The first meeting of the Canada - European Union (EU) Digital Partnership Council took place in Montréal, Quebec on December 8, 2025. The meeting was co-chaired by the Honourable Evan Solomon, Minister of Artificial Intelligence and Digital Innovation, and Henna Virkkunen, Executive Vice-President of the European Commission for Technological Sovereignty, Security and Democracy. Canada and the European Union (hereinafter referred to as "the Participants") reaffirmed the importance of their Digital Partnership anchored in the New EU-Canada Strategic Partnership of the Future, adopted at the Canada-EU Leaders Summit on June 23, 2025, and its links with the Canada-EU Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) and other key bilateral initiatives.
The Participants recognize the importance the Digital Partnership plays in advancing their interests to boost competitiveness, innovation and economic resilience. They also recognize the potential of the Digital Partnership to promote business-to-business exchanges, including for start ups and to accelerate investments in the technology sector. The Participants also understand that effective, smart regulations that are not unduly burdensome, especially for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), will facilitate trade, investment and economic growth and engender trust in society. Finally, the Participants acknowledge their shared interest in advancing digital sovereignty over technology, data, and digital infrastructure, in accordance with international law, and underscore the vital importance of cooperation in areas of mutual interest among trusted allies.
1. Enabling Innovation & Research
Canada and the EU are both prioritizing emerging technology and digital innovation to improve productivity and competitiveness, as well as tackle shared challenges in key strategic sectors, while fostering societal trust in these emerging technologies. In alignment with the EU's Apply AI Strategy, the EU AI Continent Action Plan and related work on AI Factories and AI Gigafactories, the European Data Union Strategy, the Pan-Canadian AI Strategy, the Sovereign AI Compute Strategy, and the opportunities created by association with Horizon Europe, both Participants intend to:
- collaborate on accelerating sectoral AI adoption, for example in healthcare, manufacturing, energy, culture, science and public services, by exchanging on policy approaches and sharing best practices, including through joint workshops. Building on the 2025 G7 Leaders' Statement on AI for Prosperity, the Participants also intend to jointly address challenges related to AI adoption by SMEs, such as awareness of AI opportunities, barriers to commercialization, integration and deployment, access to compute infrastructure, and skills development, including addressing the AI skills gap, while expanding AI-focused talent exchanges, underpinned by a Canada - EU Memorandum of Understanding on Artificial Intelligence
- explore scientific cooperation on fundamental AI research, building on the Pan Canadian AI Strategy, Resource for AI Science in Europe (RAISE) and the Frontier AI initiative, to advance next-generation AI architectures and agentic systems that can drive scientific discovery and innovation across key sectors.
- examine adoption of emerging technologies broadly in our respective jurisdictions, by committing to launching a preliminary discussion on challenges and opportunities related to SMEs' adoption of such technologies.
- continue to cooperate in leveraging Canada's association to Pillar II of Horizon Europe, the EU's 2021-2027 Framework Programme for Research and Innovation and commit to seizing opportunities for stronger collaboration in high priority topics such as quantum technologies, artificial intelligence, semiconductors, and high-performance computing.
- explore opportunities to deepen the collaboration in quantum research, development and innovation in areas of interest including quantum computing and simulation, quantum networking and communication, quantum sensing and metrology, building on ongoing collaborations in the ongoing joint Horizon Europe projects and by promoting the exchange of researchers, engineers, experts and students between Canada and the EU.
- further enhance cooperation on AI innovation by collaborating on the deployment, access and use of advanced large European and Canadian AI Infrastructures, and deepening research partnerships.
- explore bilateral collaboration, under the leadership of Environment and Climate Change Canada and the EU's Destination Earth, in the field of hydrometeorological sciences, including Earth system modeling, open data sharing and AI-based tools for weather forecasting to enhance service delivery.
- explore scientific cooperation to enable the co-development of advanced AI models for the public good, with a focus on the development and innovative deployment of digital twins, from global to local/urban applications, for weather and environmental disaster preparedness, crisis management (wildfires, floods), reconstruction, and many other societal applications.
2. Promoting fair, predictable and trust based digital economies
Canada and the EU recognize the important role regulation plays in bringing fairness and predictability to the market as well as creating trust among consumers and citizens that their privacy and rights are protected. The Participants also note that balanced and proportionate regulations can support innovation and competitiveness, particularly by ensuring that SMEs can thrive and contribute fully to our shared prosperity. Furthermore, both Participants are taking action to simplify and streamline regulatory compliance. While working independently, the Participants recognize the critical importance of fostering interoperability between our respective regimes, and therefore envisage to:
- deepen our understanding of the regulatory environment in the digital sphere, starting with organizing a discussion on our respective current and envisaged approaches to simplification in this field.
- advance regulatory cooperation under the Digital Partnership, notably in AI and cybersecurity, so as to launch exploratory talks towards the potential future mutual recognition of the results of conformity assessments for AI enabled and cybersecurity products, in line with the procedure set out in the EU AI Act, including trough the CETA Protocol on Conformity Assessment.
- continue to exchange information on the development of AI standards, including between the Standards Council of Canada and the European Committee for Standardization (CEN) and the European Committee for Electrotechnical Standardization (CENELEC), and on regulatory sandboxes, executed under the Canada - EU Memorandum of Understanding on Artificial Intelligence.
- deepen bilateral engagement on AI Safety between the Canadian AI Safety Institute (CAISI) and the EU AI Office, with the possibility of laying out more detailed cooperation in the future to collaboratively advance AI safety research.
- continue engagement through multilateral AI collaboration at the International Network of AI Safety Institutes and the Global Partnership on Artificial Intelligence (GPAI), to support the safe and responsible development and deployment of artificial intelligence.
- continue our dialogue on cybersecurity regulation, including by launching exploratory technical talks on our respective frameworks and on how mutual recognition of the results of conformity assessment for cybersecurity of connected products could potentially be achieved, including through the CETA Protocol on Conformity Assessment. This will comprise targeted workshops to discuss respective legal frameworks, procedures and actors, including related to accreditation.
- continue our collaboration on digital credentials and trust services, including on technical interoperability for specific use cases of Canadian and EU digital credential technologies (including solutions based on digital wallets), joint testing of technologies and standards' development linked to Canada's framework and the EU Digital Identity framework, carried out under the Canada - EU Memorandum of Understanding on Digital Credentials and Trust Services.
- strengthen cooperation in standardization of the digital economy through bilateral cooperation between Canadian (SCC) and European Standards Organisations (CEN, CENELEC, and ETSI), promoting our shared values and interests in key emerging technologies, contributing to the competitiveness of our industries and shaping a global digital transformation that is human-centric, trustworthy and respects human rights and fundamental freedoms.
- as decided at the Canada-EU Leaders Summit in June 2025, modernize our approach to digital trade by working towards a Digital Trade Agreement that will complement CETA and create new opportunities for enterprises in the EU and Canada, by bringing our preferential trade partnership into the digital domain.
- reaffirm the shared commitment to work together on ronline platform governance, including information sharing on our respective legislative and regulatory efforts and approaches to hold online platforms accountable and transparent regarding the risks stemming from their services, including risks for the mental and physical health and well-being of minors. Furthermore, both Participants will exchange best practices on whole-of-society strategies for combating foreign interference and information manipulation and disinformation campaigns, including efforts to raise civic and digital media literacy.
- explore closer collaboration on the strengthening of independent media and on enhancing information integrity online, including on the challenges for free and plural media posed by generative AI. The Participants reaffirm that access to independent, reliable, pluralistic news sources and media, including on online platforms, is integral to full democratic participation.
- reaffirm our commitment to the bottom-up, multistakeholder model of Internet governance, and work together and with likeminded partners through existing forums to ensure Internet governance efforts continue to uphold an Internet that is an open, free, global, interoperable, reliable, and secure, and that reflects the valuable inputs of all stakeholders, including governments, the private sector, civil society, the technical and academic communities, youth, and Indigenous people. We also commit to promoting multistakeholder governance principles to enable all stakeholders to address emerging technologies as they intersect with the Internet in an open and inclusive manner.
3. Promoting sovereign technological capacity
As trusted partners with shared democratic values, the Participants recognize the strategic role of digital sovereignty in building the economy of the future, and the importance of ensuring that digital technologies are developed and deployed via secure and resilient means aligned with public interest. The Participants have launched respective strategies to strengthen elements of their digital sovereignty and build digital ecosystems that reflect, protect, and project their core values, in line with international law. Against this background, both Participants recognize the need to more deeply engage and collaborate with trusted partners on digital sovereignty. As an initial step, the Participants intend to:
- reaffirm their commitment to resilient semiconductor supply chains and building on established joint mechanisms, including the G7 semiconductors Point of Contact group, continue working to address mutual challenges, including fostering trustworthiness in global semiconductor supply chains, identifying vulnerabilities and advancing cooperation on the development of effective early warning mechanisms to identify potential disruptions.
- support and advance collaboration on secure and trusted communications infrastructure (including 5G and subsea cables). In particular, and in line with the EU-Canada Summit Statement of 23 June 2025 and the G7 Action Plan for Building a Secure and Resilient Digital Infrastructure, support secure and high-quality connectivity between the EU and Canada and with other world regions and explore new routes of international communication infrastructure to strengthen network resilience, including in the Arctic region.
- share methodologies and best practices on scaling sustainable sovereign infrastructure, including how to reduce the environmental impacts of data centres, supporting industry and academia's access to AI compute capacity, and advancing joint AI R&D.
- advance cooperation through a structured dialogue on data spaces, particularly to the development of large AI models, in sectors where common legal, technical and regulatory issues can be assessed, complementarities between respective jurisdictions can be identified and interoperability opportunities can be explored.
Recognizing the breadth and depth of collaboration between Canada and the European Union under the Digital Partnership, and reaffirming close cooperation in multilateral fora, both Participants intend to foster further opportunities for collaboration over the course of the year, both at the bilateral and multilateral levels. To this end, they will also explore opportunities to cooperate with like-minded partners in the pursuit of shared interests. Cooperation could take the form of technical exchanges with partners on issues of common interest (e.g., secure supply chains, standardization), and as collaboration progresses, the potential for deeper collaboration among a network of like-minded partners.
