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AMID US president Donald Trump’s tariffs and annexation threats, Sigmar Gabriel, former German vice chancellor and foreign minister, made a curious suggestion in an interview with German media outlet The Pioneer: invite Canada into the European Union. Soon after, Guy Verhofstadt, former prime minister of Belgium, addressed Canada on X to say that “[t]here is no reason why EU membership should be off the table.” The thought of this North Atlantic alliance excited some Canadians and Europeans—one YouTube video even theorized how “CANEU” (read: canoe) would be a “global superpower.”
To learn more about what the possibilities are for Canada and the EU, I spoke with Mark Camilleri, president and CEO of the Canada EU Trade and Investment Association—CEUTIA—based in Brussels.
“In terms of trade, what similarities do Canada and the EU share?”
There’s a lot of complementarities when you go across sectors. Take mining, for example. Canada has an abundance of natural resources that the EU doesn’t have, but Europe creates and makes a lot of industrial equipment that helps extract those resources. Europe has a certain need for these resources as part of their own economic security.
If you take a look at the fertilizer that Canada produces, Europe needs it to support their agricultural sector. Another example is nuclear energy. Nuclear is going through a renaissance at the moment, and Canada can basically cover the full supply chain from mining uranium to building nuclear reactors.
Interprovince and EU trade is awesome, but the key for Canada is to diversify internal investment and trade away from “US National Security” control, that gives US authority to declare who Canada’s enemies are. China investment in Canada, perhaps with processing /manufacturing facilities in addition to resource extraction would be a big economic boom. Chinese and Russian trade is better than excluding them.
The big danger from US extortion is destroying Canada’s auto sector. Canada has extremely high subsidies for that sector, that should be looked at if our foreign owned domestic industry starts/threatens to back away from Canada as a result of US extortion. Importing EVs from China can enhance Canadian standards of living, but some assembly work, or just importing motors and batteries can make Canadian made vehicles competitive in US even with tariffs, and affordable in Canada.
Cowering together in the “abused wives club” of Europe and Ukraine is not the best strategy when normalized relations with countries that can stand up to the US is necessary to fend of war from US.
Why the fuck do I keep seeing people suggest China and russia as trading partners? We would be switching from so so to fucking terrible.
As it is china has fippa against us. Why would we want to trade more with Russia, a hostile country.
Australia, New Zealand, South Korea, India (even with recent events), 95% of Europe, or any African country.
We don’t need Chinese EVs.
Fuck sakes, we don’t want to switch from one shithole trading partner to 2 terrible trading partners.
Limiting options over hatred, harms your/our prosperity. We need to wake up against US declaring war on us, and stop hating countries they’ve told us to hate. Independence, pursuing all options, is path to get US to beg for our friendship. Just waiting until the US gets bored abusing us, is poor strategy, and one that leads to massive concessions and extra servitude.
Can make cheap/good EVs in Canada with Chinese components. Threat is destruction of auto industry here.
It’s not ignorance and hate.
Russia is a hostile nation that we have sanctioned. Why would we trade anything with them?
Chima would be like trading with a worse and more imposing US if we even approached the same sort of trade deal.
Why not the EU, other asian countries, African or South American countries?
You don’t seem to talk about them.
We could get parts fro EU companies and assemble here in Canada, if that’s the route you want.
Just because we want to separate from the US more doesn’t mean we should open our doors to those two countries. Fuck sakes, there are better options than trading a shit sandwich for another shit dish.
trade with everyone is all I’m saying. Including US but breaking their colonial relationship to us. Russia never made hostilities to Canada.
Dude, we have SANCTIONS ON RUSSIA AND COMPANIES WITHIN RUSSIA.
Just because we haven’t shot at each other doesn’t mean they aren’t hostile.
It’s suspicious that I had to drag out a nonspecific concession that only metions Russia.