Canada and EU Launch "Alliance for the Future" at Montreal Summit

Canada and the European Union have announced a new alliance of like-minded nations, and they say other countries are welcome to join. Prime Minister Mark Carney and European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen spoke to reporters in Montreal on Friday as their two-day summit ended. They named the partnership the Alliance for the Future.

They described a "protective canopy under which our citizens can thrive" and said the deepest possible partnership between Canada and the 27-member bloc could offer unprecedented stability and opportunity. "Our societies have been shaken by new storms," Carney said. He pointed to the climate emergency, the "erosion of democratic norms" and the "weaponization of trade".

What was agreed

Canada agreed to contribute to a €90bn support loan for Ukraine. The leaders said future talks would lead to a more integrated market worth tens of billions of dollars, fewer trade and travel restrictions and new educational opportunities.

Brussels and Ottawa also agreed that Canada will join Europe's supercomputing network, so Canadian users can reach European machines to train AI models. Carney pointed to a planned merger of Canada's Cohere Inc and Germany's Aleph Alpha GmbH as a step toward relying less on American AI giants. The new company would have headquarters in Berlin and Toronto, and Ottawa has announced a stake of up to C$1.6bn in Cohere.

Carney has been seeking new partners since a trade war with the United States began, and Canada has also grown wary of depending on American companies, particularly for defence.

Von der Leyen tied the partnership to the cost of living. "When trade becomes a tool of economic pressure, it's the families that pay the price, from the supermarket shelf to the cost of a new car," she said. She added that once-trusted suppliers of energy, critical minerals or semiconductors are "increasingly turned into instruments of pressure".

The "associate membership" question

Both leaders again raised the idea of Canada becoming an associate member of the EU. Von der Leyen called the designation uncharted territory. "This is a partnership not against anyone else, but for our common strength," she said. A clearer scope for the role is due at a 2027 summit.

Some EU members had bristled at the idea. Germany and other states worked behind the scenes to remove the phrase from a draft of the summit statement, because they fear a legally meaningless designation could confuse other countries seeking membership.

Antonio Costa, president of the European Council, called Canada "by far the most European of the non-European countries". He added that the two sides would seek the closest association the EU has ever had with a non-European country.

The summit also caused friction in Quebec. Premier Paul St-Pierre Plamondon, whose separatist Parti Québécois recently won a minority government, skipped the event after Ottawa refused to let him speak publicly at it.

Source: The Guardian