Johanna Flach and Nicolai von Ondarza explore the new EU security and defence partnerships with Canada, Norway and the UK.
In the span of little over a year, the European Union (EU) has in quick succession signed ‘Security and Defence Partnerships’ (SDPs) with like-minded partners and allies across the world, including the United Kingdom. From an EU perspective, the motivation for the partnerships is two-fold. On the one hand, the increasing uncertainty about the future of the American security guarantee has compelled EU member states to diversify their security partners. On the other hand, these partnerships allow the EU to offer third countries a framework for participation in EU defence initiatives, such as Permanent Structured Cooperation or joint procurement under the recent €150bn. ‘Security Action For Europe’ (SAFE) plan.
Consequently, the EU has struck SDPs with like-minded non-EU NATO allies (UK, Canada, Norway, North Macedonia, Albania), with Moldova as well as global liberal partners such as Japan and South Korea. Talks with Australia, New Zealand and even India are underway for additional partnerships. Ukraine, meanwhile, has a special security agreement with the EU.
But how do these partnerships compare? The SDP between the EU and the UK was signed as part of a wider ‘reset’ at the summit in May 2025. To put this agreement into context, we compared it with those between the EU and Norway (May 2024) as well as Canada (June 2025). All three are non-EU NATO partners with close alignment with the EU in terms of values and interests in European security.
Following the EU way of conducting foreign and security policy, each of the partnership agreements contains a structured set of exchange formats. All three SDPs include an annual security and defence dialogue between the EEAS Deputy Secretary General and the respective counterparts in Norway, the UK, and Canada. Working level consultations are explicitly foreseen for the UK and Norway, thematic dialogues on specific domains of shared interest are envisioned for the UK and Canada. However, the depth and level of exchange differs from country to country. The UK-EU relationship, for example, includes a higher level bi-annual foreign and security policy dialogue involving the EU High Representative and the UK Foreign and Defence Secretaries. Additionally, both the UK and Norway may attend Council meetings when invited by the High Representative.
There are notable differences between the agreements, both in their scope and depth. In both there appears to be a tendency to expand the agreements over time: Canada’s is the longest, the UK’s only slightly shorter, while Norway’s 2024 agreement is roughly 1,000 words shorter. All of them contain remarkably similar language, pointing to institutional learning explaining the longer EU-Canada SDP, rather than a deeper relationship. The areas of cooperation outlined in the EU’s SDPs with Canada, Norway, and the UK reflect both common priorities and differentiated ambitions. Beyond the core elements present in all SDPs, the three closest non-EU NATO allies benefit from an expanded set of cooperation areas. These include support to Ukraine – in the UK agreement even more broadly expanded to ‘exchanges on regional security issues’ that feature various other regions such as the Western Balkans or the Indo-Pacific – alongside collaboration on security and defence initiatives, cooperation in third countries and multilateral fora, external aspects of economic security, and peace mediation and conflict prevention. Moreover, disruptive technologies and the climate-security nexus are addressed in the agreements with Canada and the UK. Finally, while all three agreements include certain individual areas of cooperation tailored to each partner, the UK agreement stands out for both the number and breadth of these additional areas. It uniquely covers issues such as situational awareness, the external dimensions of corruption and illicit finance, external aspects of irregular migration, and global health security.
Beyond scope, important qualitative differences are evident in content and wording. The UK text adopts a more cautious tone on institutional cooperation compared to Canada and Norway. This is particularly clear in references to potential participation in CSDP missions and operations, engagement with the European Peace Facility, and involvement in additional PESCO projects. Despite this overall hesitancy, the UK is the only one to include a clause on seconding staff to EU institutions, echoing earlier post-Brexit considerations from 2018. By contrast, Norway’s EEA membership allows for a more ambitious approach to security and defence, with its agreement explicitly providing for intensified defence-industrial cooperation. Meanwhile, both the UK and Canada include the possibility of administrative arrangements with the European Defence Agency, which Norway already has.
Taken together, the three security and defence partnerships tell the tale of three distinct relationships in a similar framework. None contain security guarantees – unlike, for instance, the recent British German bilateral treaty – but rather stress joint values, sketch out areas of cooperation and offer a gateway to (partial) participation in EU security and defence instruments.
Norway’s SDP reflects its deep integration into the EU’s single market via the European Economic Area and its already broad participation in CSDP instruments and is therefore the deepest. The SDP with Canada, as the most recent, shows the effects of a learning process with a broader scope and more concrete formulations on selected areas such as economic security. However, given the geographic distance, the institutional linkages and depth of the agreement are shallower. Finally, the EU-UK security and defence partnership shows both: traces of the more complicated Brexit baggage, with in parts more careful, ambivalent phrasing of the agreement, but also the most potential in terms of institutional exchanges at the highest political level and the most declarations of intent on future participation in EU security and defence instruments. Together, their most significant contribution may therefore be that they make the European security architecture somewhat less complex, in effect offering a gateway or like-minded NATO countries to participate in EU defence and defence (industrial) projects.
By Johanna Flach, Research Assistant and Student Assistant in the EU/Europe Research Division at SWP, and Dr. Nicolai von Ondarza, Head of the EU/Europe Research Division at SWP and an Associate Fellow at Chatham House.