Tiny Region of Wallonia in Small Country of Belgium Trips up Global Corporatocracy

Visibly shaken, as Reuters put it, Canadian trade minister Chrystia Freeland walked out of EU trade negotiations in Belgium on Friday evening, lamenting that the EU is “incapable of reaching an agreement – even with a country with European values such as Canada.” 

A big trade deal that had taken years to negotiate, mostly in total secrecy, had just collapsed. So how in the world did such a mega screw-up happen? 

In Europe, all that is needed for the Comprehensive Economic Trade Agreement (CETA) with Canada to come into effect, “provisionally” (in EU double-speak, more or less irrevocably), before being passed to national parliaments to vote on, is for the governments of the EU’s 28 Member States to sign along the dotted line. 

This could usher in a new age of corporate domination, for CETA, just like its sister deals TTIP, TPP and TiSA, is not really a trade deal at all; it’s an investment rights deal that will effectively neuter the ability of national elected governments to regulate in the interests of their electorate.

If CETA is signed, it won’t be just Canadian investors and companies who will be able to sue EU governments. As the second edition of the report Making Sense of CETA argues, 81% of US enterprises active in the EU (about 42,000 firms) would conceivably fit the definition of a Canadian “investor” with recourse to ISDS under the EU-Canada agreement: 

US companies are already known for this kind of aggressive exploitation of the ISDS system. Should the provisions on investment protection in CETA survive, if or when the agreement is ratified, there would be virtually no need to incorporate them in the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP). 

In other words, it would be game, set and match for the global corporatocracy. The only thing stopping that from transpiring is the government of the tiny region of Wallonia in the small country of Belgium.

DYI