At the first meeting of the joint EU-Canada ministerial committee in Brussels on 4 December, High Representative of the EU for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Federica Mogherini and Canada’s Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland agreed to work for the promotion of gender equality and women’s empowerment at global level.
“We discussed an important issue for both of us: how to promote gender equality and women’s empowerment better”, Mogherini told press at the end of the meeting. “We are both feminists. Canada has a feminist foreign policy and we are working to push up these objectives”, Freeland stated.
Mogherini and Freeland announced they had agreed the EU and Canada would co-chair a meeting in 2018 of female foreign affairs ministers across the globe “to bring this topic”.
The first EU-Canada ministerial committee enabled progress to be assessed in the provisional implementation of the political cooperation agreement (the strategic partnership agreement - SPA) since 1 April, and the comprehensive economic and trade agreement (CETA) since 21 September.
“We saw good results and recorded progress both at the political level and at the trade level. Our partnership is strong and beneficial not only for our citizens but also for serving a certain idea of multilateralism and of the world”, Mogherini said.
“We are both committed and we both support, first of all, multilateralism and rules-based international order”, she underlined.
Mogherini and Freeland discussed how to strengthen EU-Canada cooperation on security and defence, on the bilateral level and within NATO, including crisis management and hybrid threats. “A file that unites us is investment in UN peace-keeping forces. I am grateful for Canada’s leadership in this file”, Mogherini said.
On the sidelines of the meeting, the EU and Canada signed an agreement enabling the exchange of classified information to strengthen bilateral cooperation in areas such as common security and defence policy (CSDP) missions and operations.
The EU and Canada also agreed to strengthen their cooperation on cybersecurity.
In addition, Mogherini and Freeland addressed international issues – the Iranian nuclear programme issues, North Korea, the Middle East and Syria, Venezuela, Myanmar and Ukraine.
They furthermore discussed how to advance Canada’s priorities during its G7 presidency in 2018 – trade, the fight against climate change and migration. (Original version in French by Emmanuel Hagry)