The 28th state? Carney's Canada draws closer to European Union

With a US president who talks of making Canada the 51st state, its leader in Europe where it’s not quite the EU's 28th state on offer, but something the president of the European Commission is calling ‘associate membership’. We’ll ask what that means, how it differs from the close status afforded to the likes of Iceland, Norway, Switzerland and the UK which Carney’s also visiting ahead of his own Strasbourg speech Thursday before the European Parliament. 

What are Canada’s options? What are Europe’s options as both the US and Russia covet the Arctic? How closer can they really get when already ten EU nations - including France and Italy - have yet to ratify the CETA free trade agreement that’s provisionally in effect with Ottawa?

The French - who have their own challenges with the far-right favorite to win next May’s presidential elections - will conclude this Canadian cycle when Emmanuel Macron hosts Carney in the tiny North Atlantic overseas territory of Saint Pierre and Miquelon. Ahead of UN week in New York, a simple question: do Europeans take on the United States head on like Canada or massage relations with the world's biggest superpower ?

Produced by François Picard, Théophile Vareille, Juliette Laffont, Ilayda Habip, Charles Wente.

Our guests

• Allan WOODS Journalist at the Toronto Star newspaper

• Mikaa BLUGEON-MERED Researcher on Arctic and Energy Geopolitics at UQTR

• Dave KEATING FRANCE 24 Brussels correspondent

• Hélène CONWAY-MOURET French senator, Socialist Party