Diplomatic balance
Montreal’s historic Fairmont The Queen Elizabeth hotel was a hub of summit activity on Thursday, beginning with a morning spectacle of von der Leyen heading out of the hotel in runners, taking staff out for a walking meeting. EU commissioners and Canadian Cabinet ministers sailed in and out of the hotel’s perfumed lobby, greeting colleagues.
Jet-lagged Europeans, along with Canadian officials and lobbyists, commiserated over what they saw as poor summit organization, spread across multiple locations.
The debate over membership semantics became a luncheon laugh line when European Council President António Costa endorsed Von der Leyen’s offer to Canada before joking the final designation is “subject to revision”
Then, between servings of frisée salad and roast salmon, Costa struck a diplomatic balance.
“Tomorrow, the European Union and Canada will launch an alliance for the future of Europe,” he said, invoking German Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s preferred label and a term Carney has also used to describe the relationship. But Costa also backed von der Leyen’s “ambition” of Canada as an “associate member” of the EU, admitting the term might not matter in the end.
By mid-afternoon, Carney seemed to come around to the term, recognizing the work underway to deepen relations as “an alliance for the future, with Canada as an associate member, between Canada and the European Union.”