Here’s what would happen if Canada joined the European Union

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In the face of uncertainty about Canada’s relationship with the United States, some have been proposing an alternative path: backing away from the Americans a bit and joining the European Union.

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The 27-state economic and political group includes a variety of countries with which Canada already has close economic, historic and political ties, including France and Germany. Notably, however, the United Kingdom, the country to which Canada perhaps owes its largest debt, left the EU in 2020.

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The idea of Canada joining the EU has got renewed attention over the past month, following a story in The Economist, in which Stanley Pignal, the Brussels bureau chief for the paper, argued that Canada should officially join its European cousins.

The EU is already Canada’s second-largest trading partner, after the United States.

Of course, joining the EU might not have the effects some might hope. Canada narrowly avoided punishing tariffs on Monday and received a 30-day reprieve from U.S. President Donald Trump. But Trump has also floated the idea of punishing tariffs levelled against the EU.

Not only that, joining the EU would require some fairly significant changes, such as potentially a new currency and almost certainly some supranational authority over Canadian affairs, and that’s if we managed to hold together enthusiasm for Europe over the potentially decades-long process of acquiring membership.

But that’s getting ahead of ourselves. Here’s everything you need to know about the prospect of Canada joining the EU.

Is it even possible for Canada to join the EU?

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That’s a tricky one to answer. The European Union does not have wildly specific rules set out about geographic proximity to Europe in order to join the EU, although the Maastricht Treaty, which created the EU in 1992, does specify that “any European state” that respects the principles of the EU may apply to join.

“This was only tested once when Morocco, in the 1980s, inquired about becoming a member and was told, ‘No, you are not in Europe, and therefore you cannot become a member,’” said Achim Hurrelmann, a professor of political science at Carleton University. “So, I don’t see any reason why the same would not apply to Canada.”

That’s the first hurdle to clear. One way to clear it, potentially, would be European legislators simply changing that treaty to say, for example, that European or allied states could join

Other criteria for joining the EU are laid out under the Copenhagen criteria. They’re fairly broad and straightforward: basically, the nation must be a democracy that respects rights, that has a market economy, and that agrees with the purpose and principles of the EU.

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But geography is really the sticky issue. There has been a map going around on social media showing Hans Island, a teeny rock in the Nares Strait between Canada’s Ellesmere Island and the autonomous Danish territory of Greenland. The meme suggests that because Canada shares a border with a European country — Hans Island is split down the middle — we are eligible to join.

But it’s more complicated than that.

At present, there is only one member state of the EU that is not totally clearly geographically part of Europe: Cyprus, which is technically part of West Asia, although it is split, in a complicated fashion, between Greek Cyprus (Greece is an EU member state) and Turkish Cyprus (Turkey is not a member state) but it’s fairly obviously European culturally and historically.

There are a few other countries that are seeking to join the EU that are not in Europe physically, including Armenia and Georgia.

All in all, it’s highly improbable, if for no other reason than the process of joining the EU takes years and years. Turkey, for example, applied to join the EU in 1987. That process is still ongoing, nearly 40 years later.

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So let’s say the EU decided, for some reason, we’re European. What then?

It would be a long road. A very long road. The European Union has all sorts of rules that differ from Canada.

“The policy remit of the EU is exceptionally broad, so a lot of economic regulation, market rules, environmental rules, workplace safety rules, you name it,” said Hurrelmann.

The most obvious is the currency. Canada uses the Canadian dollar. European Union countries, with seven exceptions, all use the euro. Those that don’t are Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Hungary, Poland, Romania, and Sweden and, with the exception of Denmark, are obliged to switch to the euro once they reach a certain set of macroeconomic indicators.

But there are a ton of other issues: Food regulations, fuel standards, labour law, and so on and so forth. If Canada were to be brought into the EU, its laws and regulations would be dissected thoroughly by European countries and would need to be brought into alignment with European law on everything from agriculture to green policies and criminal justice. (For example, no EU member state is allowed to have the death penalty. Not that Canada does, but we couldn’t bring it back as an EU member state.)

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“It takes a number of years and parliaments in Canada will be very busy discussing and basically transforming Canadian legislation to align with EU legislation,” said Emmanuel Brunet-Jailly, a professor at the University of Victoria.

Brunet-Jailly noted that some countries, such as Iceland, have initiated and then quit on this process. It requires domestic political will over a sustained period of time to make that happen.

Economically, what would joining the EU mean?

It would give Canada further access to a major bloc of trading partners. Already, the EU is Canada’s second-largest trading partner and Canada has a free-trade agreement with the European Union. The Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA), largely developed under former prime minister Stephen Harper but brought into force under Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, is provisionally in effect, meaning that about 98 per cent of tariffs between Canada and the EU have been demolished.

However, to join up officially would actually mean more market access.

“Being a member of the European single market is more far reaching than what Canada currently has, even under the CETA agreement, mainly because the single market includes not just the lack of tariffs and things like that, but also mutual recognition of non-tariff product standards and so on,” said Hurrelmann.

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“When you look at Canada-EU trade at the moment, a lot of obstacles in this area of food safety standards, product standards and so on, which are not aligned by the trade agreement. But in the EU single market, the member states are expected to mutually recognize each other’s conditions. So it would mean fewer barriers to trade, and also fewer barriers to, for instance, movement of people because of those rules.”

Are there upsides to Canada joining the EU?

Other than potential economic benefits, potentially. After all, we wouldn’t need to stand in the non-EU line at European airports. But issues of marginal convenience aside, there would be additional benefits.

“It also would contribute to increasing the diplomatic power, the voice of Canada on the world stage through the EU,” said Brunet-Jailly.

Though it would have surrendered some sovereignty, Canada would get some say over decisions made by the EU, having representatives in the European Parliament.

Additionally, free movement around Europe could be a benefit for Canadians. Canadians could, at any moment, just up and move to Paris and work and eat baguettes, if we were members of the European Union.

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That said, some of the upsides of the EU, such as easy movement of goods and people around the continent, wouldn’t materialize for Canada in the same way, since we’re divided by an ocean and not just right next door.

Are there downsides?

As a consequence of joining up, Canadians would see regulations and rules put in place by the European parliament. Critics have argued that the EU has onerous regulations on all sorts of economic sectors, for example, the EU has a strict legal framework — the world’s first — on the use of artificial intelligence.

This could have some negative economic consequences, certainly, in addition to the potential moral hazard of surrendering degrees of sovereignty.

Other have argued that because members of EU countries have freedom of movement, this would expose Canada further to a migration crisis, should migrants who’ve arrived in Europe decide to move across the Atlantic to find new lives in Canada. At present, Canada has been spared from migration trends — at least compared to Europe — in part because it’s a long and impossible walk to Canada.

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It also, of course, might anger Trump and the United States, or we could get caught in a broadening trade war, involving the EU and the U.S.

Is there a happy medium?

Yes, actually. There are ways Canada could secure more benefits from Europe — and vice versa — without fully joining the EU.

“I’m a little bit dismayed that this unrealistic debate about EU membership kind of distracts from the things that could really be done to intensify the relationship,” said Hurrelmann. “How could we try to speed up processes of regulatory alignment under CETA? How could we encourage European investment in Canada in areas such as critical raw materials?… Those, I think, are the kinds of debates for which there’s really a lot of potential. And the Canada-EU economic relationship can definitely become closer and can be intensified, and that would be beneficial for both sides, but not through Canada’s membership in the EU.”

What other countries are seeking to join the EU?

There are nine: Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Georgia, Moldova, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Serbia, Turkey, and Ukraine. Kosovo, which would make it 10, is awaiting official candidacy; not all EU member states recognize Kosovo as an independent nation.

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