I will come on to our position in due course.
The European Commission hailed CETA, calling it
“the most ambitious trade agreement between countries ever undertaken.”
However, unlike other deals currently being progressed by the European Commission, it is a mixed agreement—trade and investment.
The investment provisions of CETA touch on matters of national competence and, as such, the agreement must be ratified at the national level and the regional level where appropriate. The European Commission and respective national Governments have sought to circumvent this process by provisionally applying CETA since 21 September last year, but the deal has not been ratified and is therefore not yet fully enforceable. To understand why, we need to look at the Wallonian Parliament in Belgium, which refused to ratify the agreement over concerns about investment aspects of it and, in particular, the investor-state dispute settlement mechanism, now known under this agreement as the
investment court system. This is where process meets substance. Belgium has referred the matter to the European Court of Justice to seek a ruling on whether the investment court system is even compatible with EU law.