by Alicia Nicholls
Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) have given their stamp of approval to the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) signed by the European Union (EU) and Canada on October 30, 2016. This is according to a press release by the European Parliament yesterday.
In the vote held on February 15, 2017, 408 MEPs out of the 751-member European parliament voted in favour, while 254 voted against it. There were 33 abstentions. The MEPs also approved the EU-Canada Strategic Partnership Agreement complementing the CETA, which will deepen EU-Canadian cooperation on a wide range of non-trade issues.
The 30-chapter CETA aims to strengthen trade and investment ties between EU countries and Canada. Negotiations were launched in May 2009 and took over 5 years of negotiations before being concluded in September 2014.
Among other things, the agreement will upon its entry into force eliminate tariffs on most goods trade between the EU and Canada. A few sensitive industrial and agricultural products will either face longer periods of protection or in a few limited cases, are excluded completely from tariff cuts. Canada has also historically agreed to open its federal and municipal procurement markets. An innovation in the agreement is the establishment of an Investment Court System instead of the much maligned investor-state dispute settlement system for the settlement of investment disputes.
As the CETA is classified as a “mixed agreement” by the European Commission, the next step will be ratification by national and regional parliaments in individual EU countries. According to the press release, MEPs expect that provisional application of the agreement could start by as early as April 1, 2017.
For further information, please see the European Parliament press release.
Alicia Nicholls, B.Sc., M.Sc., LL.B., is a trade and development consultant with a keen interest in sustainable development, international law and trade. You can also read more of her commentaries and follow her on Twitter @LicyLaw.
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