Belgium
officially signs CETA agreement
Formal
approval of Belgium will allow EU leaders and Canada to sign the
deal.
By MAÏA DE LA
BAUME 10/29/16, 12:52 PM CET Updated 10/29/16, 3:07 PM CET
Belgium’s Deputy
Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs Didier Reynders on
Saturday signed the CETA agreement at a ceremony in Brussels, his
spokesman Didier Vanderhasselt told POLITICO.
The formal approval
of Belgium’s federal government will allow EU leaders and Canadian
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to sign the Comprehensive Economic and
Trade Agreement at an EU-Canada summit on Sunday.
A green light from
Belgium will allow the EU member states to start implementing CETA on
provisional basis at the beginning of next year.
The signing ceremony
on Saturday took place at the Palais d’Egmont, a conference center,
two days after regional authorities gave their approval to the
Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA), ending days of
tense negotiations with the federal government, the EU and Canadian
officials.
Vanderhasselt said
in an interview that Reynders had signed the agreement in the
presence of Cecilia Malmström, European Trade Commissioner, Mauro
Petriccione, the Commission’s chief negotiator on CETA, Olivier
Nicoloff, Canada’s ambassador in Belgium, … and Jean-Pierre
Tanghe, the president of the Belgian-Canadian Chamber of commerce.
Sunday’s summit
will come as a relief for European and Canadian trade officials, who
had been negotiating the trade deal since 2013. Their efforts were
blocked two weeks ago by the parliament of Belgium’s
French-speaking region of Wallonia.
Wallonia resisted to
CETA in part because it was seeking further assurances on
agricultural and legal aspects of the trade pact between Brussels and
Ottawa.
On Sunday, Trudeau
will be joined by Jean-Claude Juncker, the commission president, and
Donald Tusk, the Council president at a signing ceremony at noon
local time.
In a statement,
posted on its website, the Council said, “the agreement comes with
a binding joint interpretative instrument, which explains what the
provisions mean in practice.”
Many EU officials
hailed the agreement on Twitter on Saturday, expressing satisfaction
that the deadlock on CETA was over.
Juncker said in
tweet, “Hard work and patience paid off. Looking forward to
tomorrow’s #EUCanada Summit.”
Authors:
Maïa de La Baume
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