Carney pushes idea of making Canada ‘associate member’ of EU, WSJ reports

BRUSSELS, Sept 13 (Reuters) - Canada's Prime Minister Mark Carney wants a closer relationship with the European Union and is exploring whether his country could become an "associate member" of the bloc, the Wall Street Journal reported on Sunday.

The EU, which has not been flexible about membership rules in the past, is open to the idea of granting Canada a yet-to-be-created status of associate membership, the newspaper reported, citing unnamed officials both from the EU and Canada.

Canada's embassy in Brussels and spokespeople at the European Commission did not respond to separate requests for comment.

Canada's escalating trade war with the United States has added urgency to its strategic pivot towards other trading partners.

Relations between Ottawa and Washington have deteriorated sharply since President Donald Trump returned to the White House last year due to disagreements over trade and other issues. The trade dispute has led to tariffs on tens of billions of dollars in cross-border trade.

Canada and the EU are discussing ways of allowing Canada's goods, services and workers involved in strategic supply chains such as energy, AI, defence and critical minerals to move freely, thus effectively shifting the EU border, the Wall Street Journal said.

Canada and the EU are also talking about laying underwater cables, jointly constructing data centres, cloud storage and new satellite networks as well as infrastructure to ship Canadian energy to the EU, the newspaper said.

Carney has spoken regularly with several EU leaders, most notably French President Emmanuel Macron, about the possibility of letting Canadians live and work visa-free in the EU, the WSJ said, citing two unnamed officials familiar with the matter.

Macron's office separately confirmed that he will meet Carney on September 20 in the French territory of Saint Pierre and Miquelon, a group of islands off Canada's Atlantic coast.

The meeting marks the first official visit by a Canadian prime minister to the archipelago and "symbolises the strength of the relationship that unites our two countries," the Elysee said.

Any project to forge closer ties between Canada and the EU likely faces challenges, however, based on past efforts to implement a more modest trade deal, which has faced fierce opposition within Europe.

More than a decade after the deal was struck and nine years since it provisionally entered into force, several EU countries still have not ratified it.

(Reporting by Inti Landauro; additional reporting by Michel Rose and Gus Trompiz; Editing by Christina Fincher and Joe Bavier)