\u201d<\/p>\n

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The 27-member bloc ultimately opted against including the term \u201cassociate member\u201d in the joint statement. The phrase has seen some pushback from countries like Germany, which see it as a stepping-stone to permanent membership for countries like Ukraine.<\/p>\n

EU debates are always complicated matters. In the coming months, major European countries will go to the polls for elections that could shake up the nature of those talks.<\/p>\n

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