CETA: Belgium resistance to Canada-EU trade deal could affect summit of leaders

LUXEMBOURG – Talks to convince a small Belgian region to back and save a wide-ranging trade deal between the 28-nation European Union and Canada could spill over into this week’s EU summit of leaders.

Under the EU’s complicated approval system, the fate of the trans-Atlantic deal depends on all regions in Belgium approving the deal, leaving some local governments representing only a few million people with powers to scuttle a deal affecting over 500 million EU citizens and 35 million Canadians.

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Belgium’s national government, which strongly backs the deal, in consultation with EU officials, has been frantically looking to overturn the resistance by Wallonia, population 3.5 million, and the executive office of the capital, Brussels, to save a deal that took seven years to negotiate and has backing from all the other EU nations.

“I hope we will come through tomorrow,” Belgian Foreign Minister Didier Reynders said ahead of Tuesday’s meeting of EU foreign trade ministers, where the deal was supposed to be signed off on. “If not, at the end of the week during the summit of EU leaders.” The main discussion points at this week’s summit, which starts Thursday, are Britain’s exit from the EU and relations with Russia.

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Late next week, on Oct. 27, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is set to fly to Brussels to sign the agreement, but only if it has unanimous backing from all the EU nations.

The deal is expected to yield billions in added trade through tariff cuts and other measures to lower barriers to commerce. At the same time, the EU says it will keep in place the strong safeguards on social, environmental and labour legislation which have given Europe some of the toughest standards in the world.

Wallonia said last Friday that the guarantees were not good enough and urged more negotiations. Those concerns have now been talked about over the weekend and into Monday.

“There is always progress,” Reynders said of the talks, “but we have to make sure that progress leads to a deal.”

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