Czech Business Today

The Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement between the EU and Canada, or rather its acronym – CETA, was one of the buzzwords of Brussels’ bubble in the last couple of days, although not in the way it was meant to be.

The reason for that was that the region of Wallonia refused to give a mandate to Belgian government and basically to the whole EU to sign the agreement. CETA was considered as a so-called mixed agreement, meaning that although the foreign trade policy agenda is the competence of the EU and the European Commission negotiates trade deals with third countries for the whole EU28, in this case a ratification from each member state was necessary prior to the official signing of CETA. And as the federal Belgian government needs the green light from all its regional and community governments, there was a problem. The issue the Walloon government had with CETA was mainly with the new Investment Court System and their worries that large multinational companies would gain the possibility to sue Wallonia, and also with the worries that Belgian market will be ooded with hormone-treated beef and other agricultural products. It seems that after intensive negotiations, the Commission managed to give Wallonia enough guarantees (including the possibility to refuse CETA if any of the above mentioned worries would come true) and that, hopefully, CETA will be signed in the end. However, European and Czech business organizations think that the situation with CETA significantly harmed the image of the EU not only vis-à-vis Canada, but all other partners with whom the EU negotiates or envisages to negotiate free trade agreements in the future.

Canada is the EU’s natural partner and therefore it is only natural to enhance trade bonds as well. Therefore, European and Czech business organizations urge the Commission to make the best effort to correctly explain the benefits of trade policy not only for companies, but also for EU consumers, and to avoid similar deadlocks in the future.