2024-03-21 12:00:00
While the European campaigns are in full swing and agricultural crises are multiplying, this Thursday, the Senate took exception to a text which had been adopted without it: the Ceta free trade treaty between the European Union and Canada. “A political thunderbolt” which makes the government cringe.
Signed in 2016, provisionally adopted at European level in 2017, the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (Ceta) was narrowly validated in the National Assembly in 2019. The problem is that the government has not never before the Senate, although the step is necessary in the process. For what ? Because he has little chance of obtaining a majority and a refusal could call into question the application of the text on a European scale.
But the subject deserves debate: among other things, Ceta removes customs duties on 98% of products traded between the European Union and Canada.
Denial of democracy, again?
Better late than never, the Senate has woken up. Rather than focusing on their legislative proposals, the communist elected officials included in their reserved parliamentary time the bill authorizing the ratification of Ceta. And, they share this need to fight with many other political groups. Environmentalists, socialists and a large part of the senatorial right, the first group in the Senate, are in fact opposed to this treaty.. “There was once again contempt for the Senate and Parliament and we have not forgotten that,” points out the leader of the Republicans, Bruno Retailleau.
The text is criticized by French breeders, in particular because it allows imports of meat at production costs much lower than theirs, with less strict methods than those to which they are subject. “Through Ceta, we bring in products from a completely different health model, which disregards all the rules,” inveighs senator LR Laurent Duplomb, a professional farmer who intends to send a “warning shot” to denounce the “culpable naivety” of the European Commission. The socialists, for their part, insist on the “renunciation of environmental ambitions” embodied by this agreement.
If the Senate ultimately refuses the text, the latter will theoretically have to return to the Assembly, where it could well be that it will now be refused, given social circumstances. Fabien Roussel already imagines “a very broad republican arc to say no to this treaty”.
As reported by AFP, if a national Parliament declares the non-ratification of the treaty, this calls into question its provisional application across Europe, provided that the French government notifies Brussels of this decision…
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