The lower house (‘Tweede kamer’) of the Dutch Parliament will vote on Tuesday afternoon, 18 February, to ratify the CETA, the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement with Canada (see EUROPE 11826/14, 11726/1). What promises to be a close vote was preceded by a heated parliamentary debate on 12 February.
If the deputies validate the agreement, it will still be several weeks before the legislative text is presented to the Dutch Senate (‘Eerste kamer’), where the agreement is reportedly even more likely to be rebuffed, according to the Dutch press.
If the CETA is rejected, it will be up to the government in The Hague to draw the political lessons from this vote.
Since September 2018, the Treaty has been implemented and applied on a provisional basis: to be fully applied, this agreement, known as a “mixed” competence agreement, must be ratified by all Member States (see EUROPE 12100/19). It should be noted that, in accordance with the EU Council’s declaration on the termination of the provisional application of the CETA, if a Member State considers that it is permanently and definitively unable to ratify the Agreement and formally informs the EU Council accordingly, the EU could suspend the Agreement’s provisional application.
On 11 February, the Bulgarian Parliamentary Assembly voted in favour of the agreement, bringing to 14 the number of Member States that have not yet ratified it (see EUROPE 12336/26, 12285/6). (Original version in French by Hermine Donceel)