Canada will become the first non-European country to attend a meeting of the European Political Community on Monday, with Prime Minister Mark Carney heading to Yerevan as Ottawa looks for new trade and diplomatic footholds after the loss of US markets under Donald Trump.
Carney has said he is determined to build a wider network of alliances, and his appearance in the 48-plus nation grouping comes as Canadian diplomats reject suggestions that Ottawa is seeking European Union membership. The summit in Yerevan will also put Canada in the same room as some of Europe’s most senior leaders at a moment when transatlantic certainty has become harder to find.
The meeting matters because the questions on the table go well beyond symbolism. Trump’s plan to pull more than 5,000 troops out of Germany over the next year is among the main subjects being discussed in Yerevan, along with the economic fallout from a prolonged US-Iran conflict. That second issue lands especially hard in Armenia, which shares a border with Iran and has made itself a venue for Europe to talk strategy at a delicate moment.
Armenia was chosen to host the European Political Community to showcase its strengthening links with Europe, and the country’s prime minister, Nikol Pashinyan, has spent years pursuing a diversification policy that is slowly drawing Armenia into the European ambit. His Civil Contract party now faces parliamentary elections in June, adding domestic pressure to a foreign policy shift that is still incomplete and politically contested.
The European turn has been building for some time. Armenia signed a comprehensive partnership agreement with the EU in 2017, adopted a law last year formally declaring its intention to apply for EU membership, and froze its membership of the Moscow-led Collective Security Treaty Organisation alliance in 2024. At the same time, Armenia remains a member of the Russian-led Eurasian Economic Union, a reminder that its break with Moscow is partial, not total.
That tension is why the summit carries more weight than a ceremonial first. European enlargement commissioner Marta Kos visited Armenia in March and said, “Armenia and the EU have never been closer,” but Vladimir Putin warned in April that Armenia could not be both in the EU and the CSTO, saying, “It’s simply impossible by definition,”. The two lines capture the bind facing Pashinyan: move west and test Russia’s patience, or hold back and risk slowing a shift that much of his government clearly wants.
The next step comes on Tuesday, when Yerevan hopes the first bilateral summit between Armenia and the EU will produce extra funding to promote democracy and advance visa liberalisation. For Carney, Monday’s meeting is less about geography than direction, a signal that Canada is willing to treat Europe as more than a market and more than an ally of convenience.
