{"id":819069,"date":"2026-10-30T21:30:11","date_gmt":"2026-10-30T21:30:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/819069\/"},"modified":"2026-10-30T21:30:11","modified_gmt":"2026-10-30T21:30:11","slug":"canada-and-eu-announce-new-alliance-open-to-like-minded-countries-european-union","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/819069\/","title":{"rendered":"Canada and EU announce new alliance open to like-minded countries | European Union"},"content":{"rendered":"

Canada and Europe<\/a> have announced a new alliance of like-minded nations to serve as both a \u201cprotective canopy under which our citizens can thrive\u201d and a powerful hedge against the unpredictable nature of geopolitics, while welcoming other countries to join.<\/p>\n

Speaking to reporters on Friday from Montreal, the prime minister, Mark Carney, and the European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen<\/a>, called the new partnership the Alliance for the Future and said the \u201cdeepest possible partnership between Canada and the 27-member bloc had the potential to offer unprecedented stability and opportunity\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur societies have been shaken by new storms,\u201d Carney told reporters, referring to the damaging effects of the climate emergency but also the \u201cerosion of democratic norms\u201d and \u201cthe weaponization of trade\u201d.<\/p>\n

As they concluded their two-day summit, Canada<\/a> agreed to contribute to a \u20ac90bn support loan for Ukraine. Leaders also said future discussions would lead to a more integrated market worth tens of billions of dollars, reduced trade and travel restrictions, and new educational opportunities for both sides.<\/p>\n

While a trade war between Canada and the United States has seen Carney go hunting for new geopolitical partners, an over-reliance on American companies \u2013 especially for defence \u2013 has also given Canada pause.<\/p>\n

Last week, Elon Musk throttled the speeds of Starlink and Starshield over Ukraine in mid-October, severely disrupting Ukrainian military and defense operations.<\/p>\n

Carney has repeatedly raised the concern that Canada\u2019s defense technologies could be at the whim of political actors or companies with opposing interests. Musk, a dual Canadian citizen, is a critic of Canada\u2019s governing Liberal party and has advocated for provinces to separate.<\/p>\n

Carney pointed to a planned merger between the Canadian artificial intelligence company Cohere Inc and Germany\u2019s Aleph Alpha GmbH as a step to lessening reliance on American AI giants. The tie-up will see the newly formed company have dual headquarters in Berlin and Toronto, and Canada\u2019s federal government has announced a stake in Cohere worth up to C$1.6bn.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are not waiting for the future of AI to be decided somewhere else by those we don\u2019t know, or by whom we don\u2019t trust,\u201d Carney said on Thursday.<\/p>\n

Brussels and Ottawa also announced an agreement on Friday that would bringing Canada into Europe\u2019s supercomputing network, giving Canadian access to European machines to train AI models.<\/p>\n

In addition to lofty promises of helping to reshape the global order, or giving safe harbour to like-minded nations looking to weather uncertainty, Canadian and EU leaders also pitched their new, deeper relationship as one that addressed key sources of anxiety for residents, including the cost of living.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen trade becomes a tool of economic pressure, it\u2019s the families that pay the price, from the supermarket shelf to the cost of a new car,\u201d Von der Leyen said, noting that previously trusted trusted suppliers of energy, critical minerals or semiconductors \u201care increasingly turned into instruments of pressure\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cMore competition, more choice,\u201d Carney said earlier in the day, suggesting the alliance could find ways to build certainty around supply chains and \u201cwithstand shocks, together\u201d.<\/p>\n

The leaders once again brought up the prospect of Canada becoming an associate member. The designation is uncharted territory, said Von der Leyen, who added: \u201cWe have the ambition, trust, and creativity to shape it together.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis [associate membership] is a partnership not against anyone else, but for our common strength.\u201d<\/p>\n

While the leaders committed to the idea of associate membership, they said a clearer scope of the role would come at a 2027 summit. Some EU members had bristled at the idea of Canada being given a legally meaningless designation that they fear confuses other nations looking for membership. Germany and other states had worked behind the scenes to remove the phrase from a draft of the summit statement. But Von der Leyen, who first floated the term, and Carney both again referred to \u201cassociate membership\u201d at the summit.<\/p>\n

European Council president Antonio Costa, meanwhile, said earlier that Canada was \u201cby far the most European of the non-European countries\u201d, a sentiment that reflected a belief that despite geography, there was a collective sense of shared values.<\/p>\n

Costa said the two sides would pursue \u201cthe most closer, the most deepest, the most stronger association ever between European Union<\/a> and a non-European country\u201d.<\/p>\n

Still, the mere fact of the summit has caused friction in the province of Quebec, where the separatist Parti Qu\u00e9b\u00e9cois was recently elected to a minority government. The premier, Paul St-Pierre Plamondon, skipped the event after Ottawa\u2019s refusal to let him speak publicly at it.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe federal government would have us believe that the premier of Quebec being granted permission to serve shrimp cocktails at a reception constitutes an acceptable and sufficient form of influence for representing Quebec\u2019s interests,\u201d St-Pierre Plamondon wrote in a social media post earlier in the week.<\/p>\n

He said an invitation to sit at the head table was the federal government asking Quebec \u201cto get back in line, with the vassalization and invisibilization of Quebec which that implies, in exchange for obtaining better seats to watch the party\u201d.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Canada and Europe have announced a new alliance of like-minded nations to serve as both a \u201cprotective canopy…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":819070,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[49,50,51,47,52,48],"class_list":["post-819069","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/819069","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=819069"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/819069\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/819070"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=819069"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=819069"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=819069"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}