“Associate membership” is out and “ever closer association” back in.

The offer of the first phrase was made to Canada a month ago by EU Commission president Ursula von der Leyen. 

The phraseology, made during von der Leyen’s State of the Union speech, surprised many EU diplomats who claimed that they had not been consulted.

It was also never clear precisely what this would mean.

The idea of Canada having representatives or observer status in the EU institutions always sounded fanciful. Besides, there is no mention of ‘associate membership’ in the EU treaties, and this uncertainty appears to have persuaded Germany to demand that it be dropped ahead of Thursday and Friday’s (29-30 October) EU-Canada summit.  

The draft communique circulated ahead of the summit talks of “work to define by the 2027 EU-Canada summit the concept of an ever closer association of Canada to the EU, short of full membership itself.” 

Von der Leyen appeared not to have read the memo. 

Officials would “start discussing how to make Canada the first associate member of the EU,” she said on arrival in Montreal, adding that “our ambition is to build the closest partnership we have ever had with a non-European country”. 

Yet this is a dispute over language rather than substance. The EU and Mark Carney’s Canada see each other as their closest ally. Both have been repeatedly threatened with hefty trade tariffs by Donald Trump’s White House and the consequences of Trump’s foreign policy adventures in the Middle East and the Arctic. Carney’s remarks at the World Economic Forum in January that ‘middle’ powers should club together to avoid being squeezed between China and the US were aimed at the EU.  

Commission officials may blench at the comparison, but the EU is a collection of middle ranking and small states. And it is yet to act like a world power on the political stage. 

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The London-based Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA) has filed a complaint with the European Ombudsman, accusing the EU Commission of maladministration over its handling of the bloc’s methane rules.

The complaint, filed on Thursday (29 October), targets two recent commission decisions. 

The first is for a July recommendation that member states hold off on fining importers that are in breach of the rules until 2030. 

The second is a proposal made earlier this month to delay the import rules by a year over supply worries — a decision that was made following heavy pressure from oil and gas companies, the White House and eventually by the summer, a majority of member states. 

But the EIA argues that neither decision is backed up by evidence that the rules actually threaten Europe’s energy supply or push up prices.

By delaying a law already adopted in 2024, the group says, the commission is “undermining integrity of both the legislative process and the EU rule of law.”

“Rather than ensuring that the EU Methane Regulation is implemented as agreed, the commission has responded to pressure from the fossil-fuel industry by weakening enforcement and proposing further delays, without providing credible evidence to justify these decisions,” said Jack Corscadden, senior climate campaigner at EIA.

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