At the Civil Society Dialogue on the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA), which took place in Brussels this week, Trade Commissioner Malmström once again reiterated the line taken by the Commission. The treaty text was complete and would certainly not be undone again. Not one Comma would be changed. The only thing, which was worked on related to clarifications. However, the Commissioner did not want to commit herself to declaring the extent of which they would be legally binding.

Within the framework of the Civil Society Dialogue, the Swedish Trade Commissioner Cecilia Malmström praised CETA to the skies. In her opinion, CETA is the best agreement that had ever been negotiated; apart from that, the points of criticism made by the civil society had been adopted, also with regard to investment protection (based on the “new” ICS) and public services (there was absolutely no coercion to privatise and already made privatisations could be rescinded).

No comma will be changed

She made it absolutely clear that the text was complete and would not be changed again - “not even a comma”, were the Commissioner' exact words. This would also apply to any change requests by the European Parliament. Only a clarification had been scheduled. According to Malmström, this will be discussed this week during the informal Foreign Affairs Council (Trade) in Bratislava. However, she remained vague as to which extent this clarification would be legally binding.

The Commissioner once again reiterated that there would be no preliminary application prior to the approval of the European Parliament. She also left it open what effect a 'No’ by a Member State would have when the Agreement was ratified by national Parliaments. Her reasoning: “Something like this had after all never happened before.”

High risks and negligible benefit

To put it plainly, CETA entails many risks, which are associated with high costs; however, they only bring little economic benefit, as also shown by a recent AK Study.

From the point of view of the AK, there is still a lot to do until the points of criticism by employee and consumer organisations as well as by the civil society are actually taken into account. With regard to the most important issues, ICS is no different from the ISDS model; public services were not comprehensively exempt from the Agreement and the regulatory cooperation says that preliminary decisions about legal acts are taken in transatlantic committees, which weakens the role of Parliaments on both sides of the Atlantic – to name only a few points of criticism. Apart from that, the provision in respect of Trade and Labour as well as Trade and Environment are non-binding and do not come under the general dispute settlement procedures of CETA; hence, violations in these sectors are not sanctionable.

Further information:

AK Study “Access CETA“

AK Study “The Impact of the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) on the Legal Framework for the Provision of Public Services in Austria”

AK Publication on Regulatory Cooperation

 

AK/ÖGB/DGB Folder on CETA

AK/GPA CETA Fact Check (German only)