EU-Canada strategic autonomy is becoming the central idea behind a much closer transatlantic partnership. Canada and the European Union want to reduce their dependence on individual countries and technology companies in areas ranging from artificial intelligence and cloud infrastructure to payments, energy, critical minerals and defence, as relations with the USA under President Donald Trump become increasingly unpredictable.
The shift became explicit this week in Strasbourg. On Wednesday, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen proposed opening the door for Canada to become the EU’s first “associate member”, a new status whose exact institutional meaning has yet to be defined. On Thursday, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney told the European Parliament that Ottawa welcomed the ambition and proposed an “alliance for the future” built around strategic autonomy and shared economic security.
EU-Canada strategic autonomy goes beyond trade
The EU and Canada already have a close economic relationship through the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA). According to von der Leyen, bilateral trade in goods has increased by 75% in less than a decade under the agreement. But the new proposal goes considerably further.
Von der Leyen outlined cooperation in intelligent manufacturing, technology, defence production, the Arctic, energy, critical minerals, batteries, AI, quantum technologies, cybersecurity and economic security. The Commission president described the project as a partnership designed to strengthen both sides rather than an alliance directed against another country.
Carney’s speech placed this cooperation within a broader debate about sovereignty.
“Sovereignty requires resilience, the ability to withstand shocks.”
For Carney, modern sovereignty no longer means only being able to provide food, energy and defence. It also requires secure access to AI, semiconductors, critical minerals, payment systems, clean energy technologies, vaccines and satellite communications.
Neither Canada nor Europe currently controls all of these strategic capabilities. Both remain dependent on foreign governments or a relatively small number of large companies.
“We all have important gaps in these strategic capabilities, and we each must rely on individual nations or companies to fill them. This creates vulnerabilities, particularly when supposedly ‘global’ companies prove national in the breach.”
Carney argued that complete self-sufficiency is neither realistic nor necessary. The objective, he said, should instead be collective resilience, with Canada and Europe combining complementary resources and industrial capabilities.
Reducing dependence on USA technology companies
The technology dimension makes the new partnership particularly significant for Europe.
As NordiskPost previously reported, the EU is already trying to expand its own cloud, data centre, AI and semiconductor capacity through measures including the proposed Cloud and AI Development Act and Chips Act 2.0. The underlying concern is that much of Europe’s critical digital infrastructure remains dependent on companies headquartered in the USA, particularly Amazon, Microsoft and Google.
The debate is already visible in the Nordic countries. Denmark has examined contingency plans for losing access to USA-based cloud services, while public authorities have tested open-source alternatives as part of attempts to reduce dependence on a small number of foreign suppliers.
At the same time, the relationship is not simply one of disengagement from USA companies. Finland, for example, is preparing for at least €13 billion in investment from Google in data centres and AI infrastructure between 2027 and 2028. The challenge for European governments is therefore to attract technological investment while retaining sufficient control over critical infrastructure.
Canada could offer part of the answer. Carney highlighted the country’s capabilities in AI, quantum technologies, energy, critical minerals and space, while describing Europe’s advantages in advanced manufacturing, research, market scale and its ability to establish international regulatory standards.
He proposed pooling sovereign computing capacity, developing more secure broadband connections, coordinating AI safety standards and potentially creating a more integrated financial services market.
Payments, satellites and critical minerals are also sovereignty issues
The same logic extends beyond cloud services.
NordiskPost has previously examined how the planned digital euro has increasingly become a question of payment sovereignty, as much of Europe’s card infrastructure depends on USA-based Visa and Mastercard. A deeper partnership with Canada would add financial services and payment systems to a wider attempt to diversify critical infrastructure.
Satellite communications have followed a similar path. Iceland and Norway have joined the EU’s GOVSATCOM and IRIS² programmes, designed to provide secure communications for governments, emergency services and critical infrastructure. The initiatives form part of Europe’s effort to develop alternatives in an area where reliable access to communications infrastructure has become a security issue.
Critical minerals are another central element of the Canada-EU proposal. Canada has deposits of more than 30 minerals considered critical, while Europe has significant demand for materials needed for batteries, semiconductors, clean technologies and defence equipment. Carney proposed combining Canadian resources with European processing and manufacturing capabilities to create more complete supply chains.
Trump has accelerated an existing European debate
The push for greater autonomy predates Trump’s current presidency, but the deterioration of relations with Washington has given the debate new urgency.
NordiskPost recently reported that the Trump administration threatened tariffs against European countries over digital services taxes, while the European Commission defended the right of EU governments to regulate and tax economic activity inside their own markets. The dispute added to existing tensions over the Digital Services Act, the Digital Markets Act and European regulation of large USA technology companies.
Canada faces its own pressure from Washington. Ottawa has been trying to diversify its economic relationships as tensions with the USA have increased, while deepening cooperation with Europe on trade, defence and security. Canada has already become the first non-European participant in the EU’s SAFE defence procurement programme.
Trump reacted to von der Leyen’s proposal by threatening further trade measures if closer EU-Canada cooperation were treated by Washington as hostile. Both Brussels and Ottawa, however, have presented the initiative as an attempt to strengthen their own resilience rather than create an anti-USA bloc.
Carney made the distinction explicit.
“I am not proposing a third bloc in order to become a great-power rival, only with better manners.”
Instead, he said, the objective was to create enough resilience to prevent external actors from controlling markets, limiting sovereignty or dictating political choices.
A wider model for European strategic independence
The proposed Canada-EU relationship therefore connects several debates that have often been treated separately: defence autonomy, energy security, digital infrastructure, critical minerals, payments and the regulation of technology companies.
For the EU, they increasingly form part of the same question: how much dependence on a single foreign country or company is compatible with political sovereignty?
Canada offers an unusual partner because it shares many of Europe’s political and regulatory preferences while possessing resources and technological capabilities that the EU lacks. Europe, in turn, offers Canada a large market and an alternative economic and strategic relationship at a time when Ottawa is trying to reduce its exposure to the USA.
The details of the proposed “associate membership” still need to be negotiated, and neither side is presenting the project as economic self-sufficiency. What emerged in Strasbourg is instead a broader principle: Europe and Canada want enough technological, economic and security capacity to ensure that cooperation with larger powers remains a choice rather than a dependency.
