Emmanuel Macron
Role at the time: President of France, speaking at a joint appearance with Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney on Saint-Pierre-et-Miquelon
Statement summary
Speaking in French beside Prime Minister Mark Carney on Saint-Pierre-et-Miquelon, President Emmanuel Macron said France strongly supports the agenda of closer ties within the "alliance du futur" (alliance of the future) that Carney had named, with Canada as an associate state as European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen had said, and as a full member of a European political community that Canada had joined at a summit in Yerevan a few months earlier.
“That is why we very much support this agenda of rapprochement within this alliance of the future that you have named, as an associate state, as the President of the Commission said, as a full member of a European political community to which you did us the friendship of coming a few months ago, in Yerevan. (Translated from French. Original: C'est pourquoi nous soutenons ô combien cet agenda de rapprochement dans cette alliance du futur que vous avez nommée en tant qu'État associé, comme l'a dit la présidente de la Commission, comme membre à part entière d'une communauté politique européenne à laquelle vous nous avez fait l'amitié de venir il y a quelques mois, à Erevan.)”
Why we used this label
Relative to whether Canada should become an associate member of the European Union, Macron supports the proposition, endorsing the agenda of closer ties and Canada’s status as an associate state as von der Leyen described it. The closest competing label is “Mixed or conditional”, because the same sentence describes Canada as a full member of a European political community, not of the Union; that limits the support to associate status and closer ties, not full EU membership, but it does not qualify the support itself.