Von der Leyen opens the door to Canada within the Union, Trump threatens harsh tariffs

On September 16, 2026, in Strasbourg, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen delivered her annual State of the Union address before the European Parliament. At the center of the speech was a package of climate-related measures and an announcement directly concerning transatlantic relations: the opening of an “associate member” status of the Union for Canada.

Among the proposals was a new Climate Insurance Alliance created to close a gap that the president herself quantified: today only 25% of losses caused by natural disasters in Europe are covered by private insurance. Von der Leyen also cited the impact of summer heatwaves on the continent, speaking of 35,000 excess deaths and 660,000 hectares burned. On this point, the president stressed the need to speed up the pace of European action against the effects of climate change.

The speech also touched on artificial intelligence: von der Leyen called for slowing down the development of the most advanced models, so-called frontier AI, for safety reasons — a chapter that stood alongside, without replacing, the climate section of the address.

The most significant institutional development, however, concerned Canada. For the first time, a head of government was invited to the State of the Union address: Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney attended the speech as part of the proposal through which the Commission is paving the way for the country to become the first associate member of the European Union. According to the Commission, trade in goods between the Union and Canada has grown by 75% in less than a decade, a result attributed to the CETA free trade agreement already in force between the parties.

In the same speech, von der Leyen linked two separate episodes from the preceding weeks to risks for European security: a drone that entered Lithuanian airspace and was shot down by NATO fighter jets, and the launch of signal rockets by a Russian warship near a Danish helicopter. The president called the Russian conduct behind both cases dangerous and reckless, stressing that these are recurring episodes rather than isolated facts, while nonetheless treating them as separate cases rather than a single sequence.

The proposal on Canada produced an immediate reaction from Washington. According to El País, US President Donald Trump threatened very severe tariffs or a cut in trade with Europe across several areas, should he deem the project of an associated Canada within the Union hostile. The threat came just hours after the Strasbourg proposal and links, for the first time explicitly, the transatlantic trade dossier to the Canadian institutional matter.

The timeline of the confrontation continues in short order: also according to El País, Prime Minister Carney is expected on September 17 before the plenary of the European Parliament, the same day on which Trump’s threat was made public. It is not yet clear what concrete content the associate member status will have, nor whether the US trade threat will translate into actual measures in the coming days.

The confrontation between the two sides of the Atlantic thus continues on a dual track: the technical process of Canada’s status in Brussels and Carney’s hearing in Strasbourg on September 17, while no concrete measures have so far come from Washington beyond Trump’s statement.