PP-IR-FR. In June 2022, Canada and the Kingdom of Denmark, together with Greenland, ended the half-century ‘Whisky War’ over Tartupaluk (Hans Island) with a boundary agreement between ‘neighbours and allies’ — proof, said Canada’s foreign minister, Mélanie Joly, that the Arctic ‘is a beacon for international cooperation, where the rule of law prevails’. Four years on, that rule is under strain, and Brussels has turned to Ottawa. In her State of the Union address on 16 September 2026, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen announced: ‘We will move from CETA to an Alliance for the Future’, proposing to open ‘the door for Canada to be the first associate member of the EU’. Replying to the European Parliament the next day, Prime Minister Mark Carney put the inherent dilemma — Article 49 TEU opens membership only to a ‘European State’ — on the agenda: ‘The institutions we have inherited are organised by geography. The strategic capabilities we need are organised by function.’
That is the crux, and Washington is making it urgent. Since the 2025 US National Security Strategy and the Greenland crisis, the North Atlantic’s protector has also become a source of risk. In September alone, the presidential map (7 September), the tariff threat (16 September), and the Greenland defence agreement (22 September) followed one method: deal with each partner separately, never with all at once. That is the geopolitical fragmentation risk against which Carney warned middle powers in Davos in January: if they are not at the table, they are on the menu. Against that threat, the EU holds an asset no one else offers: Article 42(7) TEU, the only multilateral mutual-defence clause among European democracies that does not depend, in law, on the US. But it comes only with membership, which Article 49 TEU closes to Canada. Associate membership would give Ottawa the economic good it wants, not the security good it needs.
Extending shelter theory, the paper explains why none of the five North Atlantic countries and territories (Canada, Norway, Iceland, Greenland, and the Faroes) finds full EU membership both attractive and attainable. The EU’s economic offer is unbundled; its security guarantee comes only with the entire acquis, Common Fisheries Policy included. Iceland, which could buy the bundle, voted on 29 August against resuming accession talks. Canada, its mirror image, cannot buy it, yet seeks the security it would guarantee.
The paper proposes to cut this Gordian knot by unbundling the security good through a mutual-assistance treaty concluded outside EU law, modelled on Article 42(7) but stronger, and open to the European members of NATO and to Canada. The EU’s core would stay intact, surrounded by two concentric structures, one for security and one for integration: differentiated integration governed by rules rather than exceptions. Built without Washington but not against it, the treaty would name no adversary, remain consistent with NATO, and leave NORAD untouched. By negotiating together rather than one by one, the five would meet the seller’s market power with the buyers’ countervailing power. That is where a unified voice of the non-American West stops being a slogan and becomes a mechanism.
The EU–Canada summit in Montréal on 29–30 October, ten years to the day after CETA was signed, can take the first steps. The paper makes six recommendations and sets out what Montréal should open:
The second paper in the Olters Policy and Working Paper Series (OPWP) and the first in French, it is published ahead of the summit, with abstracts in French, English, and German.
→ Full paper (PDF, in French): https://olters.eu/wp-content/uploads/2026/10/OPWP-02-2026_UE-Canada_jpo.pdf
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