In these calamitous times where nationalist and sometimes identity-based withdrawal serves to repel multilateral advances, good news comes to us from the Strasbourg Parliament.
After eight years of negotiations, the free trade agreement between the European Union and Canada, called CETA, has just been adopted by the European Parliament. 95% of its provisions could be implemented as early as April 2017.
The CETA (Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement) is primarily intended to remove as many barriers to trade as possible between European countries and Canada.
Today, only 10% of public tenders launched in Canada are open to European companies: CETA plans to increase this part to 30%.
It also aims to eliminate “non-tariff barriers,” namely those differences in standards that prevent a product manufactured in Europe from being marketed in Canada and vice versa.
It should be noted that currently, standards are used to preserve the health, environment, and safety of citizens (such as the ban on asbestos in Europe, for example).
But they also have a protectionist downside: the classic example is Germany, which previously set the minimum alcohol content of liqueurs at 32°, making it impossible to sell lower-alcohol liqueurs in its territory at a time when foreign countries were producing them and ready to sell them much cheaper.
CETA plans to reduce the share of products subject to such obstacles from 36% to 3%.
With CETA, many tariffs will disappear
And like any free trade agreement, CETA obviously addresses tariffs: they will be lowered in a wide range of areas, such as agriculture, fisheries, metallurgy, automotive, and manufactured goods.
CETA thus plans for the reduction or simply the elimination of many of these taxes, as is the case for beef and pork: for these two types of products, tariffs will drop from 20% to 0%.
Better Protected Geographical Indications
CETA also provides for the recognition by Canada of 145 protected European geographical indications.
