Two oaks do not make a forest

Photo: European Union, 2026

 

The EU–Canada summit in Montreal closed on 30 October, ten years exactly after Canada and the EU signed their Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) and their Strategic Partnership Agreement (SPA), and fifty years after their first framework agreement. CETA abolished tariffs on nearly all goods. The SPA covers cooperation in many fields. Both remain provisionally applied.

Montreal goes further. In their joint statement, the two sides describe “a deeper, more integrated and strategically aligned relationship”. Leaders launched an “Alliance for the Future” and concluded negotiations on a digital trade agreement. Canada and the European Investment Bank signed a framework agreement for investment, and the two sides agreed to open negotiations on Canadian access to Galileo, the EU’s satellite navigation system. They also commit to defining by their Summit in 2027 an “ever-closer association” of Canada to the EU, “short of full membership”.

This is a real achievement. But its architects set it against a dark backdrop. At Davos in January, Prime Minister Mark Carney warned that “we are in the midst of a rupture, not a transition”. In her September State of the Union address, Commission President Ursula von der Leyen described “an openly hostile world”. The next day, Carney told the European Parliament that storms were shaking our societies: climate change, the erosion of democratic norms and the weaponisation of trade.

In such a storm, he argued, a single tree falls, but a forest stands, because each oak's roots intertwine with those of its neighbours. He recalled the Vimy oaks, grown in Canada from acorns a soldier brought home from Vimy Ridge, in France, in 1917. A century later, their descendants were replanted at Vimy. He called not for self-sufficiency but for “collective resilience”, in “a transatlantic forest”.

Yet two oaks do not make a forest. Together, the EU and Canada account for about a fifth of world output but just 6 per cent of humanity.

Could these two oaks seed a forest? Von der Leyen called the EU and Canada the alliance’s “nucleus”, and Carney and European Council President António Costa cast it as a beacon for other democracies. But the joint statement says nothing about how others might join.

In September, the EU, together with Australia, Barbados, Brazil, Canada, India and Kenya, launched the Partners for Multilateralism (P4M) initiative at a summit in New York. It aims to strengthen a multilateral system under pressure and make it “more effective, representative, inclusive and fit for purpose”. In a joint op-ed, Costa, Carney, Kenya’s William Ruto and Brazil’s Lula insisted it was “not about creating another exclusive bloc” but open to countries that disagree on many issues yet share the principles of the UN Charter. Montreal speaks a different language: shared values, trust and reciprocity among like-minded partners.

Addressing the UN General Assembly the same week, Costa argued that the two can reinforce each other: a stronger multilateral system also requires stronger alliances.

The EU’s emphasis, however, is uneven. In her State of the Union, von der Leyen called for “global coalitions for our resilience and democracies”, insisted that “only Europe” could lead them, and named as partners like-minded countries: Canada, the UK, Norway and Ukraine. Countries of the South appeared as trade and investment partners, not as actors needed to reform the international order. The joint statement links P4M to UN reform but not to the alliance’s practical work.

The priorities EU governments adopted for the current General Assembly session spell out what multilateralism requires: a system that is “more representative of and delivers effectively for all”. Every country must have a fair share in the benefits of development and in shaping the rules.

A bilateral summit cannot reform the international order. But an alliance that presents itself as the nucleus of something wider can be judged by what it offers countries beyond its members.

Montreal delivers much for its two members, but so far little for anyone else. The joint statement supports investment across the critical-minerals value chain, from extraction to processing and refining, in Canada and the EU. It also explores projects in third countries, but without comparable commitments to local processing or value creation. Yet for producer countries, the difference between supplying ore and hosting refineries can be the difference between dependence and development.

The development agenda shows the same gap. A UN summit in September 2027 will consider sustainable development beyond 2030, but the joint statement merely reaffirms the Sustainable Development Goals. While preparatory work is ongoing, the EU has yet to set out a vision for what follows. Von der Leyen’s mission letter to her development commissioner does not mention the task.

On representation in global institutions, Montreal is silent. The EU’s own priorities call for Security Council reform that strengthens “the voice of under-represented regions”, and Costa has called for reforming the global financial architecture. Europeans differ on Security Council models, not on the principle. The international financial institutions are a sharper test: a fairer distribution of votes and seats would require Europeans, represented on the IMF and World Bank boards, to cede some of their weight. The return would be institutions that others regard as legitimate.

These omissions have a common root. The EU does not lack external policies, from Global Gateway to regional strategies. What it lacks is a strategy that binds them together and sets out how Europe intends to shape a more inclusive international order with countries beyond its like-minded partners. The 2016 Global Strategy was written before the rupture Carney describes. The European Security Strategy in preparation will, by early indications, concentrate on Europe’s own security. But Europe’s security also depends on development beyond its borders. Alliances with like-minded partners cannot replace such a strategy.

None of this argues against the alliance. Trusted partners can pioneer what cannot yet be agreed universally, provided they carry the gains outward. That could mean critical-minerals partnerships with producer countries that build local processing, post-2030 proposals co-authored with P4M partners, and a joint commitment to give under-represented regions more weight, starting with the international financial institutions.

The Vimy oaks crossed the Atlantic in both directions. If the Alliance for the Future is to strengthen collective resilience beyond its own members, its roots must intertwine with those of other trees. And not only oaks.