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CETA Signed Off As Wallonia Folds Under Pressure (freezenet.ca)
Dangerous_Minds writes: The Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) has been signed off. The government of Wallonia appeared to be holding off on the agreement, but has since folded under the pressure. Two days after Wallonia agreed to the trade deal, countries signed off on the agreement. The agreement contains provisions surrounding a three strikes law, a global DMCA, site blocking, and the hugely controversial ISDS provisions to name a few. The deal still needs to be ratified for these laws to take effect.
Is this british english? What does that mean? It was cancelled? (Just kidding, I read the article). But, WTF? Signed off.
The multinationals backed by a puppet US Government Signed off as Wallonia Folds Under Pressure..
ISDS = workers rights gone as big corps can say they are bad for profits.
Wallonia is a real place, it's a region of Belgium, which is a country in Europe.
They built a Wallonia, and will make us all pay for it.
This deal removes barriers to trade and will boost both economies significantly; with at least 22.9% increase worth €25.7 billion. See here.
Extrajudicial transnational corporate control of sovereign law and policy. "But it's only fines based on lost profits!" the proponents cry, like we haven't seen, for example, the MPAA making up imaginary multi-billion-dollar annual profits during piracy studies.
Europeans love having someone to call "Fuehrer".
Europeans (including Germans) have been there, done that, and no, they don't love it.
If it weren't for deadlines, nothing would be late.
or in 2017 trump!
Yeah but Europeans love to eat, too. At least the Fuhrer provided food and jobs.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
With all its obvious and widely discussed downsides, Nazism was nothing like an ultra-liberist capitalism.
and nothing else. You can literally do anything else. And you can squeeze as hard as you want on 10% of the population. The US used to do it to black folks, India to the "untouchables", Japan to Islanders and the Chinese/Koreans, etc, etc.
The 1% have long since learned how hard they can squeeze. What few wars break out are when one member of the 1% pisses off another. We moved on Iraq so we could move on Afghanistan too. We did that so we could build an oil pipeline the Afghanistan gov't opposed.
Don't wait for the revolution. It's not coming. Do something about wealth inequality now before it drags you down.
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but it's manageable as long as it doesn't get too big for it's britches. Fix wealth inequality and it won't matter. Worst case then & we'll pay a few billion here and there to some Chinese mega corps. Yeah, it'll suck to pay but it'll be small potatoes. Now, keep ignoring wealth inequality and it'll prompt a nativist backlash that'll make Trump seem tame by comparison...
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Assuming Juncker is a male it is 'unserer Fuehrer'. Oh, and also Schutzstaffeln.
Anyway, you seem to have failed to understand that WWI and WWII, you know, that one with that Fuehrer, was caused by the Anglo-Americans and their allies for geo-political reasons.
Just like nowadays with the Ukrainian 'question', America was and is hellbent on not to allow Russia and Europe form any economic alliance as that would rapidly evolve into a big economic--if not geo-political power--competitor causing the USA losing its hegemonic dominance in the world.
"Trump!!", the new Godwin.
It means nothing, its the fake signing ceremony they have to pretend its a done deal that cannot be revoked. It's sort of a two step thing, they sign it off and tell doubters its only ceremonial, and when it comes to National Parliaments, where the actual legal democratic process is supposed to occur, they tell them its a done deal already signed off.
Yet the treating still includes the fake court (a tribuneral of lawyers that is not a court, not within any democracy and not challengable) that can require changes to national laws. No national government is empowered to take away the democracy and assign it to that court. They are giving away powers they legally cannot give away.
World Bank says TPP (which is almost identical treaty) will have no effect on GDP, its not a trade deal, its protectionism and a means for corps to overrule democracies:
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20160112/07433333306/world-bank-report-tpp-will-bring-negligible-economic-benefit-to-us-canada-australia.shtml
... to our new George Soros overlord.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
Globalization is neither good nor bad, but CETA is a bad deal. Especially when we want to battle resource limitations and climate change. A key problem with CETA is the so called protection for investors, which sounds like we do not have a proper legal system in Canada and the EU. CETA has also a system which allows to modify the treaty later without parliamental control. So in short it is undemocratic and I want to keep my democracy.
The real deal is this: The french-speaking Parti Socialiste (PS or Socialist Party) was in government for 30 years or so. They always tried to hold back any laws that would grant more power to the regions (dutch-speaking, a.k.a. Flemish , french-speaking a.k.a. Wallonia and the mixed language capital of Brussels), but ultimately could endanger the financial transfers from the richer Flemish part to the poorer and big spending Walloon side, but this policy backfired the last decade when Flemish people (60% of the population) voted en masse for a more confederate-orientated party. Scaring their populace with stories of Flemish people wanting to tear the country down thereby dumping the royalties and throwing overboard any solidarity between the regions, a deadlock was created. Until the liberal french party (MR) was found to run the federal government with the Flemish parties and together they started cleaning out (or attempting to) the immense Socialist dump: a massive debt, a wildgrowth of departments etc... Now, the waning PS is only strong in it's bastion: Wallonia. And how do you think they can make themselves 'necessary'? Right, by blocking the CETA for a bit and showing the federal government, their electorate and the Europe: "See , we still have power! We are necessary! We are the conscience of Belgium". But what they tend to forget to say is that the CETA deal has already been on the table for 2 years: plenty of time to voice their opposition. Can someone please show the Walloon people what has been changed in the CETA agreement? Nothing, nada, noppes, nichts, rien!
Globalization is neither good nor bad, but CETA is a bad deal. Especially when we want to battle resource limitations and climate change. A key problem with CETA is the so called protection for investors, which sounds like we do not have a proper legal system in Canada and the EU.
Investor protection isn't a bad thing to have in a trade deal per se. The main idea is supposed to be to prevent things like nationalization of an industry after a trading partner country's company(s) setup shop, or to pass laws that effectively bypass the agreement altogether by passing laws which directly disadvantages the trade partners industries, while favouring the local industries (i.e.: make widgets sold by the trading partner illegal, but permit locally made widgets). I would think that if you owned a Canadian company and decided to spend a ton of money to setup a factory in Belgium, only for a local government to expropriate your factory without permission or compensation (like Cuba did to various US companies in 1960), you would be pretty pissed off. Likewise (and probably more likely), you'd also be pretty cheesed if you spent a bunch of money and effort to import your widgets to (say) France, only for the French government to turn around and find some bullshit reason to make import and sell your product effectively impossible (i.e.: perhaps they decide suddenly post-agreement that all widgets must contain 100% raw goods refined in France, or that all workers building widgets must be fed a steady diet of baguettes made in Paris), you'd likewise be pretty pissed that the goalpost was moved in order to disadvantage you, while giving your competition within a trade partner nation an unfair advantage.
Ideally under such protections, changes to environmental and product safety laws shouldn't be a problem so long as they apply to everyone equally. That's the goal at least -- not having read CETA myself, I can't say how close it comes to the ideal. However, as a comparison here is a list of all current NAFTA Chapter 11 Investor-State Disputes, which makes for an interesting read on the types of disagreements the NAFTA ISDS-equivalent has dealt with.
Ultimately, I don't think that a clause in a free trade agreement that says "you'll treat our companies and goods as you do your own companies and goods" is a bad thing, and anyone who is automatically against the concept of an Investor-State Dispute Settlement system is wrong (there really isn't a point to a free trade system without one). I think that criticism of the implementation of an ISDS system is fair game (so long as the goal is to make the system fair and reasonable) -- but as there are a lot of ways legislation can be drafted to disadvantage foreign goods without tariffs, a free trade agreement without such a system in place is meaningless.
(And if you really can't stand having your local industries on a level footing with a foreign trading partner (and vice-versa), then you need to either negotiate an exemption for those industries when you (re)negotiate the agreement in the first place, or have the decency to back out of the agreement entirely. Disadvantaging your trading partners trade while expecting them to uphold their end of the agreement is a completely dick move that makes a mockery of trade agreements).
Yaz
Globalization is neither good nor bad, but CETA is a bad deal. Especially when we want to battle resource limitations and climate change. A key problem with CETA is the so called protection for investors, which sounds like we do not have a proper legal system in Canada and the EU. CETA has also a system which allows to modify the treaty later without parliamental control. So in short it is undemocratic and I want to keep my democracy.
explaining this to the quite rule-based society Germany probably, which is typically receiving end of why trade needs state-independet dispute resolution even for established democracies. The 2nd part of the answer is why counterintuitively trade agreements and nation-independent courts would be the most impactful way to address climate change (!) if implemented properly.
(1) The badly termed Schiedsgerichte investment court system (also investor-state dispute settlement-ISDS) protects investors from one country to political arbitrariness. Recent examples are:
* banks having to forgive part of loans by decree of other governments that gift bank loan reductions to its voter clientele (Hungary, Croatia). Technically the exchange rate is modified by changing laws, which in effect forgives part of the loan. Needless to say that people will invest less given this, for which in the end all lose.
That is, it's not uncommon at at all that even developed democracies parliaments/governments change rules affecting the investments of others on the fly. You would not believe how common it is even in more developed democracies for ex post facto changes based on domestic politics that harm investors from other nations, it's possible to cite many more recent examples.
If an investor wants to go to court for this with only domestic courts it may amount to a wish-you-good-luck situation. So there need to be non-national, potentially less biased independent courts (better) or resolution mechanisms. As trade agreements are badly explained and quite complex which makes them prone for popular simplifications. but it's not given that robust democracies have need independent judiciary.
(2) Climate change: I would posit that CETA-alike agreements with China could do more for climate change than lip-service non-binding populism as maybe seen with COP21 (non-binding Paris climhttps://yro.slashdot.org/story/16/10/30/2233243/ceta-signed-off-as-wallonia-folds-under-pressure#ate treaty). If China would need to pay for its environmental emissions enforced by proportional duties and other instruments, overseen by independent dispute settlement courts it could lead to real CO2 parts per million reductions.
A pity that (2) sounds completely unrealistic in a populist climate of trade being bad mouthed and the need for non-national courts weakly understood.
I know they are there to protect investors from greedy governments. However, in the EU, we already have laws protecting your private property. In case the state requires your house the state must compensate you for that. In Germany, this is part of the constitution. I do not know if this is the case in Belgium, but it is also part of the EU treaties. The problem with such international courts is that they only value investors and they provide them extra protection beyond being treated equally. In case of leaked parts of TTIP and CETA, if a state would forbid carbon fueled engines by 2040/2050 (which we must do), this could become extremely expensive for a state, as any car manufacturer could sue them. Also Austria was sued (based on another such treaty) by an Austrian bank, which owns itself via a company on some island, because Austria trailed and fined them violating the law. The Bank sued, because the trail resulted in a reduced reputation.
The problem with such treaties is. They are all inclusive. Therefore, if some thing should be excluded it must be listed explicitly. It would be much, much better if they would only list those things where these rules apply. Yes this is more work, but it is better in the end. And yes there are positive things in the CETA treaty. You could just separate them from the rest and start with them. Why on earth must be everything in one treaty at one time.
BTW: another issue with this treaty is the inability to quit and it is valid indefinitely. This is rubbish. No one should ever sign such treaty. What if the next generation wants a different treaty or no treaty?
...and WWII, you know, that one with that Fuehrer, was caused by the Anglo-Americans and their allies for geo-political reasons.
"Oh, look at what you made me do"
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
I'm more interested in what Elbonians have to say on the matter.
I know they are there to protect investors from greedy governments. However, in the EU, we already have laws protecting your private property. In case the state requires your house the state must compensate you for that.
Yes, however ISDS doesn't just cover eminent domain seizures; it also protects investors from governments passing BS laws that disadvantage foreign imports in order to confer a special advantage to competing local interests.
Let's look at a (completely made up) example. Bombardier, a Canadian company, competes with Airbus, a French company in the aerospace field. Let's say that France wanted to confer a trade advantage to Airbus, and so decided to pass a law requiring X% of French-made parts in jets sold in France. The United States isn't party to CETA, and there is no tariff involved, so on the face of it, some politician might think this is legit. However, it would put Bombardier at a significant disadvantage -- the United States is Canada's largest trading partner, and importing parts made in France to Canada is going to cause the Canadian company to confer an added expense to ship parts to Canada that the French manufacturer doesn't have. In effect, it's a no-tarrif way to bypass a free trade agreement.
EU laws protecting property doesn't cover such a scenario. And that's why there are Investor protections built in -- to prevent such shenanigans.
The problem with such international courts is that they only value investors and they provide them extra protection beyond being treated equally. In case of leaked parts of TTIP and CETA, if a state would forbid carbon fueled engines by 2040/2050 (which we must do), this could become extremely expensive for a state, as any car manufacturer could sue them.
You can sue anybody for anything. Winning the suit is a completely different matter.
I've spent some time since yesterday reading the text of CETA, and Chapter 24 on Environmental Protection seems to apply in this case. Indeed, Article 24.2 seems to promote the type of protection you're talking about. Article 24.3 specifically states that parties have the right to regulate and encourage high levels of environmental protection. However, I will note that IANAL, and CETA is hugely long, thus there could be some details I've missed. Again, it seems that so long as such measures are applied equally and fairly, a scenario such as the one you've suggested would be completely permitted (Chapter 8, Section C).
Now, as the text does seem to indicate that the "parties" are Canada and the EU, so the treaty might require harmonization of such laws within the EU (as the above sections tend to talk about application to "the parties", and I'm not sure if individual nations within the EU are considered parties individually, or only as a collective). You'd need to take that up with a trade lawyer who knows more about this than I do. If that's the case I could see why some people have a problem with this, however isn't such harmonization the entire point of the EU in the first place?
BTW: another issue with this treaty is the inability to quit and it is valid indefinitely. This is rubbish. No one should ever sign such treaty. What if the next generation wants a different treaty or no treaty?
Any treaty can be quit. You don't need special wording added to an agreement to quit. Indeed, there are two ways you could conceptually quit CETA:
Leave the EU: as we are currently seeing with the "Brexit", you can get out of a treaty such as CETA by leaving the EU. The EU charter has text on how to exit the EU, and as CETA is between Canada and the EU, if you're not in the EU, you're not party to CETA.
Just announce you'll no longer recognize the treaty: or you can go the old-fashioned route and just ignore the treaty, and stop participating. Sure, this might trigger and old-fashioned trade war and cause a diplomatic crisis, however it has
Um, this is Canada - EU.
WWII was caused by the Anglo-Americans? Really? Please tell me what planet you are on - it certainly isn't the same one that I am!
have your currency debased
be thrown out of the international payment system
have your political career destroyed
have wars on your soil
color revolution
receive no more oil
nor gas
be assassinated?
"Trump!!", the new Godwin.
Did you read about the geo-political motives?
"Trump!!", the new Godwin.
Remember the treaty of Versailles after WWI? Some general came out of the meeting and said:
"We have just started WWII."
It was all geopolitics by the English (WWI), later the Americans (WWII), to keep Germany and the rest of Western Europe from allying with Russia which would have formed the greates economic and military power in the world.
Currently it's the same geo-political objective that led the USA to foment a overthrow in Ukraine.
A barrier between Europe and Russia is and always was the objective.
Indeed I'm afraid you're living on the wrong planet.
"Trump!!", the new Godwin.
Germany isn't Nazi-Deutschland anymore :)
"Trump!!", the new Godwin.
No & no. :)
"Trump!!", the new Godwin.
Well, actually, WWII was started more by France and Britain who wanted punitive reparations from Germany, whose economy then collapsed. Your explanation of the 'big bad boogeyman' of the Russians..the Communists were a non issue at the end of WWI. Indeed, Joe Stalin was our buddy in WWII - if anything, FDR caused most of the issues because he gave eastern Europe to the USSR thus forcing millions of people under the yoke of the Soviet Union.