Brussels, 01/03/2016 (Agence Europe) - Following the announcement the same day of the end of the legal scrubbing of the EU-Canada free trade agreement (CETA), which now paves the way for the ratification of the CETA (see EUROPE 11501), French Secretary of State for Trade Matthias Fekl said on Monday 29 February that France would like the legal status of the CETA to be a mixed agreement - in other words, for it to require not only the approval of the Council of the EU and European Parliament, but also ratification of the national parliaments.
“Like other EU member states, France considers this agreement as a mixed agreement. The CETA will therefore have to be submitted to the national parliaments as it will have to be ratified in the 27 other member states, including when there is provisional implementation as regards the areas of Community competence that it covers”, Fekl said in a press release.
Questioned by EUROPE on this issue on Monday, European Commissioner for Trade Cecilia Malmström said that the Commission's legal service would examine this issue and would make a proposal on it in the spring. “But at the end of the day, it's the Council that decides”, she added.
France leading European consensus on investment protection. Fekl also hailed the recast of the CETA chapter on investment protection. The recast was based on proposals tabled by France in June 2015 that aimed at abandoning the ad hoc arbitration system for settling investor-state disputes (ISDS) in order to instead create a permanent court for settling investor-state disputes. “The French position has become the European consensus”, Fekl stated, underlining that “in the face of many ISDS shortcomings over recent years”, France had, in December 2014, affirmed the need “to invent dispute settlement modalities appropriate for the 21st Century”.
On Monday, Malmström and Canada's Trade Minister Chrystia Freeland announced the end of the legal scrubbing process for the text of the CETA, following an agreement between the two parties on the investment protection chapter. The final version of this chapter picks up the elements of the reformed approach proposed by the EU for a more transparent system for investor-state dispute settlement as part of the EU-Vietnam and EU-USA (TTIP) free trade negotiations. This more transparent system is based on setting up a special investment court (ICS) together with an appeal mechanism (see EUROPE 11429). (Original version in French by Emmanuel Hagry)