The European Union and Canada agreed a multi-billion-dollar trade pact yesterday that will integrate two of the world’s largest economies and paves the way for Europe to do an even bigger deal with the US.

Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper and European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso resolved remaining issues in Brussels, wrapping up talks launched in May 2009 but stalled for months over quotas for Canadian beef and EU cheese.

“This agreement is a landmark achievement for the transatlantic market,” Barroso told a news conference, flanked by Harper. “With political will and a good dose of hard work, there is a way to reach a result that benefits people on both sides of the Atlantic,” he said.

The deal, the European Union’s first with a member of the G8 club of the world’s biggest economies, marks a breakthrough for Brussels’ free-trade agenda that so far has only achieved smaller ones with South Korea and Singapore.

The accord is expected to increase bilateral trade in goods and services by a fifth to €25.7 billion a year, according to the latest EU estimates.

The European Commission is negotiating trade pacts with more than 80 countries on behalf of the bloc’s 28 members following the collapse of the Doha trade talks.