Without casting any doubt over the provisional implementation of the highly controversial EU-Canada free-trade agreement (CETA), French Prime Minister Édouard Philippe has emphasised that people’s concerns and worries over free-trade agreements and EU trade policy have to be recognised.
“It’s not my intention to ignore or brush aside the concerns within civil society over trade agreements”, Philippe told the press, following a meeting with European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker on Monday 16 October.
The national commission set up on his initiative at the start of the summer to assess the impact of CETA on the climate and the environment “has produced a report which does not call into question the implementation of CETA or the coming into effect of the agreement but does propose a whole raft of measures to accompany its coming into force so that the consequences of the coming into effect of the agreement are known and stated transparently”, Philippe said, promising that “a national plan that addresses these factors will be announced by the end of October”.
“Trade policy is a sensitive issue in France and other countries. We cannot give the impression to our citizens, who are sometimes legitimately worried at the scale and consequences of these (free-trade) agreements, that we are not taking account of the worries they are expressing”, he went on to say.
Philippe called, too, for “discussion of the place of the member states, the Commission and the EU institutions to make sure that, while respecting national parliaments, the Commission is not deprived of the powers devolved to it in implementation of this agreement”.
Juncker sure of benefits of free-trade agreements. The Commission president gave assurances that the Commission was “listening” to concerns about the beef sector in free-trade negotiations with Mercosur. “We’ve made proposals and we are currently looking at how to make sure they progress as we want. It’s too early at this stage, however, to be more precise”, he added.
“I would not want our fellow citizens to look upon every trade agreement as an attack on our main interests”, Juncker continued, repeating that every additional billion euro in exports meant 14,000 more jobs in Europe. “If you look more closely at CETA, (you’ll see that) it will be good for European Citizens”, he said. (Original version in French by Emmanuel Hagry with Lucas Tripoteau)