Brussels, 09/05/2016 (Agence Europe) - During a meeting of their respective presidents, Luca Visentini and Hassan Yusuf, on Wednesday 4 May, the European Trade Union Confederation (ETUC) and the Canadian Labour Congress (CLC) agreed on five key changes to be made to the text of the EU-Canada free trade agreement (CETA). The agreement is due to be signed and ratified in the coming months.
In a joint statement, the ETUC and CLC call for preferential treatment to be dropped for foreign investors in the chapter on investment protection and on settling investor-state disputes. The two organisations consider that the EU and Canada already have fully developed and effective court systems.
The ETUC and CLC also call for violations of the CETA's labour provisions to be subject to its dispute settlement process. “The privileged status for investors stands in sharp contrast with the very mild labour standard provisions which have no enforcement mechanism”, the two organisation state.
Furthermore, the ETUC and CLC call for guarantees that new services will not be subject to “liberalisation by default” as a result of the so-called negative list of services which are excluded from liberalisation. “No sensible government can reasonably make such a commitment”, they state.
In addition, the two organisations call for the removal of unconditional access for foreign companies to public procurement. While admitting that foreign companies must be able to bid for contracts, the ETUC and CLC argue that local governments should have the ability to attach social and environmental conditions to their public tenders.
“The changes recently made to ISDS [investor-state dispute settlement] provisions show it is possible and legitimate for reasonable partners to improve the CETA” and that “unless the text is adjusted to meet our concerns, we will have to call on our elected officials to reject the CETA”, the joint statement concludes.
The finalisation of the CETA's legal scrubbing on 29 February and the agreement concluded between the EU and Canada on the CETA's chapter on investment protection (see EUROPE 11501) paved the way for the signature and ratification of the CETA by both parties. The EU's trade ministers will discuss the CETA at their meeting on 13 May, with a view to signing the CETA at the EU-Canada summit on 13 May. (Original version in French by Emmanuel Hagry)