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Stronger Together: Canada-Iceland-Europe Ties
John Kirton, Global Governance Program, September 22, 2026
Invited lecture on “Stronger Together: Canada-Iceland-Europe Summit Ties” at the University of Iceland’s Iceland Institute of International Affairs, Reykjavik, Iceland, as delivered on Tuesday, September 22, 2026.i>
Takk fyrir, merci, thank you to Silja Ómarsdóttir, the University of Iceland’s rector, and its Institute of International Affairs for inviting me here, to Canadian ambassador Jenny Hill for connecting us, and to Eliza Reid, my companion in the International Relations Program at the University of Toronto long ago, who led me to discover the wonders of Iceland through her terrific books about it.
I’m in Iceland now, for the first time, for the 50th anniversary reunion of my classmates who graduated from the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies in Washington DC, where I chose to go to do my PhD in 1972.
For our reunion, the first idea was to go back there. But few of my classmates did.
But when our classmate Geir Haarde said: “Let’s do one in Iceland,” everyone enthusiastically said yes.
So, for us, the USA as the preferred destination back then became Iceland today!
The rising appeal and importance of Iceland is the theme of my remarks today. So is Canada’s increasingly prominent role in the international arena, with Europe at the core.
This is certainly true where I focus, as a scholar, teacher and policy advisor, at the very top of global governance, the small group summits of global relevance and reach.
Today I’ll focus on four of them – the summits of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) since 1957, the new Nordic-Canadian Summit since 2023, and the European Political Community (EPC) and Joint Expeditionary Force (JEF) summits since 2026 for Canada, as potential precursors to Iceland and Canada contributing to other European summits too.
But first, eight fundamental facts show that Canada, like Iceland, has long been a European country, in many ways.
First, demographically, the first visitor to Canada from overseas was the first named person in Canadian history, Leif Erikson, who came from Iceland to Newfoundland about a millennium ago. Today, Canada has the largest Icelandic diaspora in the world, with well over 100,000 people, more than those in the United States or Norway.
So thank you to Iceland’s President Halla Tómasdóttir for her personal visit to Canada last summer, to help us celebrate the 150th anniversary of Icelanders’ major migration there.
Half a millennium after Leif Erickson arrived came the permanent settlers from the United Kingdom and France, followed by several waves of immigrants, including from Ukraine in the late 1800s, and Germans and Dutch right after World War Two – among many more.
Second, linguistically and legally, our official languages and laws have always been both French and English. Our diets, religions and culture are European too.
Third, geographically, three of our four neighbours are European: Russia to the north; France through Saint Pierre and Miquelon to the east, and Denmark, with a 3,000-kilometre border in the Arctic and where we can walk over land into Greenland now.
Fourth, militarily, Canada has fought most of its many wars abroad in Europe and won them all. It started only one and won it, against Spain, over fisheries in 1995.
Fifth, economically, when Canada has recurrently sought to diversify its trade-dependent economy away from its concentration on the United States, Europe has always been its first choice as a destination, as it is today.
Sixth, politically, our head of state has always lived and worked in the United Kingdom, as our current King Charles III does now.
Seventh, our current prime minister, Mark Carney, was until recently a citizen of the United Kingdom and Ireland. He served as governor of the Bank of England from 2013 to March 2020, as the first non-British person to lead the bank since its founding in 1694. He helped get our British siblings through their trauma of Brexit from 2016 to 2020.
And eighth, in global summit governance, Canada and Iceland, together with our European neighbours, have become increasingly connected at the very top, through the plurilateral summits of NATO, and the Canadian-Nordic, European Political Community and Joint Expeditionary Force ones. Their leaders have already met there an unprecedented four times this year.
These summits matter more than ever in today’s “ruptured” world, as Prime Minister Carney put it in his highly acclaimed speech to the World Economic Forum in Davos in January this year. In this world, Canada is a rising principal power, and Iceland is a top-tier performer, in many important ways.
So how can we make our summit cooperation and contribution bigger, better and broader in the years ahead?
I focus on summits because our leaders are the only individuals in our government responsible for dealing all the time, all at once, with all the toughest issues, to produce solutions that benefit all. They alone possess the authority to put their decisions into effect. And since none of these issues can be solved at home alone, they must regularly combine with their key colleagues outside to do the job.
The restricted-membership summits where Canadian and Iceland’s leaders meet have reached a new peak this year. But there is more for them to do, to shape global governance, starting now.
First, NATO. It is the oldest and biggest such summit and the only one of the four that includes the president of the United States.
Canada was one of the four conceivers and creators of NATO in the late 1940s, along with the US from North America and the UK and France from Europe. Canada led the insertion of Article 2 on economic and social cooperation into NATO’s founding charter, coming before Article 5 on collective defence – declaring that an attack on one is an attack on all.
Article 5 proved its worth on September 11, 2001, when it was invoked for the only time to date, to defend the US under attack, for the first time since 1941, and this time in the mainland in New York City and the Pentagon in Washington DC. On that day Canada and Iceland combined to save American lives, showing vividly how much the United States needs them both.
Politically, David Wright, Canada’s permanent representative at NATO, was the first to suggest that NATO invoke Article 5. Iceland, all other members and thus the United States agreed, so NATO did.
Physically, when a frightened United States immediately closed its airspace and airports to incoming trans-Atlantic flights, Canada and Iceland kept theirs open, so thousands of Americans and other passengers could land safely there.
At the political peak, NATO’s leaders had held their first summit in 1957, their second in 1974, their third in 1975 and then ones in most years since.
During every NATO summit from 2017 to 2023, Iceland’s Prime Minister Katrín Jakobsdóttir raised the issue of climate change as a security threat. While she was not alone, this was a relatively new idea within NATO. She had an increasing impact in the leaders’ discussions and decisions there.
In 2021 the NATO summit made its first commitments on climate change. Indeed it made 19 among its 121 commitments overall. There were 11 climate commitments in a separate section on a NATO Climate Change and Security Action Plan. The Vilnius Summit in 2023 made five commitments on climate change.
But after Prime Minister Jakobsóttir left office, the Washington Summit in 2024 made only one. The Hague Summit in 2025, with a new president now representing the United States, made none. The Ankara Summit this summer had none, and only 10 commitments overall.
But in Ankara on July 7–8, Iceland’s 38-year-old Prime Minister Kristrún Frostadóttir was the photogenic star of the show. She shone in sharp contrast to the 80-year-old male US president there.
Prime Minister Frostadóttir’s picture was worth a thousand words and attracted many thousands more new followers on social media. So, the world learned that Iceland is number one in the world in many ways – including trust, well-being, personal safety, a per capita income of $100,000 a year and gender equality, as Eliza Reid’s first book, Secrets of the Sprakkar, describes so well.
Also at Ankara was Mark Carney, Canada’s 63-year-old prime minister. Like his Icelandic colleague, he is a well-educated economist, in his case educated at universities abroad. Like Eliza Reid, he got his MA and spouse at Oxford in the UK. Prime Minister Carney has been the governor of two central banks, having been Canada’s in North America before leading the United Kingdom’s. He was another fresh face at Ankara, as he had got Canada’s top political job in March 2025, just after Prime Minister Frostadóttir had got Iceland’s in December 2024.
Prime Minister Carney actively engaged in the Ankara Summit’s deliberations. Backed by Canada’s top-tier power and performance, he secured many of the principles and decisions he wanted there.
The major principles were “Iran must never have a nuclear weapon” and must “fully respect freedom of navigation in the Strait of Hormuz.” Ankara’s 10 decisions began with those on Article 5 and continued with pledges on defence spending, rearmament and support for Ukraine. But two were related to the Article 2 issues of trade and investment and one to artificial intelligence.
To help deliver these decisions, NATO leaders will rely on the usual meetings for their ministers of defence and foreign affairs and NATO’s permanent secretariat in Brussels.
But there is much more for Canada and Iceland to do, for the next NATO Summit, its 37th, in distant Tirana, Albania, on the Adriatic, not the Atlantic Ocean, next year.
Canada and Iceland’s four best joint initiatives flow from their geographic and demographic position as the great connectors of North America and Europe, at the core of a NATO, which does so a broader scale.
The first initiative is to have NATO’s leaders focus on the Arctic and climate change, as NATO embraces two oceans as well as two continents. And the threat from Russia, China and others is rising in the Arctic, as its ice melts from climate change, and the regional Arctic Council remains politically frozen. Canada and Iceland should get NATO’s leaders to more strongly support the new NATO Climate Change and Security Centre of Excellence in Montreal. It should be the home of a new Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) Observatory, to help Iceland, Canada and others cope with the colder, drier, harsher climate that the weakening ocean currents bring, as Iceland’s National Security Council declared last year.
The second initiative is to have NATO’s leaders rediscover Article 2, and thus other issues, including gender equality, where Canada and Iceland’s power and performance lead the world.
The third initiative is to foster accountability, so all can see how well NATO leaders keep their summit commitments, well beyond those on raising their defence spending as a percentage of gross domestic product.
The fourth initiative is to have Iceland and Canada host a future NATO summit, as neither has done so since its summits started 70 years ago.
The second plurilateral summit combining Canada and Iceland is the newer Nordic-Canadian Summit.
Iceland has long been a member of – and leader in – the Nordic Summit since its start in 2006.
The first one with Canada took place in June 2023 when Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau participated as a special guest at the annual Nordic Prime Ministers’ meeting in Vestmannaeyjar. There was no “murder on the island” there, nor had there been any direct deaths from its volcanic eruption in 1973. But it was a meaningful summit in other ways.
It was only the second visit of a Canadian prime minister to Iceland, after the first by Justin Trudeau’s father, Prime Minister Pierre Elliot Trudeau, in 1981.
The 2023 summit was hosted by Katrín Jakobsdóttir, who served as the prime minister of Iceland from December 2017 until April 2024. She had long believed that climate change was a key issue and made it a key theme for all the Nordic summits she attended, even when wars, conflicts and new technologies demanded their leaders’ attention. Prime Minister Trudeau shared this view and her other priorities such as gender equality. On the sidelines of the summit, they together toured a geothermal plant in Hellisheidi and a carbon capture and storage facility nearby. They also had a bilateral meeting to discuss, inter alia, the environment and green energy, and dined together before Trudeau left.
That summit’s theme was societal resilience. At their very good meeting, Prime Minister Trudeau emphasized the need to protect oceans, advance the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, use nature-based solutions, tackle climate change and biodiversity loss, and use carbon pricing as an instrument. He also said Canada’s Sustainable Critical Minerals Strategy was a blueprint for producing clean technologies.
The leaders made 21 commitments. Another two came from the Nordic leaders alone. But for over 90% of their decisions, they knew they needed Canada with them.
These 21 commitments covered many subjects: deterrence and defence; exchanges and cooperation; the Arctic Council; Indigenous peoples; democracy and human rights; international institutional reform; gender equality and LGBTI+ rights; terrorist and extremist violent online content; Ukraine’s peace, recovery and reconstruction; Russian aggression; crisis resilience; welfare and well-being; critical raw materials and sustainable mining technologies; healthy oceans and climate change; conservation; and economic development in the Central Arctic Ocean.
To help deliver these decisions they agreed to ask their ministers to follow up by way of a Canada-Nordic Foreign Ministers Strategic Dialogue. Canada would host the first on September 27–29, 2024, chaired by Foreign Minister Mélanie Joly in New York. The dialogue ended with a joint ministerial visit to Iqaluit, Nunavut. It addressed shared circumpolar and transatlantic priorities as outlined in Canada’s Arctic Foreign Policy. The foreign ministers met again in August 2025, in Finland, focusing on regional security and Arctic cooperation.
The second Nordic-Canadian Summit took place this year, on March 15, in Oslo.
Prime Minister Carney, Prime Minister Frostadóttir and their four colleagues made 28 commitments there. Most were ambitious. They covered a broad range of issues, with nine on Arctic security, four on security in Ukraine, three on trade, two each on security, the economy, energy and international cooperation, and one each on the environment, European security, climate change, and information and communications technology.
But the leaders announced no new summit, ministerial or official-level meetings to follow up.
So, Canada and Iceland should do four things.
First, they should offer to host the next summit, either individually or jointly.
Second, they should get their colleagues to identify the next foreign ministers meeting.
Third, they should explore adding ministerial meetings for defence, energy and the environment.
Fourth, they should have the Canada-Nordic Summit create a permanent secretariat, as NATO and the European Political Community possess, with Iceland as the ideal location.
The third plurilateral summit combining Canada and Iceland is the EPC Summit.
It was first proposed by French president Emmanuel Macron in 2022, as an intergovernmental platform for political and strategic coordination. It includes EU and non-EU European states. It aims to develop projects to protect critical infrastructure, fight cyber threats and disinformation, build energy resilience, cooperate on youth and migration, coordinate on major regional issues, and support Ukraine’s reconstruction.
Its summits started in October 2022, in Prague, where leaders discussed continental security, stability and the energy crisis following Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Iceland participated from the start, with Prime Minister Jakobsdóttir there. She returned for its second summit, in Moldova in June 2023.
Canada first joined, as a guest, at its eighth semi-annual summit, in Yerevan, Armenia on May 3–4, 2026 – the first time a non-European leader was invited. The leaders focused on democratic resilience against foreign interference, advancing connectivity, and reinforcing economic and energy security.
EU president António Costa’s press statement highlighted how the summit helped lead to a peace agreement between Armenia and Azerbaijan and addressed the wars in Ukraine and the Middle East. President Costa said he told the participating Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy that the EU members would advance Ukraine’s accession to EU membership, by opening the first negotiation cluster as soon as possible.
President Costa also highlighted how Canada’s participation was “politically very significant,” showing “the strong and growing alignment between Europe and Canada.” But he did not promise to invite Canada to the next EPC Summit.
So, Iceland should seek an invitation to Prime Minister Carney to it. It takes place in Ireland, which Canada represents on the Executive Board of the International Monetary Fund, where Canada’s prime minister had long been a citizen and where it will be much easier for EPC leaders to focus on Europe’s northern and Arctic regions.
The fourth plurilateral summit combining Canada and Iceland is the JEF one.
On March 26, 2026, Prime Minister Carney joined its virtual meeting from Halifax, on Canada’s Atlantic coast, as a special invitee. Hosted by Finland’s President Alexander Stubb, it assembled the leaders of Iceland, Norway, Sweden, the United Kingdom, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, the Netherlands and a representative of Denmark.
This 10-country military partnership focuses on rapid crisis response and security in Northern Europe, the Baltic Sea region and the High North. Unlike NATO, it does not need consensus from all members to decide or even deliberate on issues, enabling faster political and military responses. It pools high-readiness maritime, air and land forces from members for operations or exercises. It operates outside direct NATO command structures. But all its members belong to NATO, and the JEF regularly coordinates or integrates with NATO missions. Its major operational areas are the Arctic, the North Atlantic and the Baltic Sea, where it deters regional aggression and protects critical subsea and maritime infrastructure.
The next JEF summit will be held right here in Reykjavik next year.
Prime Minister Frostadóttir should invite Prime Minister Carney to come, in person, and start developing its agenda with him now.
And she should support Canada’s application to join the JEF as a full member, which Prime Minister Carney announced on September 16 he wanted Canada to become.
Fifth, could the next plurilateral summit joining Canada and Iceland be one held by the European Union itself, with their leaders even invited to some EU Council summits?
The “strong and growing alignment between Europe and Canada,” as President’s Costa put it, and the need for more at the leaders’ level, is also true for Iceland, now the prospect of Iceland soon joining the EU as a full member has gone and the threats to Canada and Iceland from Russia, China and the US administration grow.
There is a big basis on which to build this next step up to the visible summit peak.
In 1959, two years after the first NATO summit, Canada became the only non-European “Cooperating State” of the European Space Agency. Iceland is not a member, although its parliament voted in 2016 to explore becoming one. Iceland now participates in several major EU satellite and connectivity projects.
In July 2009, to connect with the European Free Trade Association, of which Iceland is a founding member, Canada concluded the Canada-European Free Trade Association Free Trade Agreement.
In October 2016, Canada added the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement with the full European Union itself.
On June 14, 2022, Canada became Europe’s immediate neighbour with a land border, when Canada and Denmark agreed to split Hans Island in the Arctic down the middle. Now people can just walk into the other jurisdiction from the other side. Before they had to swim or sail 25 kilometres in the Atlantic Ocean between Canada’s Newfoundland and France’s Saint Pierre and Miquelon.
On September 20, 2026, Carney became the first Canadian prime minister to officially visit the French territory to meet French president Macron there. President Macron announced there that he wanted Canada to become an “associate member” of the EU.
In 2024, Canada joined Horizon, the European research funding program, with which Iceland has been an associate since 2021.
On February 24, 2026, Canada officially joined the European Union’s Security Action for Europe defence procurement program. Iceland was already a member due to its membership in the European Economic Area and European Free Trade Association. Canada was the first non-European country to participate in this €150 billion military rearmament initiative.
In the Eurovision song contest, Canada will debut in 2027, after CBC/Radio-Canada becomes a full member of the European Broadcasting Union. Iceland joined in 1986.
In 2026, Canada secured the headquarters of the new Defence Security and Resilience Bank. The other founding and supporting members are Belgium, Latvia, Luxembourg and, further south, Albania, Greece, Romania, Türkiye and Ukraine.
On August 24, 2026, Prime Minister Carney said: “This fall, we will begin intense discussions with the European Union, the world’s second largest economy, to build a much stronger and deeper economic and security partnership.” That statement followed the US administration’s imposition of massive new tariffs on key Canadian exports to the United States.
And on September 16 and 17, Prime Minister Carney attended EU Commission president Ursula von der Leyen’s annual State of the European Union address and the next day addressed the EU parliament himself.
Here he proposed an “alliance for the future” that incudes deep cooperation on many key areas: critical minerals, defence industrial capability, artificial intelligence and compute, energy security, space, payment systems, membership in Erasmus+ and in Horizon’s next generation, maritime infrastructure on the Arctic and Atlantic, broadband connections, and an integrated market for financial services.
Prime Minister Carney has strong public support at home for this, even if Canada is unlikely to formally join the EU as a full or even associate member. Public opinion polls by August 8, 2026, showed that about 50% of Canadians supported starting a formal process to join, 57% supported Canada becoming a full member and about 58% thought the idea was worth exploring, especially to diversify trade and reduce over-reliance on a protectionist United States. A poll conducted on September 4–6 found 56% of Canadians felt they had more shared values, way of life and outlook on the world with the countries of the European Union than with the United States. Only 16% chose the United States.
But the time has come to do even more, now that the US administration has become a predatory threat to Canada and Iceland too, for on September 7, the US president posted a map on social media showing both Iceland and Canada being part of the United States.
So, the next steps should be the following.
Prime Minister Carney should visit Iceland for the first time, for the third such Canadian prime ministerial visit there. In contrast, Iceland has sent five prime ministers and four presidents to Canada on official visits 12 times. The last was in 2023, when President Guðni Jóhannesson and Eliza Reid visited, as The First Lady Next Door came back home once more. With no official summit visits either way since then, the three-year gap is far too long.
The two countries should have annual bilateral summits, as Canada does with the EU.
Canada should invite Iceland’s leader as a guest for the first time to the next G7 or G20 summit that Canada hosts. It should ask its European partner, the United Kingdom, to do so when it hosts the G20 in 2027 and the G7 in 2028.
And Iceland should join the Defence Security and Resilience Bank, as several other small European countries have.
I look forward to hearing what you think and what you might add to the list.
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