Irish Ministers probably had a "there-but-for-the-grace-of-God" moment on news that a veto by the Wallonian parliament was holding up EU ratification of a key free trade agreement with Canada. The deal, which has taken seven years to negotiate and is supported by the other 27 states, will now go through after agreement was brokered yesterday between the Walloons and the Belgian federal government.
Ireland, courtesy of unanimity voting, and to the distress of its EU partners, has also at times been a lone blockage on the EU integration road. Ministers here will have taken comfort from the fact that the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) only requires government support for ratification – the Seanad took a look at it, did not like what it saw, but has no say.
CETA's fate in Belgium is an ominous portent of the bumpy passage facing another looming agreement with the US, the Trans-Atlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP). Although TTIP's terms are far from agreed, and both US presidential candidates are opposed to it, the deal as shaped includes some of the provisions that prompted Walloon CETA opposition and have led to recent mass protests in many EU capitals.
The bête noir of protesters is the plan to establish an investor court system to interpret the agreement and safeguard the rights of investors who feel they are being denied entitlements. Opponents fear the court will allow big business undemocratically to challenge – and claim "billions" in compensation for – government decisions taken in the public interest, such as worker-protection or state monopolies in health services.
The Commission insists the court, a version of which inhabited many previous agreements, is obliged to recognise the right of governments to regulate, just as many environmental regulations are also copper-fastened in the proposed deal. Fears are unwarranted, it says, but repeated assurances are having little effect on public opinion. It is likely TTIP will face considerable resistance throughout Europe, including Ireland.
As it happened, the EU’s complex procedures did not require CETA to be approved by unanimity – because it is a trade agreement, an exclusive “competence” of the Commission. But the latter voluntarily put it through the unanimity system to placate two large member states which wanted to reassure their own parliaments that they would have a veto. To everyone’s surprise, it was a third – Belgium – which caused the hiccup.
TTIP, on the other hand, is a "mixed" agreement – more than just trade – and so must be approved unanimously by the member states, making it a hostage to the Union's "ultra-democratic" procedures. All it will take for TTIP to founder will be a successful revolt in Wallonia, Flanders, or any of 27 member states – or indeed the US Congress.