Brussels and Ottawa Prepare a Mobility Pact, and Italy's Young Look West

The European Union and Canada are set to announce a strategic alliance on Friday that would give Europeans and Canadians more opportunity to live, study and work on the opposite side of the Atlantic, The Local Italy reported on Thursday evening. The report gave no detail of the routes involved, no numbers of people affected and no length of stay.

Because the agreement is a European one, any mobility it creates will apply to Italians as EU citizens, on the same terms offered to French, German or Polish nationals. Valle d'Aosta's autonomy gives the region room on language, schooling and some local competences, but none on visas; the terms will reach the valley from Brussels.

The announcement also arrives in the middle of an Italian argument about numbers. Italy's population is roughly 59 million and ageing, with a low birth rate and a steady outflow of young people toward work abroad. A wider door to Canada would add a destination outside the EU's own free-movement area, and the reporting does not say whether a large scheme or a symbolic one is intended.