CETA: EU parliament ratifies (only three dozen more votes to

[Oscar]

EU parliament ratifies CETA (only three dozen more votes to go)

[ http://behindthenumbers.ca/2017/02/15/e ... -votes-go/ ]

Stuart Trew and Scott Sinclair February 15, 2017

Prime Minister Trudeau travelled to Europe this week [ http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/justin- ... -1.3982787 ], in part to be there when the European Parliament voted on CETA, the Canada-EU Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement, Tuesday morning. Just under two-thirds of MEPs voted yes, which means CETA can come into force provisionally as soon as ratifying legislation receives royal assent in Canada. Interestingly, a poll came out today showing only 55% of Canadians approve of the deal [ http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/grenier ... -1.3983997 ] —down considerably from 80% support in principle at the beginning of the negotiations in 2010.

For the whole package to apply, including CETA’s controversial investment court system [ http://www.foeeurope.org/sites/default/ ... st_web.pdf ], all of Europe’s three-dozen national and regional parliaments must also sign off, which is far from a certainty at this point. Public protests [ http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-37396796 ] against the deal over the past two years have been the largest Europe has seen since perhaps the anti-war marches of 2001. The centre-left Social Democrats mostly voted for CETA today, but many French and U.K. S&D MEPs sided with the broader labour and environmental movement in opposing CETA. That fight now moves to the national level.

The fact that the investment court system will not come into force now (or possibly ever) is a victory for the critical voices in Canada and the EU who oppose investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) [ https://www.policyalternatives.ca/publi ... p-and-ceta ]. Despite the official view that CETA “fixed” the biases and ambiguities in the ISDS system, the investment court merely offers a few procedural improvements while acknowledging all the same rights offered multinational corporations and foreign investors to challenge public interest decisions affecting their profits.

Canada had originally put ISDS on the negotiating table, with half-hearted pushback from the European Commission. It is satisfying Canadian negotiators lost this point in the final deal. The non-application of CETA’s ban on camcordering movies—another strange Canadian request—is also kind of funny. This was the Harper government’s only counter-proposal in an intellectual property rights chapter that otherwise imposes EU norms and preferences, including costly patent extensions, on Canada.

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[ http://behindthenumbers.ca/2017/02/15/e ... -votes-go/ ]