EU President Ursula von der Leyen has offered Canada ‘associate membership’ of the EU. No one knows what ‘associate membership’ means and the Germans have subsequently said the term needs reconsidering, but the general idea seems to be that Canada will have some sort of very close relationship with the EU, not wholly unlike the countries applying to the EU or on the outskirts of the bloc – placing Canada in a class with countries such as Egypt, Serbia or Ukraine.

Exactly what this would add to the existing Canada-EU trade agreement, CETA, or how likely EU member states would be to ratify any such ‘associate membership’ agreement with Canada remains unclear, not least because even CETA is yet to be ratified by ten EU member states a decade after it was signed.

Von der Leyen herself mentioned manufacturing, technology, energy policy, economic security and defence as potential areas of cooperation. Some of these match known Canadian aspirations for collaboration. For example, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney, perhaps drawing on his past experience as a central banker, has said he wants to work with the EU to develop new payments systems, as well as on AI, cloud computing, space and energy security. There are various schemes for........

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