Australia and New Zealand could follow Canada into associated EU membership

Roberta Metsola, president of the European Parliament, is reported as saying that Australia and New Zealand could follow Canada into an "associated EU membership" arrangement. The material provided contains mainly site navigation and page metadata rather than the full remarks, so it lacks direct quotes, timing, or the setting in which the comment was made. The headline frames a proposal to extend a formalised partnership model beyond Canada to other like-minded, close trading and security partners in the Anglosphere.

If taken at face value, the suggestion points to a potential widening of the EU’s external architecture to allow deepened links with Australia and New Zealand - likely covering trade alignment, regulatory cooperation, mobility, and closer political or security coordination - without full EU accession. Important specifics for readers to check in the full text would include the legal form of “association,” which competences it would cover, how EU institutions and member states would react, and responses from the governments named. The supplied content does not include those details, so reading the complete report would be necessary to assess feasibility, timelines and concrete policy implications.