EU Commission:
CETA to Face Votes in National Parliaments
Nations
Assert themselves, Follow Brexit
The
European Commission proposed that a planned trade deal with Canada be signed
and provisionally applied, while also announcing that it would be submitting
the pact for approval from all EU national parliaments, as well as the European
Parliament and Council.
The
news marked a change in stance by the EU’s executive arm, which previously said
that the deal would not need to go to national parliaments, citing the Treaty
of Lisbon.
Specifically, if a deal’s provisions fall exclusively
under EU competences, it would only need to go to the Council and the European
Parliament.
However, if it features provisions that address areas
falling under the responsibility of EU member states, this qualifies the
agreement as “mixed” – therefore meaning that individual member states would
need to ratify the accord in their own legislatures as well. Examples where
this could occur would be investment, or some regulatory matters.
Given that the issue of “mixity”
has arisen repeatedly in EU trade policy process, Commission officials flagged
a pending ruling by the European Court of Justice (ECJ) on whether a separate
deal with Singapore also requires national parliament approval as having the
potential to give much-needed legal clarity.
While the ruling will be specific to the deal with
Singapore, officials say that it could help clear up long-standing differences between
the Council and the Commission on how to interpret the provisions of the Lisbon
Treaty which relate to trade deals. The EU’s executive arm requested the ruling
in October 2014.
Meanwhile, the Commission has suggested that the pact
could be applied “provisionally” until the full ratification process is
completed.
The news of the Commission’s decision comes at a trying
time for the EU’s trade policy, as it works to clinch another deal with the
United States this year, while also navigating the potential implications for
its trade agenda from the UK’s vote to leave the EU.
Meanwhile, the heated public debate over the merits of
trade deals – including CETA – has already spilled over into discussions in
some EU national legislatures.
For example, the Belgian regional parliament of
Wallonia has said it would need to see guarantees on certain issues before
approving CETA, while Bulgaria and Romania have raised separate concerns
regarding visa-free travel with Canada that could make it difficult to give their
sign-off to the
The process of negotiating the EU-Canada pact already
dates back several years, kicking off in 2009. The pact has attracted
significant public scrutiny since the talks began, and even after negotiations
were concluded in 2014.
Following the legal scrub of the pact, the two sides
announced earlier this year that they had revised the investment protection
parts of the deal to incorporate an EU proposal for an investment court system,
while stressing the “right to regulate” in the public interest by domestic
governments.
Officials said at the time that the changes were
designed to answer concerns by citizens and businesses on both sides of the
Atlantic. However, the debate failed to die down, with concerns continuing to
arise over how effective these reforms would be, among other aspects of the
deal.
Meanwhile,
speculation had grown in recent weeks as to how the Commission would propose
treating the deal in the ratification stage, particularly in light of earlier
statements by both the EU and Canada that they hoped to see the deal signed
this year and implemented in 2017.