Carney eyes ‘unique alliance’ with EU, but there are legal limits to his plan

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“Europe is asking itself where it wants to go in terms of enlargement,” he said, noting that it will depend on whether the EU is willing to create a broader set of intermediate relationships between full membership and outsider status.

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While a bigger relationship with Canada could upset other countries, Roos argued that the risks of institutional innovation should not deter Europe.

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“In the realm of politics and policymaking, any kind of audacity is risky. But this is exactly what Europe needs,” he said.

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But if a new formal status is unlikely anytime soon, what exactly can Ottawa and Brussels achieve?

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On that point, the experts agree that the clearest — and least legally questionable — way forward is on defence, Ukraine support, and industrial cooperation.

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Usherwood, for example, expects Canada’s support for Ukraine to continue to expand and believes its participation in Security Action for Europe (SAFE), the EU’s defence financing programme, could “bear some fruit pretty quickly on defence procurements.”

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Both the EU and Canada have incentives given U.S. unpredictability and the need to diversify their defence supply chains.

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Other areas for strategic cooperation could include critical minerals, energy security — including potential undersea electricity interconnections — and technology.

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Carney has also suggested that a deal could include greater mobility for Canadians, specifically “enhanced labour mobility… enhanced educational opportunities, enhanced research co-operation.”

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Usherwood said a youth-mobility scheme would be more realistic than unrestricted free movement. But Barnard cautioned that EU member states would retain control over admission numbers and could, in principle, set Canadian quotas at zero.

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Roos was more optimistic and said freer movement for Canadians to work and live in the EU would not be difficult in practical or political terms. He even believes Canada’s positive image in Europe could help mute populist opposition to such mobility arrangements, at least for now.

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When it comes to deeper trade integration between Canada and the EU, however, the experts were more cautious.

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Usherwood said CETA itself illustrates how difficult deeper integration can be.

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“CETA … is still not fully in effect because we’ve still got 10 member states that haven’t done the ratification because they’re worried about access of Canadian agricultural imports into the EU,” he said.

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The EU can readily make separate agreements with Canada on defence and security, Barnard said. But WTO rules generally prevent Brussels from offering Canada selective preferential access to parts of the EU market without extending the same treatment to other WTO members. The principal exception is a free-trade agreement or customs union under GATT Article XXIV, which must cover “substantially all” trade between the parties — not a narrow, Canada-specific economic arrangement.

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Even if a more generous arrangement were legally feasible, Barnard said, the politics would remain difficult. If Brussels devised a new Canada-specific relationship, countries with stronger geographic or accession claims could demand comparable treatment.

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“It’s difficult to see quite what cozy relationship the EU might have with Canada unless they invent something new,” Barnard said. “And if they invent something new, then Ukraine, Bosnia, Serbia, the U.K. all will say, ‘Well, we want some of that, and we have much greater claim than Canada does because we’re on the EU borders.’”

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For that reason, Barnard and Usherwood see the “unique alliance” language as more rhetorical than immediately realistic.

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