Squabble over ‘membership’ label emerges as irritant at EU-Canada summit

Disagreement over what a stronger relationship between the EU and Canada should be called has emerged as an irritant at a Montreal summit, with leaders dogged by questions about wording rather than substance.

Born in Brussels, the lexical dispute pits some member states against the powerful European Commission.

Now it has presented itself like an uninvited guest at a two-day event aimed at projecting EU-Canada unity at a time of global tensions.

“This new alliance is not a marketing exercise. The name doesn’t matter,” Canadian prime minister Mark Carney said Thursday, answering yet another question on the subject from reporters.

The issue first emerged last month, as commission chief Ursula von der Leyen suggested Canada could become the EU’s first “associate member,” in a Strasbourg speech before Carney.

That ruffled a few feathers in Brussels, as the title doesn’t exist in EU treaties.

Some countries argued it might create confusion with the less far-reaching association agreements the 27-nation bloc has struck with other non-EU countries.

Brussels also has a different type of relation with Norway, Switzerland and other European countries that are not EU members but have joined its single market.

Opposition was led by Germany, which had incidentally first proposed the term “associate member,” but for Ukraine under a plan to bring the war-torn country closer before it fully joins the EU.

After weeks of wrangling, the group successfully pushed to drop the wording from a joint EU-Canada summit statement.

“In this summit, the EU and Canada are establishing an ‘Alliance for the Future’,” German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said Thursday.

Not ‘Eurovision’

Not so fast. In a pre-summit speech, von der Leyen doubled down.

“We are discussing the idea of Canada becoming the first associate member of the EU,” she said.

“We can build a partnership that comes closer to membership than anything we have done before,” she added.

Explaining the reluctance to abandon the term, an EU official said it has been developed in partnership with Canada over the past year, an idea separate from that of an “Alliance for the Future” – a term that will be featured in the joint statement.

“Associated membership was on offer only for Canada,” the senior official said.

While the concept still needs to be fully developed, it entails aligning policies, such as on climate and artificial intelligence, Canada joining some EU programmes, and creating a stable governance framework.

“The ‘Alliance for the Future’ is instead open to other trusted partners and aims at coordinating economic security measures, like tariffs, so that they do not inadvertently harm members of the group,” the official said.

Addressing another Montreal event Thursday, Antonio Costa, head of the European Council representing EU member states, backed von der Leyen’s vision.

“We want to go beyond a simple association, without going as far as full membership of the EU. This is where we differ from Eurovision,” he quipped, referring to Canada having recently joined Europe’s most famous song contest.

Von der Leyen has put forward a “bold idea of making Canada an associated member of the EU. I share her ambition,” Costa said.

Regardless of what it’s called, “one thing is clear: our partnership will be the closest, the deepest, and the most unique possible”.

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