The CETA agreement can be reversed
Article by Neoklis Sylikiotis, AKEL Political Bureau member and AKEL MEP
9th November 2016
CETA (the EU-Canada free trade agreement) is a new type of free trade agreement, as well as TTIP. Given that the EU ruling circles failed to impose the latter, through CETA they have brought back TTIP through the back door and its recent signing by the European Council. The 3,500,000 EU citizens who signed petitions against CETA, and the 2,087 cities and regions which declared themselves CETA-free zones were not taken into account at all, despite the fact that Barcelona, Vienna, Amsterdam and many other major cities are included. More specifically when the parliaments of Wallonia and the city of Brussels closed the way for Belgium to sign the agreement because of Article 8 (the Investor-state dispute settlement mechanism (ISDS), the Brussels ruling circles simply changed its name, and called the mechanism’s officials judges.
The lack of democracy in the EU is something that we already knew. Now it has yet again been exposed as a servant of the multinational companies. After the small resistance put up by Wallonia against the extrajudicial mechanism for resolving disputes between investors-state (ISDS) the side that stuck to Article 8 and the dispute settlement mechanism is not Canada, but the EU. Canada has bitter experiences from the creation of this mechanism with regards the free trade agreement it concluded with Mexico and the US. At present the country has the most convictions ruled against it. By the end of 2015, Canada had to pay €13 million to companies and more than € 45 million to defend itself, while at the same time pending cases amount to €1.75 billion against it. These cases mainly concern environmental standards which the country is implementing. Consequently, companies such as the ETHYL Corporation, which consider that these standards are very strict, file lawsuits against Canada to prevent the free market and their profitability.
However, could the sacrifice of the acceptance of an extra-judicial mechanism (ISDS) perhaps be done to create jobs in Europe? The Canadian experience as part of NAFTA provides us the answer again. The Caterpillar Company which manufactures trains in Canada in 2010 demanded from workers that they accept a 50% reduction in their salaries. After the worker’s refusal to do so, the company closed down the factory and moved it to Indiana in the United States. There, the workers took home 50% less in their salary than that of the workers in Canada. But this was not enough. The workers in Mexico were being paid even less. As a result of the NAFTA provisions of the free market, the Caterpillar Company simply closed down the factory in the US and in 2012 moved it to Mexico. 600 workers were laid off with the closure of the company in Canada, which since 2010 – when it signed the 2016 agreement – has lost 350,000 jobs in the industrial sector,
Brussels may have signed the agreement through manipulation policies and approved it by using all means, but nothing has been lost yet for the people. The agreement must also be approved by the national parliaments with Wallonia stressing that its adoption is not certain if the mechanism of Article 8 is not deleted.
In Germany, the DIE LINKE party has already proceeded to take court action against the agreement on the basis that it violates fundamentals principles of the country’s constitution. Wallonia also intends to do the same.
In addition, as with the case of TTIP, the peoples are resisting and taking to the streets. The 3 and a half million citizens that were mobilized can become even more. Huge demonstrations have already been organized in recent months in Brussels, Germany and France.
The CETA agreement can be reversed.
The overthrow of TTIP shows that this is indeed possible.
