Update: The European Parliament gave consent to CETA. It failed to defend democracy. Now national parliaments will have to decide on CETA. There may also be referendums and court cases. See also EDRi’s press release; procedure file; INTA report; roll call vote (point 1, A8-0009/2017).
Wednesday 15 February 2017, the European Parliament will vote on the EU-Canada trade agreement (CETA).
CETA strengthens investments vis-à-vis democracy and fundamental rights. 1 This undermines our values, ability to reform, and ability to respond to crises, including climate change. 2
CETA undermines protection of personal data, as it includes data flows under an outdated, insufficient safeguard. 3
CETA undermines health 4 and strengthens the position of patent trolls 5. See also Making sense of CETA, a broad analysis. 6
Take action! See La Quadrature du Net, Let’s dump CETA once and for all!; CETA Check, and SumOfUs.
Footnotes:
1 See for instance the statement by over 100 law professors; German Magistrates Association, Opinion on the establishment of an investment tribunal in TTIP; and European Association of Judges, Statement from the European Association of Judges (eaj) on the proposal from the European Commission on a new Investment Court System. (The CETA text is arguably worse than the TTIP proposal.) The CETA option to “upgrade” to a multilateral investment court isn’t helpful. See also FFII, CETA ISDS not conform European Parliament resolution.
2 Van Harten, Foreign Investor Protection and Climate Action: A New Price Tag for Urgent Policies
3 “Going beyond the GATS, the CETA, TTIP and TiSA agreements are very comprehensive and cover cross-border trade in services, which inevitably involves the processing and transferring of personal data in connection with the conduct of a service supplier’s business.” (page 1); K. Irion, S. Yakovleva and M. Bartl, “Trade and Privacy: Complicated Bedfellows? How to achieve data protection-proof free trade agreements”, independent study commissioned by BEUC et al., published 13 July 2016, Amsterdam, Institute for Information Law (IViR). The study shows the safeguard, GATS article XIV like, does not provide sufficient certainty (page 34). See also EDRi, CETA puts the protection of our privacy and personal data at risk, FFII, Broken data protection in EU trade agreements.
4 EPHA, How CETA could undermine public health
5 Ante Wessels, Patents, copyright and innovation
6 The EU-Canada CETA interpretative instrument, which was added before signing, does not solve issues, see Van Harten and The Council of Canadians. See also Pia Eberhardt, Unfair EU-Canada trade deal is wrong response to Trump.