The European Parliament will open a liaison office in Ottawa, its 10th outside the European Union, the assembly’s president announced Monday, three days before Prime Minister Mark Carney is scheduled to address its members in Strasbourg.
Roberta Metsola, the Parliament’s president, said the office will make it easier for the 720 politicians who represent the EU’s member states to exchange visits and information with Canadian MPs and senators, and will help legislators on both sides better understand the Arctic, security and transatlantic trade, The Canadian Press reported Monday. The decision was taken by the Parliament’s governing Bureau and follows discussions with the Speaker of the Canadian Parliament that began after Metsola attended the G7 Speakers’ Summit in Canada last year, according to an account of the announcement published by the Greek outlet Parapolitika.
“In an era where the world is becoming increasingly unpredictable, like-minded partners must work together more closely than ever,” Metsola said in a statement carried by Parapolitika. “Europe and Canada share values, interests, and a commitment to the same rules-based international order.”
What is being created is a parliamentary office rather than a diplomatic one, and the distinction matters. The EU already maintains a diplomatic mission in Ottawa, and The Canadian Press noted that members of the European Parliament have travelled to Ottawa with that mission’s support in the past, just as Canadian MPs and senators have relied on Canada’s embassy in Brussels for visits the other way. The new office formalizes the legislature-to-legislature side of the relationship, which is the layer that usually thickens after two partners have settled what they are to each other, not before.
The company Ottawa now joins says something about how Brussels reads the relationship. The Parliament runs nine offices outside the EU, according to Parapolitika’s account: Addis Ababa for relations with the African Union, Jakarta for the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, New York for the United Nations, Panama for Latin America and the Caribbean, Washington for the United States, London for the United Kingdom, Tirana for the Western Balkans, Chisinau covering the Eastern Partnership region, and Kyiv. Most of those are attached either to a multilateral institution or to a country that is negotiating its way toward the bloc, away from it, or alongside it. Only Washington is a straightforward capital-to-capital posting. Ottawa becomes the second.
The Arctic element is the most concrete and the least reported. Parapolitika said the office carries a regional mandate extending to the Arctic, which places a European Parliament presence in North America with a remit over a region where EU member states have been pressing Brussels for a firmer posture.
The announcement lands in the middle of an active argument at home about how close Canada should get to the EU. Carney said last week that Canada is not seeking membership but a “unique alliance,” after The Wall Street Journal reported his government had been scoping out an associate-member arrangement, and Conservatives have attacked the pursuit as a distraction. Canada and the EU are separately expected to announce a broader trade and security partnership this week.
Neither source gave an opening date, a budget or a staffing figure for the Ottawa office. Carney is scheduled to address the European Parliament on Thursday, Sept. 17.
