Ursula von der Leyen made a striking proposal in Strasbourg on September 16. With Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney in attendance, the European Commission president opened the door to Canada becoming what she called the European Union’s first “associate member.”
There is only one problem. The European Union has no such status.
Associate membership does not appear in the EU treaties. There is no established package of rights and obligations attached to it, no predetermined place for an associate member in the Union’s institutions, and no agreement about how much access to the Single Market it would entail. Von der Leyen supplied a name before Europe had designed the institution.
But Brussels does not need to start with a blank sheet of paper.
It should look at Israel.
Canada may indeed become the first country formally granted whatever new status the EU eventually calls “associate membership.” But it would hardly be the first country to inhabit the space between membership and an ordinary third-country relationship. Israel has spent nearly seven decades constructing one version of such a relationship: integration without membership.
The story began almost as soon as the European project itself. In April 1958, only months after the Treaty of Rome entered into force, Israel became the third country, after Greece and the United States, to request the establishment of a diplomatic mission to the European Economic Community in Brussels. Full diplomatic relations followed in February 1959.
And Israel wanted more than trade.
From the beginning, Israeli policymakers sought association with the emerging Community. The Israeli ambition was substantially political as well as economic. Israel eventually accepted agreements that fell short of association, but the larger objective was to secure a recognized place alongside the developing European project.
What Israel was asking Europe in the late 1950s sounds surprisingly familiar in 2026: how close can a non-member country come to the European project without actually joining it?
The answer emerged gradually rather than through grand constitutional design.
Over the decades, Israel and Europe built their ties layer by layer. The 1995 EU-Israel Association Agreement, which entered into force in 2000, established the central institutional framework. The European Neighbourhood Policy later added an Action Plan intended to bring Israel closer to European policies and programs. Cooperation expanded into research and innovation, aviation, pharmaceuticals, education and regulatory cooperation.
Israel's largest trading partner
Today those ties reach remarkably far. The EU is Israel’s largest trading partner, accounting for 31.7% of Israel’s trade in goods in 2025, worth €43.3 billion. Israel participates in Horizon Europe. The EU-Israel aviation agreement connects the Israeli and European aviation markets, while another agreement facilitates trade in pharmaceuticals. Israel also participates in the Pan-Euro-Mediterranean system of rules of origin.
This is not EU membership. But neither is it a conventional relationship between two separate markets.
Nearly two decades ago, Joel Peters and I described the logic behind this arrangement as “integration without membership.” We proposed a Euro-Israeli Partnership that would sit deliberately below full membership while moving beyond the existing Association Agreement. It envisaged deeper political cooperation, Israeli participation in European agencies and programs, gradual convergence with relevant parts of the European acquis, and greater access to the Single Market.
The objective was not to prepare Israel for eventual accession. It was to recognize that European integration need not end at the Union’s formal borders.
Israel is not the only precedent. Switzerland offers the EU’s most developed example of sector-by-sector integration outside membership, with extensive agreements connecting it to large parts of the Single Market and numerous European programs. But Switzerland is geographically and economically embedded in Europe. Israel offers a different lesson: a country outside geographical Europe, with no realistic membership perspective, can nevertheless become deeply connected to selected parts of the European system.
That distinction suddenly matters far beyond Israel.
Carney has ruled out Canadian EU membership. What Ottawa is seeking instead is what he has called a “unique alliance,” extending across trade, defense, technology, energy, and critical minerals. Canada has already moved closer to European defense structures through its participation in the EU’s SAFE defense program.
Here the analogy with Israel has limits. Israel’s integration has developed overwhelmingly through economic, regulatory, scientific, and sectoral cooperation. It does not provide a blueprint for the defense and security dimension that Canada and the EU are now considering. If associate membership eventually encompasses defense procurement and strategic coordination, Brussels will be constructing something new.
But the Israeli experience does offer a model for how such a relationship can be constructed.
Closer ties do not have to be all or nothing. They can proceed sector by sector. Research systems can connect without political membership. Aviation markets can open. Regulations can converge in selected areas. European programs can admit non-member states. New areas of cooperation can be added as political circumstances and mutual interests change. None of that necessarily requires the full institutional rights of an EU member state.
The Israeli case also cautions against romanticizing such arrangements. EU-Israel relations are currently experiencing a period of severe political strain. EU institutions have debated Israel’s compliance with the human-rights provisions of the Association Agreement and possible restrictions on parts of the relationship over the war in Gaza.
That does not invalidate the model. It demonstrates something important about it. Deep institutional ties do not eliminate political disagreement. They create structures within which cooperation, conditionality, and conflict can coexist.
Canada has, therefore, exposed a gap in the EU’s institutional architecture. There are countries that may want much more than a trade agreement without seeking membership. Switzerland demonstrates how far that principle can extend within Europe. Israel demonstrates that it can extend beyond it. Canada may now add a strategic and defense dimension neither model fully provides.
Canada could still become the first country formally designated an EU associate member. But it would enter territory Europe has been exploring for decades.
The Canadian question is how a country can move much closer to the EU without becoming a member of it.
The name may be new. Much of the model is not.
The writer is a senior fellow at the Jewish People Policy Institute (JPPI) and a professor of European studies and international relations in the Department of Politics and Government at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev.