Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement

Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement

Canada (orange) and the European Union (green)
Type	Trade agreement
Signed	30 October 2016 (2016-10-30)
Location	Brussels, Belgium
Effective	Not in force (But provisional application of most of the agreement)[1]
Condition	Approval by all signatories
Provisional application	21 September 2017[2]
Signatories	Canada  European Union  All EU member states
Ratifiers	Canada received royal assent[3] and 17 EU member States ratified[4]
Languages	All official languages of the EU and Canada Bulgarian Croatian Czech Danish Dutch English Estonian Finnish French German Greek Hungarian Irish Italian Latvian Lithuanian Maltese Polish Portuguese Romanian Slovak Slovene Spanish Swedish

The Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) is a free-trade agreement between Canada and the European Union and its member states.^[5][6][7] It has been provisionally applied,^[8] thus removing 98% of the preexisting tariffs between the two parts.

The negotiations were concluded in August 2014. All 27 European Union member states and former member state United Kingdom approved the final text of CETA for signature, with Belgium being the final country to give its approval.^[9] Justin Trudeau, Prime Minister of Canada, travelled to Brussels on 30 October 2016 to sign on behalf of Canada.^[10] The European Parliament approved the deal on 15 February 2017.^[11] The agreement, being a mixed agreement, is subject to ratification by the EU and all EU member States in order to be fully applied.^[7][12] Until then, substantial parts are provisionally applied from 21 September 2017, excluding investment protection.^[2][13] After a challenge by Belgium, the European Court of Justice upheld the agreement on 30 April 2019, in its opinion 1/17, that the dispute resolution mechanism complies with EU law.^[14] The agreement is still only provisionally applied, because only 17 EU member States have ratified the agreement so far.^[15]

The European Commission indicates the treaty will lead to savings of just over half a billion euros in taxes for EU exporters every year, mutual recognition in regulated professions such as architects, accountants and engineers, and easier transfers of company staff and other professionals between the EU and Canada. The European Commission claims CETA will create a more level playing field between Canada and the EU on intellectual property rights.^[16]

Proponents of CETA emphasize that the agreement will boost trade between the EU and Canada and thus create new jobs, facilitate business operations by abolishing customs duties, goods checks, and various other levies, facilitate mutual recognition of diplomas and regulate investment disputes by creating a new system of courts.^[17][18] Opponents consider that CETA would weaken European consumer rights, including high EU standards concerning food safety,^[19] and criticize it as a boon only for big business and multinational corporations, while risking net-losses, unemployment, and environmental damage impacting individual citizens.^[20][21][22] The deal also includes a controversial investor-state dispute settlement mechanism which makes critics fear that multinational corporations could sue national governments for billions of dollars if they thought that the government policies had a bad impact on their business.^[18] A poll conducted by Angus Reid Institute in February 2017 concluded that 55 percent of Canadians support CETA, while only 10 percent oppose it. The support, however, has waned when compared to the poll conducted in 2014.^[23] In contrast, the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) has a 44 percent support rate among Canadians in February 2017.^[24] In contrast to the agreement's reception in Canada, the agreement has prompted protests in a number of European countries.