A security and defence partnership pact Prime Minister Mark Carney will sign with European leaders in Brussels on Monday will be among the most wide-ranging agreements with a third country Europe has ever reached, a senior EU official said on Friday.
Carney is flying to Europe Sunday for a Canada—EU Summit, planned for Monday evening with European Council President António Costa and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen.
At the G7 summit in Alberta on Monday von der Leyen confirmed that the agreement will be signed on Monday in Brussels, calling Canada a “key partner.”
“This is also a moment where we can strengthen Canada’s role in Europe’s rapidly evolving defence architecture,” said Von der Leyen on June 16.
In a briefing to Canadian and European reporters on Friday, a senior European official said there will be two main outcomes from the summit—a joint statement that expresses views on global issues, such as conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East, as well as the signing of the “EU Canada Security and Defence Partnership Agreement.”
“This is an ambitious one,” the official said. “And actually we’ve had this with a number of global partners, but the one with Canada would be one of the most far reaching of its kind that the EU has ever signed with a third country. It will open up new avenues for joint work on crisis management, military mobility, maritime security, cyber and cyber threats, and defence industrial co-operation.”
Carney has been clear that he intends to expand Canada’s ties with Europe as its relationship with the United States strains under the weight of tariffs and threats of annexation. Within two days of being sworn in as prime minister in March Carney flew to Europe, meeting with French President Emmanuel Macron in Paris and British Prime Minister Keir Starmer in London.
It was during those meetings that he seriously began talking about signing on to Europe’s new defence procurement plan known as ReArm
In the throne speech on May 27, Carney’s government pledged to join that program, and he told the CBC in an interview that same day he expected Canada to do that by July 1.
