Belgian Deal Clears Way for EU-Canada Free Trade Pact

[pampango]

Source: New York Times

A landmark free trade agreement between the European Union and Canada could be signed within days after the Belgian government overcame an impasse with its regional authorities on Thursday.

Giving a voice to millions of Europeans who oppose the deal for myriad reasons, Wallonia President Paul Magnette said his resistance yielded huge results.

"We always fought for treaties that reinforced the social and environmental standards, protect the public services and that there is no private arbitration" in dispute settlements, he said. "All this is achieved as of now. I am sorry for all the other Europeans we made wait and for our Canadian partners. But if we took a bit of time, what we achieved here is important, not only for Wallonia but for all Europeans," Magnette said.

Proponents say it would yield billions in added trade through customs and tariff cuts and other measures to lower barriers to commerce. At the same time, the EU says it will keep in place the region's strong safeguards on social, environmental and labor issues. Magnette said Wallonia's insistence on a better deal would bolster EU standards and set a precedent for other trade talks between Europe and trading partners like the United States or Japan.



Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2016/10/27/world/europe/ap-eu-europe-canada-trade-.html?_r=0

[yallerdawg]

1. Those "European socialists" unanimously approving free trade agreements?

Can't they hear that "giant sucking sound" of their jobs going to Canada?

What are they thinking?

Or is it just there's no impoverished "emerging market" countries with non-whites involved?

[DFW]

3. Maybe you have not dealt with "European Socialists" up close

I have to deal with (=suffer the effects of) them all the time. They are largely tenured-for-life, tie-wearing bureaucrats who have never earned a real day's pay in their lives. They have gotten their salaries paid out of other people's taxes since day, one, and have no earthly clue what it means to go out and earn your own living in the real world. Like George W. Bush, as far as they are concerned, they never made a mistake in their lives--everyone else has.

This is not universal by any means, but it DOES describe a huge number of today's European Socialists, epitomized by France's François Hollande. They talk the talk, but when they get into power, they don't walk the walk. They don't know how. They have the slogans to get elected, but they don't have the know-how to get anything done, and seldom have the inclination to find out how to do anything but make things more bureaucratic, and make up new, useless rules that require--surprise!!--more bureaucrats to administer them. My wife used to vote Social Democratic here in Germany religiously. She is so disgusted with them at this point she only gives the local party members her vote. The fat, bloated, limousine-driven national party members have long left her orbit.

There are, as I said before, many exceptions, but for a large part, European Socialists are no closer to Bernie Sanders than Palau is to Iceland.

[yallerdawg]

4. Sanders?

"Sanders is the longest-serving independent in U.S. congressional history."

Sanders began his career as a "bureaucrat" in 1980, becoming one of those "...largely tenured-for-life, tie-wearing bureaucrats who have never earned a real day's pay in their lives."

Of course, Sanders is different.

[DFW]

6. I wasn't for him as president, but I did take him a little more seriously than Hollande

I know his career, but his past, too. He doesn't have himself driven across the street in a chauffeur-driven limo. He isn't Sam Gompers, but he isn't Georges Marchais, either.

[mtasselin]

2. regret

They will regret this because in the fine print is something that gives corporations total control of their economy.

[pampango]

5. Perhaps but both the EU and Canada are more progressive than the US. I hope

they come closer to a progressive trade agreement - something like FDR's ITO - than anything the US has come up with.