As EUROPE was going to press on Monday 17 October, suspense remained over the EU’s signing of a free-trade agreement between the EU and Canada (CETA), which it is hoped will take place at a bilateral summit in Brussels on 27 October – but which is hanging on Belgium’s internal approval process.
On Monday evening, EU member states’ sherpas on COREPER were again due to validate draft decisions by the Council of the EU on the signing of CETA on behalf of the EU and its provisional application, along with a request for consent from the European Parliament for the conclusion of CETA, and the interpretative statement to be added to the agreement. The aim is for the various documents to be given the formal go-ahead by EU trade ministers in Luxembourg on 18 October.
The outcome of the COREPER meeting was uncertain on Monday and if the special meeting of the Foreign Affairs Council in the trade format goes ahead, no agreement is expected because Belgian foreign minister Didier Reynders, representing Belgium, has not yet been given full powers at national level to endorse signature of CETA on behalf of Belgium.
Last week, several bodies in Belgium’s complex federal system – particularly the parliaments of the Walloon Region and the Wallonie-Brussels Federation (the French-speaking community) – vetoed Belgium’s approval of the signing of CETA by the EU.
During a debate on his government’s policy at the parliament of the Walloon Region on Monday, the minister-president of the Walloon Region, Paul Magnette, said he was expecting over the next few hours a new interpretive declaration for CETA, which is due to clarify sensitive issues like protection of standards and public services.
Magnette said he was calling for time to examine the declaration and said he was prepared, if the document is unsatisfactory, to confirm the Walloon Parliament’s refusal, saying that this would mean that the EU-Canada summit of 27 October would have to be cancelled.
Finally, after having talked thus far about very strong pressure on the Walloon Region for it to give CETA the go-ahead, Magnette said that the Region had been receiving barely veiled threats in recent hours but these would not prevent it from carrying on with its action, as the online version of Belgian newspaper Le Soir reported. (Original version in French by Emmanuel Hagry)