The following is the text of a keynote address by former Foreign Affairs Minister and former Ambassador to France and to the European Union, Stéphane Dion, for the 2026 Jean Monnet Debate, organized by the Jean Monnet Centre Montreal and co-sponsored by the McGill Institute for the Study of Canada and McGill’s School of Continuing Studies.
McGill University, April 27, 2026.
It would have been, in itself, a great honour to deliver the keynote address of the Jean Monnet Debate 2026, the landmark annual event of the Jean Monnet Centre. But on top of that, you are placing this responsibility on my shoulders on a great occasion, that of the commemoration of the 50th anniversary of EU-Canada relations.
So, I hope you are not expecting me to pull out my crystal ball to predict the course of the next fifty years! I will instead be content to highlight where we stand in the current geopolitical and economic context.
I am addressing you at a time when Canadians and Europeans feel the need to get closer to each other, and I am an enthusiastic supporter of this rapprochement. Yet, I do not join those who advocate for Canada’s entry into the European Union. For the reasons I am going to explain, this idea is both unrealistic and undesirable.
My presentation will be in two parts: First, yes to rapprochement. Then, no to the merger. In conclusion, I will make a proposal to adequately respond to the need for rapprochement, a proposal that I have already put forward and in which I have a lot of confidence: that Canada should join, rather than the European Union, the European Political Community.
‘Yes’ to Rapprochement
The need for rapprochement and the mutual attraction between Canada and the European Union are currently felt more strongly than usual. We know very well why. Let us not pretend not to know the reason. Let us not mince our words; it comes from the repulsion inspired in us by the erratic, unfriendly, vulgar, and outrageous behaviour of the Trump administration.
Canada then stands out, for many Europeans, as the ‘good’ country in North America, the one you can rely on, that believes in win-win agreements, that keeps its word, the reliable partner that cherishes the same values, the same societal project, the most European of non-European countries.
Europe, for its part, appears to many Canadians as a vital political and economic ally at a time when we really need it. But beyond this Trump effect, which brings us closer to each other, we must not forget that our ties have deep historical, French and British roots. Our two official languages are European. Our multicultural population has come from so many countries in Europe.
Europeans still cherish, during each commemoration of the two world wars, the memory of those liberators who came from the cold. Today, our ties are strong and multiple, embodied by our common membership in NATO, the G7, the G20, and so many other international organizations where we work side by side for peace, justice, and sustainable development.
Canada was, after the Second World War, one of the architects of an international order based on rules rather than the law of the strongest. The UN, the WTO, the World Bank, the IMF: Canada promoted the establishment and functioning of these institutions. With the United States, we helped the Europeans to convince themselves that it was unnecessary for them to strive to maintain their empires at great expense, that they could have access to natural resources without owning territories, and that for this it was necessary to establish rules allowing peaceful trade on all continents.
So, when President Trump seriously threatened to annex Greenland, it was at that moment that Prime Minister Mark Carney delivered his famous Davos speech, which resonated so much in Europe and beyond. By applauding his words, Europeans and Canadians said with one voice: no, we will not go back to the conquest of territories and the subjugation of peoples.
President Trump’s argument that he must seize Greenland since Denmark is unable to defend it alone is a license for unbridled imperialism. Only the United States, Russia, and China are capable of defending themselves alone in this world. So, Donald Trump’s statement is equivalent to saying that he has the right to invade all countries in the world except Russia and China.
Accepting his grip on Greenland would in a way have legitimized his other annexationist claims. It is therefore a chance not only for Greenland and Denmark, but also for us Canadians and for the world, that the Europeans and Canadians stood up and pushed Trump back on the Greenland issue… at least for the moment!
In concert with the Europeans (and the Americans under the Democratic Administration), for four years we have been telling the world that Putin’s war of aggression against Ukraine is not only a European issue: it is a global issue. The universal principle at stake is that it must be demonstrated to the world, once and for all, that a country gains nothing by invading its neighbor, that the crime of invasion does not pay.
Allies for peace, the European Union and Canada are also so in all key areas: NATO, international security, Ukraine, the Middle East and Iran, tariff escalation, AI, the transition to a decarbonized economy, the fight against foreign interference. For all this and more, the EU and its Member States form an essential strategic partner for Canada.
The EU is the second largest economy in nominal terms after the US. It includes 12 of the top 25 countries in the world regarding living standards, according to the 2024 U.S. News & World Report’s annual Best Countries rankings. There will be no successful diversification strategy for Canada without a considerable strengthening of our ties with Europe.
Even when it comes to developing our ties with other continents, our European allies are of crucial help to us. Whether it is managing our relations with the United States or promoting our objectives in Africa, the Asia-Pacific, or the Arctic, consultation with our European allies is essential.
Every polycrisis, wherever it occurs in the world – in Ukraine, the Middle East, Haiti, with China, with the Trump Administration – produces an intensification of calls, contacts, and coordination efforts between Canadian and European ministers.
The European Union is particularly vital for successfully transitioning to a carbon-neutral economy that will spare us the worst ravages of climate change. Canada, the whole world, needs a European Union fully committed to this struggle. If the European Union were to fail on this front, it would be a tragedy for humanity.
On January 1, 2026, the European Union formally launched the world’s first carbon border levy: the Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM). The European Union will impose tariffs at its borders on certain goods that have not been subject to carbon pricing in their country of origin. This means that for a country like Canada, having our own carbon pricing policy is becoming an asset for exports to Europe. Carbon tariffs must become a reality of world trade.
While Canada, like no other country, cannot change its geography, and will always belong to the North American continent, it is aware of sharing, at the same time, a common destiny with Europeans. Canada, through its societal model, its values, and its commitment to sustainable development, to justice, including social justice, and to the rule of law, Canada is, as Prime Minister Carney has said, the most European of the non-European countries.
Precisely because the EU is so large, rich and democratic, so close to our own societal project, we need it as a major economic partner as well as a key political ally.
In return, the European Union and its Member States consider Canada as a reliable partner and a rapidly expanding strategic market, particularly in sensitive industrial sectors, military acquisition, and security technologies. This friend of Europe is also a cutting-edge economy rich in critical resources, essential for the energy transition to a carbon-neutral economy.
European democratic states are seeking to get out of their dependence on Russian gas and on critical minerals from China. There is therefore a real interest in a stable, allied democracy, strong in technology and R&D, and blessed with critical natural resources like Canada.
Europeans also see Canada as a trading nation with the largest network of free trade agreements among G7 countries, giving it access to nearly two-thirds of the global economy, as well as one of the best banking systems there is, with pension funds that are among the most active infrastructure investors in the world.
Canada is among the most attractive countries for foreign investment with exceptional financial stability: the lowest net debt in the G7, the highest credit rating (AAA), and a borrowing rate on financial markets nearly 100 basis points lower than that of the United States. Besides, Canada has the most educated talent pool in the OECD… according to the OECD. We are a country with strong companies in traditional defence sectors, such as Bombardier, De Havilland, and MDA in aerospace and space.
Like the EU, Canada believes in science and academic freedom, with thousands of university cooperation agreements with European universities. Canada is now a full participant in Horizon Europe, the world’s largest research and innovation funding program; We now also collaborate within the European Eureka program, the largest international network dedicated to industrial research and development.
We emerge as a preferred partner in civil nuclear, with our unique heavy water natural uranium reactor technology – the Candu reactor. Furthermore, small modular reactors (SMRs) provide the opportunity to demonstrate continued Canadian leadership in the next generation of nuclear technologies; And Canada is one of the world’s largest uranium exporters.
Canada is multiplying robust agreements and partnerships with numerous European countries in all areas: defense, security, the environment, civil nuclear, artificial intelligence, quantum, critical minerals, cybersecurity, intelligence, crisis management, oceans, transport, and innovation in general.
The Strategic Partnership signed, last June, with the European Union, marks the most comprehensive strategic partnership the EU has ever concluded with a non-EU country. These agreements and partnerships must not remain on paper; they must be fully implemented; I will come back to that later.
Europe cannot replace the United States for us, but by strengthening our trade and political ties, we will help each other make our economies more prosperous, more resilient to global shocks, and less dependent on the United States. We cannot be satisfied with the status quo. The serious challenges we all face — geostrategic, technological, and eco-climatic — require Canada and the EU to do more together in the world, much more.
Vigilance is, however, required to ensure reciprocal access to markets, an essential condition for sustainable balance in bilateral industrial partnerships. Our diplomacy is making effective efforts to prevent Canadian exporters from becoming collateral victims of the industrial and commercial strategies that the European Union adopts in response to American protectionism and to stem the flow of Chinese goods. In many European countries, the electoral weight of protectionist movements is increasing with the rise of the radical nationalist right and anti-globalist left.
We want to keep the European market as open as possible to our products and services. Hence our interest in maintaining a coherent, functional, and liberal European Union, open to our arguments for an inclusive trade which is our country’s hallmark, and not an incoherent Europe fragmented by self-centred nationalisms.
The Government of Canada announced in its latest budget that it intends to double Canadian exports to markets other than the United States within ten years. To succeed in doubling Canadian exports to Europe from 2025 to 2035, they will need to grow at an average annual rate of 7.18%. This rate is significantly higher than the average annual rate of 3.93% over the past ten years. This represents a considerable challenge that will require sustained performance well beyond recent historical trends.
Attracted, for all these reasons, by Europe, Canadians, nevertheless, do not know the European Union well as such. I would like to tell all my fellow citizens that the European Union is nothing less than a superb achievement of and for humankind, a crucial ally for Canada, a power for peace and democracy in the world.
Since the post-war period, the European Union – and its previous incarnations – has allowed peoples who had been torn apart for centuries to understand that they were brothers and sisters. It has helped the countries of the Mediterranean and Eastern Europe to give birth to their democracies and to consolidate them. When democracy was in peril, the EU was a hope, a beacon, for all democrats in Europe, from the Carnation Revolution in Portugal to the acceptance as EU members of eleven former communist countries. It is largely thanks to the EU that humanity has experienced the greatest wave of democratization in history.
On April 12th, an election put a halt to Hungary’s autocratic drift, even as Viktor Orbán’s regime was the archetype of a “capture state” celebrated by the MAGA movement as the model to follow. This excellent news for democracy is primarily attributable to the resilience of Hungarian democrats.
However, it must be said, it is also the result of the ongoing effort made by the European Union, through its Commission and Parliament, to defend human rights and democracy within all its member states, even going so far as to make its financial aid conditional on respect for the rule of law.
When the European Union froze 17 to 18 billion euros in payments to Hungary on the grounds that its government was not respecting the rule of law, when it warned Georgia that the anti-democratic measures of its government were moving it away from joining the European Union, it was playing its role for democracy.
Despite the harbingers of doom who announce the implosion of the European Union, it is expanding. Since January 1, 2025, Bulgaria and Romania have been full members of the Schengen area. On January 1, 2026, Bulgaria adopted the euro and thus became the 21st member state of the eurozone. Switzerland is moving towards a closer alliance, and Iceland will hold a referendum on August 27, 2026, on the opening of negotiations for its possible accession to the EU.
Our interest in maintaining a functional and effective European Union must guide our attitude facing the debate on its enlargement. Ideally, we would like not only Ukraine, but also Georgia and all the Balkans, to join the European Union as soon as possible. This would encourage economic and democratic progress in these countries and guard them against Russian or Chinese influence.
But on the other hand, Canada understands the European Union’s cautious approach, ensuring beforehand that these countries, once accepted into the Union, will be part of the solution rather than adding to the problems of cohesion, particularly regarding respect for democracy, the rule of law and support for NATO.
In short, the European Union is a jewel of humanity as a maker of peace and democracy, a great political success and an economic achievement. And yet, Canada must not join it. Canada must remain Canada and the European Union must remain the European Union.
‘No’ to a Merger
The affinities between the EU and Canada are so numerous that some come to think that Canada should join this union. Rather than the 51st US state, we would become the 28th member state of the European Union.
On March 16, Finnish President Alexander Stubb invited Prime Minister Mark Carney to consider Canada’s accession to the European Union (EU). On the same day, French Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot also mentioned, only half-jokingly, such an entry of Canada into the EU.
Since The Economist launched the idea in January 2025, it periodically resurfaces, notably among Canadian and European experts on Canada-EU relations. Prime Minister Carney rejected this possibility, preferring to conclude concrete and comprehensive partnership agreements with the EU and its member states on trade, defense, and other issues of common interest. He is right in my opinion.
Canada’s membership in the EU is unrealistic and, moreover, undesirable. This idea will not reach first base, to use an image borrowed from baseball. I suggest, however, that what is feasible and desirable is Canada’s entry into the European Political Community, a coordination forum launched four years ago at the suggestion of Emmanuel Macron that brings together twice a year the leaders of the entire European continent, beyond the European Union.
The loss of sovereignty that our entry into the EU would entail would never be accepted by Canadians and would require impossible trade-offs within our decentralized federation: who, Ottawa or the provinces, should give up more of their powers to Brussels? We would probably have to reopen our Constitution!
It would be impossible for Canada to have its cake and eat it too, that is to say, to benefit from the advantages of EU membership without the resulting obligations. Otherwise, the EU would implode because all member states would want the same thing.
Canadians should accept that Canada, a wealthy country, is a net contributor to the EU budget. It would not be a popular transfer of money, given that equalization among Canadians already raises many debates here.
Our three levels of government and Canadian businesses would need to comply with the multiple very specific Brussels regulations in all areas: common trade policies, common agricultural policies, and perhaps we would even be asked to adopt the euro. We would also need to comply with the free movement of people between Canada and the EU, which would further complicate border and immigration control for Canada.
These policies and regulations are different from those we have negotiated with the United States, which will remain, in any case, our main partner by far, even if our trade agreement is not renewed. If Europe can help us become less dependent on the United States, it cannot replace them.
Geostrategically, Canada’s security existentially depends on military cooperation with the United States, within NATO and NORAD. Economically, we trade more with the United States than all the member countries of the European Union combined.
A country is tied to its geography. Currently, 76% of Canadian foreign trade is with the United States, compared to 8% with the countries of the European Union. If Canada succeeds in its economic diversification, it could hope to reduce the share of its foreign trade with the United States from 76% as it is today to about 50-60%, which would still remain considerable.
To embark on such a negotiation with the EU, long and difficult, there would need to be a consensus in Canada. A March 2025 poll did show a plurality in favor of joining the EU (44% in favor, 34% opposed). More recently, a March 2026 poll shows that a quarter (25%) of those surveyed said it was a good idea to join the EU, and 17% said it was a bad idea – the rest (58%) said it was worth exploring more.
However, how long this already hesitant support would withstand the multiple compromises that would have to be made (the abolition of supply management, for example)?
From the Europeans’ point of view, mustering the unanimity of the member states required for our accession would be quite a challenge. Already, they are having all the difficulties ratifying the trade agreement we have with them (CETA). More than eight years after its implementation, ten out of 27 member states still have not ratified it.
As for the intermediate solutions of partial integration adopted by Norway or Switzerland, that would require us to accept dynamic alignment, that is to say, to comply with EU rules over which we would have no formal right to vote. In addition, we would have to make significant financial contributions to the EU.
We would feel uncomfortable in this complex organization where important decisions are made by the unanimous agreement of member states or by a demanding qualified majority (55% of the member states representing at least 65% of the population). It’s as if the Canadian federal budget depended on the agreement of our ten provinces. Can we imagine how long our budget negotiations would take?
In fact, for Europe, the situation is even worse, since unanimity must be obtained not from ten, but from twenty-seven members, among whom there are some where values of liberal democracy and good governance are still poorly rooted.
The EU is a complex organization, to say the least. This complexity comes, fundamentally, from the meeting of two opposing phenomena: on the one hand the rule of unanimity by which several major decisions must be made; on the other hand, the exceptional political fragmentation faced by the vast majority of member states and in the EU parliament.
Rule of unanimity, political fragmentation, there is an assembly that complicates an organization. This constant tension between its need for unity and its marked fragmentation has recently been accentuated by the rise of the far right.
In many European countries today, one sees fragile coalition governments, made up of center-right and center-left parties, facing enormous difficulties in agreeing on a common government program. Yet they are well aware that reaching an agreement is in their interest to block the populist far-right.
The rise of the far-right does not make the old cleavage between the classic right and left disappear, especially in a context of heavy debt and budgetary restraint, while the left’s remedy, which is to ‘make the rich pay,’ confronts that of the right, which is to ‘liberate the economy.’
The European far-right, in its various national incarnations, can be close to Putin and Trump, opposed to supporting Ukraine, isolationist and nationalist, protectionist including within the European market, Eurosceptic, and hostile to climate policies.
One must be wary of short-term perspectives that currently make us look at Brussels as so much more attractive than Washington. In three years, there could well be a White House tenant as friendly towards Canada as Donald Trump’s predecessors were.
In what political health will the EU be? How far will the rise of radical right-wing, Eurosceptic, protectionist, and Brussels-hostile parties go? Will it go as far as taking power in Paris? Or even in Berlin? For my part, I remain optimistic about the future of democracy, both in the United States and within the European Union. But nothing is certain.
So, Canada’s entry into the European Union will not happen because it is so unrealistic and undesirable. Instead of chasing this mirage, let’s be concrete: let’s truly implement all these partnership agreements that we sign with Europeans and fully take advantage of them, starting with CETA. According to the Chief Economist of Global Affairs Canada, only 60% of its potential is used by our businesses. Reaching 100% may not be realistic, but there is room for improvement.
Signing agreements with the Europeans is not too difficult. What is more complicated is to implement them. We must “deliver the deliverables.” Both in Ottawa, in Brussels and in European capitals, we have work to do to ensure that commitments are translated into concrete actions.
The suggestion I made to Prime Minister Carney is to ensure that for each signed agreement, there are two senior officials, one Canadian, the other European, who are accountable for its implementation, with specific objectives and deadlines.
This is how I see the European political environment as it currently stands: fragmented, polarised, but still crucially important for all the objectives Canada is pursuing.
‘Yes’ to Canada’s Membership in the European Political Community
Canadians and Europeans feel, for solid and good reasons, the need to get closer to each other. Merging would not be a good idea. What needs to be done is to turn into concrete results, beneficial both to Europeans and Canadians, the multiple commitments that we have made together in so many key areas. We have a lot of work ahead to achieve this.
But there is another thing we could do, which in my opinion would be very useful. It is a proposal that I have already put forward: Canada’s membership in the European Political Community.
Created in 2022 at the proposal of President Macron, the European Political Community (EPC) brings together the leaders of 47 European countries to promote their cooperation on common issues such as security, stability, and prosperity. Only two European countries are not invited: Russia and Belarus, due to the war of aggression against Ukraine.
Our membership in this political coordination platform would be entirely beneficial. It would strengthen our ties with Europe and allow our Prime Minister to consult with the leaders of countries he would otherwise never have time to visit individually. It would consolidate our status as the most European of non-European countries. Admittedly, this would require the Prime Minister to attend two additional meetings in Europe each year, but these trips could be combined with statutory events, such as the NATO summit or the Canada-EU summit.
I know that several European leaders would welcome such an accession by Canada. A first step could be for Prime Minister Carney to be invited as the keynote speaker at an upcoming EPC summit. Without being too presumptuous, one might think that crowned by the immense success of his Davos speech he would be received with open arms!
I hope that this suggestion will come true. But to conclude on the overall picture, if there is one thing we Canadians must keep firmly in mind, it is that to a large extent, not only the diversification of our trade outlets, but also our country’s influence in the world, its strategic security, its own democratic health, and the achievement of its ecological and climate goals will depend on our ability to strengthen our alliances and establish ever stronger and more effective partnerships in Europe.
We have so much to do, the European Union and Canada, side by side, for peace, justice, sustainable development, and democracy in the world… at least for the next fifty years!”
Stéphane Dion is currently Diplomat in Residence, Faculty of Arts and Science, Université de Montréal.