You forgot Turkey as well. Yes, the EU is open in general for specific treaties. If possible they want to do broad treaties (see the EEA). But Switzerland is almost as big a partner as the UK. If it is big enough, they'll do custom deal.

There is not much trade with Canada at the moment but with some special treaties this might change.

Then there's the political edge to this "associate member" status and if it can work as a blueprint for more countries, they'll certainly will be open to do it.

> The only bit the EU is rowing back is that they mentioned during BRExit that there would be no more custom deals so this simply a case of the realpolitik winning out.

This isn't _really_ what they said. In practice, if the UK wanted similar status to Norway, it could have had it. The EU is cautious of specifically the Switzerland situation, which is a huge complex mess of treaties.

to be fair until we know what associate member means, there might not be any contradiction to the UK position