Honourable Members.

In this age of tipping points, our prosperity and security will not only be built at home.

This year, we signed free trade agreements with India,

Mercosur, Mexico, Australia and Indonesia.

We now have trade deals in place with more than 80 countries, more than anyone else in the world. Business is asking us for more.

I can announce today a new international connectivity project.

It will link the South Caucasus and Central Asia directly to the European market. What we call the middle corridor.

Through the Global Gateway, we will aim to crowd in up to EUR €12 billion in public and private investment.

Our goal is to diversify routes,

triple trade flows and slash freight transit times by 2030.

To make this a reality, we will organize a regional connectivity summit with the Prime Minister of Bulgaria.

Honourable Members These partnerships are a strategic choice for Europe.

They also respond to the fracture in the international rules based system.

For some, the answer is to go it alone.

But this is not an option for us.

Europe will always lead when it comes to defending the rules based system.

But we can no longer rely on it.

To be the only way to secure our interests,

or assume that its rules will shelter us from the complex threats that we face.

In this new world, we must urgently reimagine our partnerships.

And build global coalitions for our resilience and democracies.

Here too Only Europe, with its size and power, can take the lead.

This is why I have invited Prime Minister Mark Carney of Canada.

Mark, your presence here is a symbol of the enduring friendship between our people.

Our cultural, historical, and personal links run deep in the fabric of our societies,

and thanks to CETA, our trade in goods has grown by 75% in less than a decade.

This shows the power of our trade agreements, by the way.

We see the world with the same eyes, from AI to climate change, from the Arctic to geopolitics. We have stood together.

On Ukraine On defense, on raw materials and supply chains. But above all, dear Mark. Europe and Canada believe in democracy.

That power does not belong to the strongest, richest and loudest, but to all of us,

that democracies have the freedom to choose with whom to work. So we are joining forces voluntarily.

We will move from CETA to an alliance for the future,

to create a common prosperity and economic security space.

We will work on intelligent manufacturing, we will create a tech alliance, we will integrate defense industrial bases,

we will make the Arctic a flagship joint project,

we will work on energy critical minerals and batteries on AI, quantum cyber and economic security.

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

In short, we want to bring the relationship with Canada to the highest level possible, and, dear Mark,

I said we must urgently reimagine our partnerships,

so I would like to work with you on opening the door for Canada.

To being the first associate member of the European Union.