As universal institutions stall and United States (US) leadership becomes unreliable, the European Union (EU) and Canada are increasingly presented as building blocks of an alternative coalition capable of sustaining rules-based global governance. This article tests that proposition against five criteria: normative convergence, aggregate weight, institutional capacity to act, willingness to bear costs, and openness to multilateralisation. The empirical record is more impressive than sceptics allow – the bilateral interim appeal arbitration arrangement of 2019 became the Multi-Party Interim Appeal Arbitration Arrangement, and the 2025 Security and Defence Partnership matured into Canada’s participation in SAFE within a year. In September 2026 Commission President Ursula von der Leyen went further, proposing to open the door to Canada becoming the Union’s first “associate member” within an “alliance for the future”. Yet the partnership fails the more demanding tests. It cannot substitute for US capability, its flagship trade agreement remains unratified after nine years, and its legitimacy is contested internally and externally. The partnership is best understood not as an alternative to multilateral governance but as an alternative route towards it: a holding operation and a norm laboratory whose principal risk is that its members mistake it for an order.
About the Speaker
Jan Wouters is Full Professor of International Law and International Organizations, Jean Monnet Chair ad personam and Director of the Leuven Centre for Global Governance Studies and the Institute for International Law at KU Leuven. He also serves as Administrator of the America Europe Fund. He is Visiting Professor at Paris2 and the College of Europe and Adjunct Professor at Columbia University. He has published widely on international and EU law, global governance and international organizations. In the Autumn of 2026 he is Konrad Adenauer Visiting Professor at Carleton University.
This will be a joint event co-sponsored by University of Waterloo’s Political Science Department and the Global Institutions, Diplomacy, and Justice Research Cluster at the Balsillie School of International Affairs.
