The European Union's top official said she would work to make Canada the bloc's first associate member, a major shift indicative of the new ties traditional U.S. allies are forging with each other in the face of hostility from the Trump administration.

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said Europe needed to tighten its cooperation with like-minded democracies, in particular Canada, to retain the continent's sovereignty and tackle threats from what she called "an openly hostile world."

The landmark speech at the European Parliament in Strasbourg signaled that the notoriously bureaucratic 27-member bloc, threatened by Russia to its east and an increasingly adversarial relationship with Washington, is rethinking its own limits. Officials are beginning to contemplate new, more flexible terms of inclusion, and Canada, whose prime minister has been urging Europe to create a space for a country heavily reliant on the U.S., will be the prototype.

"We must urgently reimagine our partnerships. And build global coalitions for our resilience and democracies," von der Leyen said in her annual address to the European Parliament in Strasbourg, France, where Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney was in the audience. "I would like to work with you on opening the door for Canada to be the first associate member of the EU," she added.

The Wall Street Journal recently reported that Canadian and European officials were discussing the prospect of associate membership-a new category of relationship with the bloc. European and Canadian officials have said that while full membership of the EU is off the table, they want the closest possible relationship. The prospect of a new economic and defense alliance between Europe and Canada speaks to how the idea of "the West," long centered on U.S. military and economic power, is shifting.

Among the ideas being discussed are the integration of supply chains in critical economic sectors, including defense, the possibility of joint European and Canadian cloud and data centers, greater Canadian energy flows to Europe and cooperation on AI and digital rules. Carney has confirmed that there are also discussions on certain types of mutual visa-free travel and work arrangements.

The details are still being sketched by technical working groups on both sides for what the Canadian leader has told his aides will be nothing short of reorienting an economy and a society that for half a century has been dominated by the U.S.

Yet serious obstacles remain: Countries with full, frictionless access to the EU's $21 trillion single market, which permits the free flow of goods, services and capital, have to follow its rules, pay into the EU budget and allow freedom of movement for its workers. Canadian officials have said they aren't willing to sign up to all those terms.

Canada will also have to carefully balance deeper economic cooperation with the EU with the rules of its U.S. trade relationship.

Von der Leyen greeted Carney outside the Strasbourg parliament ahead of the speech with a kiss on the cheek and embrace. The Canadian leader joked: "I'll be taking notes."

The idea of creating a new "associate membership" category for the European Union had long sat uneasily in the halls of power in Brussels. Officials were wary about creating the precedent of a halfway-member that could be seen as enjoying the benefits of membership, without the burdens. The U.K. spent years trying to negotiate its own bespoke arrangement after Brexit-Carney was Bank of England governor during that time.

But as Canada looked to pivot away from its heavy reliance on America in the wake of Trump's 51st state threats, Carney and his personal envoys urged the EU to think bigger. They proposed using "associate membership," alongside other possible titles, as a way of galvanizing the complex machinery of Europe. One senior Canadian official said that when Carney's team proposed the idea, the EU had initially remained cool toward the notion.

"We were the ones who proposed associate membership," the senior Canadian official said. "Let's bundle it together, let's give it a name...They were nervous about using that because of all sorts of bureaucratic connotations in the European context."

The EU's top official only decided to use the "associate membership" language in the past couple of days, according to a senior EU official. The two sides had jointly discussed the possibility in previous weeks, the person said.

The announcement comes as an entire network of U.S. allies, from Australia to the Middle East, rethink their reliance on Washington, both as a trading partner and military protector. Canada is uniquely dependent on the U.S.: two-thirds of its trade crosses their shared border. But it isn't alone in seeking closer ties with Europe as a hedge against the U.S.

In her comments Wednesday, von der Leyen said that the EU and Canada should deepen their tech alliance, integrate their defense-industrial base and work together on energy, critical minerals, AI and economic security. The two sides enacted a free-trade agreement in 2017, which has seen commerce grow by 75% in less than a decade, but in a sign of the threats to a far deeper coordination, 10 EU nations are still to ratify it.

"This is a partnership not against anyone else, but for our common strength," she said.

Both the EU and Canada have seen tensions flare with Washington since President Trump's return to office. In his second term, the president has alarmed European leaders by ending support for Ukraine and working to ease relations with the Kremlin. New U.S. tariffs on European exports and a push to take over Greenland, an autonomous Danish territory, have also seriously tested trans-Atlantic relations.

Since becoming prime minister, Carney has embarked on an ambitious plan to diversify trade away from the U.S. amid Trump's tariffs on Canada and repeated musings about using economic coercion to make it the 51st state. Europe has been central to those plans, and he has often called Canada "the most European of the non-European nations." Canada was the first non-European nation to join Security Action for Europe, the bloc's defense procurement instrument.

"Canada is deepening and widening its relationship with the European Union to strengthen our sovereignty, improve affordability, opportunity and security for Canadians while safeguarding our way of life," Carney's spokeswoman said after von der Leyen's speech. "We welcome President von der Leyen's proposal...This is a unique, positive approach that we will define together."

In Canada, the prospect of associate membership in the EU has drawn criticism from opposition lawmakers, who have argued that it risks weighing businesses down in regulations and red tape and amounts to a loss of sovereignty. Such a decision, they argue, shouldn't be made without consulting Parliament.

"The Saskatchewan farmer and the Atlantic fisherman did not choose a Brussels agrifood regulator that has never even seen our prairies or coasts," Conservative Party leader Pierre Poilievre said in a social-media post this week. "We will NEVER be the 51st U.S. state. And we will NEVER be the 28th EU state."

But polls show Canadians are strongly supportive of closer European ties. A poll this week from Abacus Data found that more than 80% of Canadians support strengthening links with Europe while Canada remains outside of Europe, with a majority saying they feel Canada has more in common with Europe than the U.S. Nearly half said they backed Canada becoming an EU member state.

Von der Leyen will meet later with Carney, who will give his own address to EU lawmakers Thursday.

The European Commission president pitched the new alliance with Canada as part of a swath of proposals to strengthen Europe's security and sovereignty at a time when relations with the U.S. are strained, Russia continues its war in Ukraine and is carrying out sabotage in Europe and trade tensions with Beijing are deepening. Russia denies involvement in acts of sabotage.

Von der Leyen also called for a new EU equivalent of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization's Article IV protocol, where any member can summon an emergency meeting because of an evolving threat. And she took an idea that has been advanced by France and Germany previously for a European Security Council leaders group, which would include non-EU members Norway, the U.K. and Canada as well as top EU leaders.

"This is even more urgent now, given the nature and scale of the risks at play," she said.