Tag Archives: ceta

Social Democrats TD Jennifer Whitmore

This morning/afternoon.

Further to Tanaiste Leo Varadkar’s defence of Ceta, the free trade agreement between the European Union and Canada…

…where he hailed a report by Copenhagen Economics, commissioned by the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment, into the costs and benefits for Ireland arising from four recently concluded EU Free Trade Agreements (FTAs) – Canada, Korea, Mexico and Japan.

Jennifer Whitmore, Social Democrats TD and the party’s spokesperson on the environment, climate and communications, writes (full article at link below):

…There is no question but that the Ceta deal will boost trade, but the benefits are lopsided. While Irish exports to Canada are expected to be 31 per cent higher by 2030, imports from Canada will increase by 84 per cent.

The newly published study by Copenhagen Economics for the department, which cost €28,000 to produce, is being used by Varadkar as a rationale for the ratification of the free trade deal with Canada, despite the vast majority of the report comprising an analysis of three other FTAs.

To put this in context, the consolidated Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (Ceta) text is nearly 1,600 pages long. The Copenhagen Economics’ report is just 79 pages – and fails to even mention the most controversial aspect of the deal, the investor court system (ICS), which gives multinationals the right to sue governments who curtail their freedom of action as investors.

Perhaps the Government didn’t have time to commission a thorough report. It had attempted to rush through ratification of this hugely complex deal after just a 55-minute Dáil debate in December. That effort only failed because a sustained public outcry about such a truncated debate forced the Government to defer it.

Now, this fig-leaf report is being brandished as evidence of the Government having done its due diligence when, in reality, it is a cursory analysis of four separate trade deals, which concludes that almost all of the cumulative economic benefits to the State flow from just one agreement, the trade deal with Japan.

It is also noteworthy, that the trade element of Ceta – which has seen the reciprocal removal of nearly 99 per cent of tariffs between the EU and Canada – has applied since September 2017. Therefore the State is already reaping the economic benefits of the deal. The element which has yet to come into force, and which is dependent on EU member state ratification, is the portion of the deal concerned with investment protection, which includes the highly contentious ICS.

In Dáil debates, when concerns regarding the ratification of Ceta are posed to Varadkar, he invariably issues a boilerplate response which includes a vague reference to a sustainability impact assessment undertaken on behalf of the EU into the entirety of the deal.

One wonders if he has ever read this impact assessment, because it unambiguously recommended that the investor state dispute settlement (ISDS) regime, of which ICS is a variant, should be excluded from Ceta and replaced with a state-to-state enforcement mechanism.

Given that the EU’s own impact assessment recommended dropping ISDS from the final deal, it is bizarre it has been retained – albeit, in a slightly improved format – as ICS. Despite these changes, the core elements of the dispute mechanism remain the same. ICS allows large corporations to leapfrog domestic and EU courts and take cases against governments to specially-created tribunals when policy decisions impact their bottom line.

Meanwhile, Ceta’s supposed ability to insulate public policy decisions from attack by investors contains an express exception. If the impact of a decision in important public policy areas is deemed excessive, investors can pursue a case against a member state, even if the policy decision was implemented in the public interest. [More at link below]

Canada trade deal comes with strings attached, Mr Varadkar (Jennifer Whitmore, Irish Times)

Leo Varadkar: Ireland needs a trade deal with Canada (irish Times, April 28)

Meanwhile…

This morning.

“(I was) strongly critical of the whole approach down through the years, down through the decades in international trade, particularly around the dispute resolution where the environmental community among others like social justice organisations said that the power of the corporations within that was too strong, so that was our primary concern regarding CETA and other trade deals that were being done.

“But, there are three developments in the last three years that give me reassurance, some of those concerns are starting to be addressed in a way that is progressive.”

Green Party Leader Eamon Ryan on RTÉ Radio One’s Morning Ireland.

Eamon Ryan says he will urge Green TDs to change their mind on CETA (Independent.ie)

Meanwhile…

FIGHT!

wallonia

The regional government of the Belgian region of Wallonia is blocking an EU trade deal with Canada which would reduce 98% of the tariffs between Canada and the EU.

Critics of the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement [CETA] believe it will weaken consumer rights and damage the agricultural industry in EU member countries.

Sean O’Reilly writes:

Interesting reading from American born, Belgian based, German supported news outlet Politico on the topic of CETA…

Via The Brussels Playbook

it’s easier to imagine the deal as a meal.

Among many, many concerns, the negotiation process for CETA has come under substantial fire for being more of a set menu than an À la carte proposal.

With dinner having been opaquely decided on, at best not quite suited to the taste of some guests, and at worst inedible to some in the room, the Wallonian government has decided that it won’t be eating.

A key concern of the Walloons is the threat CETA presents to agriculture. In a region which boasts a cow for every three inhabitants, the prospect of the European market becoming flooded with Canadian products is a daunting one.

That the deal is an all or nothing proposal, and that the Walloons have rejected it in major part because of this raises the question of whether this way of doing business is now tenable.

….it’s worth noting that Politico leans fairly heavily towards the American centre, that is to say it would be very much pro-business, free market capitalism, and transatlanticism.

It’s possibly fair to say the Americans have gone soft so far away from home, but what’s interesting here is that the negotiation of these deals has been so poorly handled that even those who might be expected to be cheering them on have reservations.

FIGHT!

The Brussels Playbook (Politico)

Map via Economist.com

Screen Shot 2016-08-10 at 11.46.46

Anne Marie, from Uplift, writes:

Uplift, with support from the trade union Unite, commissioned a Red C public opinion poll on the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) and Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) trade deals. From the results…

– 74% of people polled in Ireland want a referendum on TTIP and CETA.
– 62% agree that EU standards should not be changed to match US or Canadian standards.
– 4 out of 5 people don’t think that US or Canadian corporations should be allowed to sue EU governments whose legislative changes affect their profits.
– 69% of people would be concerned if TTIP or CETA were agreed

Previously: Luke’s TTIP

Uplift

attac

Free Monday?

The International CETA speaking tour will be held in Liberty Hall, Dublin at 7.30pm, hosted by Attac Ireland, which “resists neoliberal globalisation and campaigns for a more just, equal and sustainable world”.

CETA?

Barry Finnegan writes:

The Comprehensive Economic Trade Agreement (CETA), is the less well-known cousin of TTIP, the EU-US ‘free’ trade and investment deal currently being drafted. Negotiations on CETA are closed: if adopted by the European parliament early next year, it would allow companies to sue governments for compensation in a private arbitration called ISDS when they say that laws interfere with their profits.

The completed CETA trade deal is the first EU treaty to include an approach to services liberalisation through ‘negative lists’. This means that all categories of the services sector, including water, education and health, will be opened to competition and competitive private-sector tendering, except those services that have been explicitly excluded in the ‘negative list’ at the start of negotiations.

The text of CETA,, now available online, clearly shows that the Irish Government has not excluded water, health or education services from the enforced privatisation and tendering rules of CETA,

International CETA Speaking Tour (Facebook)

Attac Ireland