Canada and the European Union on Friday set out an ambitious new partnership, forged in a matter of weeks out of their separate conflicts with President Trump.
With Canada embroiled in a deep trade fight against Washington, and Europe bristling at the Trump administration's thawing relationship with the Kremlin, the two sides are seeking to carve out closer economic and security ties. Efforts include joint programs to secure raw material supply chains and collaborations on space satellites and other research.
At the 21st EU-Canada summit in Montreal on Friday, the EU and Canada signed several new agreements on investment, digital trade, competition, supercomputing and border security and set a deadline: Next year the two sides will fully define the partnership that Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen are calling associate membership of the EU.
"Our societies are being shaken by new storms: the upheaval caused by climate change, the erosion of democratic norms, the weaponization of trade," Carney said at a news conference at the end of the summit. "In the coming months we will determine the full substance, scale and scope of this new form of membership."
Carney came to power last year vowing to reduce Canada's reliance on the U.S. as Trump imposed punishing tariffs and threatened to make Canada the 51st state. Few countries are as dependent on the U.S. as Canada, which sends two-thirds of its exports to its southern neighbor. Carney has made doubling his country's exports to non-U.S. markets by 2035 a key goal.
At a speech in Davos, Switzerland, in January, Carney called on the so-called middle powers to "act together" against unnamed superpowers or risk being "on the menu." He has spent much of his time in office traveling the world in search of new trade and security partners, leaning heavily on the connections with European leaders that he made as governor of the Bank of England and as a Goldman Sachs investment banker. Canada, he often says, is the "most European of non-European" nations.
The Wall Street Journal reported in September that Canadian and European officials were discussing the possibility of Canada becoming an "associate member" of the EU, a status with neither precedent nor definition in the 27-member bloc. Carney traveled to Strasbourg last month to endorse the new partnership.
"Canada cannot become a full-fledged member of the EU because of geography," von der Leyen said in Montreal on Thursday. "But we want to bring our relationship to the highest level possible."
The plans have riled some in Washington. Last month, Trump said that he could consider Canada's deeper integration with the EU a "hostile act" and threatened to impose tariffs on Europe if it was done with "bad intentions."
Canadian and European officials say their plans aren't aimed against Washington.
Yet some of the projects the two sides laid out at the summit clearly aim to reduce dependencies on Washington. One plan is to build new undersea cables that would prevent all cables going through the U.S. Another will permit the EU's finance arm, the European Investment Bank, to work in Canada, with a focus on joint investments in Canadian critical materials and their exploitation.
The two sides plan for deeper Canadian involvement in the EU's student-exchange program, the European Galileo space satellite program, and broader participation in the EU's $100 billion Horizon Europe research program.
Von der Leyen said they would also work on mutual recognition of professional qualifications, opening up opportunities that even EU partners, like the U.K., lack.
The EU sees greater cooperation with Canada as the first step in building a broader alliance of like-minded global democratic allies, like Australia and Japan, to increase economic security and independence.
The drivers of collaboration have become even more intense in recent weeks. Canada remains entrenched in a trade war with the U.S., and European allies have reacted with dismay to the Trump administration's decision to permit diesel imports from Russia.
Elon Musk's decision to slow down a military-grade version of Starlink relied on by Ukraine's armed forces, has highlighted what von der Leyen called the instrumentalization of dependencies.
On Friday, as the EU and Canadian leaders capped two days of meetings, the Trump administration welcomed Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov, who is sanctioned by the EU and the U.S., to a G-20 foreign ministers meeting in Atlanta.
Yet the past few weeks have also provided a political reality check on the ambitions.
In both Canada and the EU, von der Leyen's goal of making Canada the EU's first associate member has sparked backlash. Trade irritants between the EU and Canada could also complicate the plans. That includes the failure of nine EU member states to fully ratify a decade-old EU-Canada trade agreement.
After the Journal report, Canadian officials started publicly backing away from the idea of associate membership amid criticism from conservative opponents that such an arrangement would erode Canadian sovereignty and subject the country to burdensome regulations and unchecked migration. Polls show deepening ties with Europe has broad public support in Canada.
Carney has offered various formulations of the potential relationship, including "alliance for the future," but he has emphasized that the name is much less important than the substance. On Friday, however, Carney fully endorsed the term "associate membership," and he has said that any deal will be put to a vote in Parliament.
In Europe, some major governments have pushed back against the idea of associate membership, worried that it could undermine the benefits of being in the EU. Opposition was strongest in Berlin, after Chancellor Friedrich Merz saw other governments knock back his pitch of associate membership for Ukraine.
In the end, that forced EU and Canadian officials to drop the associate membership term from this year's summit statement. Instead the communiqué committed the two sides to define "the concept of an ever-closer association of Canada to the EU, short of full membership itself."
This article is being republished as part of our daily reproduction of WSJ.com articles that also appeared in the U.S. print edition of The Wall Street Journal (October 31, 2026).