Prime Minister Mark Carney said the two words Germany and France had cut from the paper. "Today, we move towards associate membership for Canada," he told the closing press conference of the Canada–EU summit in Montreal on Friday.
Carney, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and European Council President António Costa released a joint statement that never calls Canada an associate member. Berlin and Paris objected to a title that exists nowhere in the EU treaties, so the EU wrote "ever-closer association" instead. Von der Leyen, who proposed the title in September, repeated it at her closing press conference. Carney went further: a partnership "short of accession, with Canada becoming the European Union's first associate member." He said the two sides would negotiate over the next year.
Berlin and Paris struck the word. They signed the thing itself, line by line.
