Finland’s Stubb says EU should expand to 40 states, including Canada

HELSINKI, Finland — Finnish President Alexander Stubb has outlined his vision for a much larger European Union, saying the 27-nation bloc needs to “think big” and seize the moment to project power on the global stage.

Speaking at an energy conference in the Finnish capital on Wednesday, Stubb said the EU should push to increase its membership to 40 states and named the U.K., Canada, Turkey, Norway and Iceland as potential candidates to join.

His comments come as the Trump administration’s actions, alongside Russia’s war with Ukraine, prompt some countries to reconsider the benefits of EU membership.

Stubb told the Eurelectric Power Summit that “the window of opportunity” for EU enlargement “is quite short because when the war in Ukraine ends and perhaps when the U.S. administration changes, I don’t know, then people are going to take their foot off the gas pedal and start heckling about unnecessary stuff again.”

Stubb added that “European strategic autonomy or European geopolitical power” is “often based on size and scale and I think the best European policy ever has been European enlargement.”

“In this moment, we need to think big and geographically, we need to enlarge or at least create memberships which are flexible enough to bring in a sum total of 40 European states — or even non-European,” Stubb said.

The European Commission, the EU’s executive arm, did not immediately respond to a request for comment from CNBC.

The EU is pursuing its largest enlargement in a generation, with nine candidate countries all eyeing entry to the bloc over the coming years. Montenegro and Albania are seen as the frontrunners among the Western Balkans, while Ukraine and Moldova are moving closer to opening formal membership talks.

Finland’s president said the EU should look to its western flank and bring the U.K., which left the bloc in 2020, back into the fold, or at least “as close as possible.”

Canada should be considered as another option, Stubb said. “Wouldn’t it be lovely if Canada was the 28th state of the European Union rather than the 51st state of the United States?”

U.S. President Donald Trump has touted his ambitions of annexing Canada. In a Truth Social post earlier in the week, Trump wrote “51st state!” while sharing a Bloomberg news article about Canada entering a technical recession for the first time since 2020.