This is from Politico:
COUNCIL TO AMEND CETA AS ‘MIXED AGREEMENT:’ Coming as no big surprise to frequent Morning Trade readers, Friday’s Trade Council will see the EU ministers changing the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) with Canada into a ‘mixed agreement,’ meaning that not only the Council and Parliament, but also the Parliaments of all 28 EU countries, will need to approve. That’s what several diplomats from different countries confirmed to Morning Trade. “It is very clear that our national parliaments want to have a say on this as well, so we won’t deny that,” one of the diplomats said.
While this is understandable, the question remains whether the Council is not opening a Pandora’s box: In Belgium, for example, all three parliaments — the Wallonian, the Flemish and the Brussels regions’ — would have a say, and the Wallonian chamber has just lately approved a resolution in which it rejects the deal. In the Netherlands, under the new referendum law, Euro- and trade-skeptic initiatives could call in a public vote once the Parliament approved CETA. In a similar case on the EU-Ukraine trade agreement, we just saw how this can end — with a public rejection of the deal.
Legal fuzz: The Commission sent another trade deal, the EU-Singapore agreement, to the Court of Justice to clarify whether such deals actually touch on national competences, thus whether this approval of national parliaments is actually a necessary duty. But a ruling is not expected before September, and the Council is certainly not going to wait that long.
The really exciting question: Which parts of the treaty will be defined as EU competence (entering into force after the approval of the Council and the European Parliament) and which ones will be national competence (only applicable after the green light from all national parliaments, and thus in only in two to three years). What we hear: One nugget the national parliaments most certainly want to keep in their court is the new investor court system (ICS), which replaces the much disputed and less transparent investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS). Independent of which parts fall into their competence, both sides — the Council and the European Parliament on one side and the national parliaments on the other — will always vote on the whole package.
So how (and when) will national parliaments vote on CETA and the new investment system?
ADDED: Some EU experts on twitter tell me this is still in the discussion stage. Nothing final yet.
