Are people drawing any lessons from the troubles with CETA? There is still a long way to go with settling the scope of EU trade policy, with a court decision coming and political battles to be fought, and CETA may eventually be fully ratified in its current form. But even so, the Australians seem wary of taking on a trade negotiation that is so comprehensive and controversial:
Trade Minister Steven Ciobo says Australia will forge ahead on a proposed free trade agreement (FTA) with Europe, despite the embarrassing collapse of the EU's trade deal with Canada.
However he said Australia may have to settle for a smaller deal that can be signed by the EU Commission alone, rather than a broader FTA that must be ratified by parliaments across the Union.
Mr Ciobo, who is in Europe meeting the region's other trade ministers, said he was still "optimistic" about an Australia-EU deal, despite European Council president Donald Tusk saying that if the Canada agreement fell through it "could be our last free trade agreement".
...
Mr Ciobo said Australia "needs to be sober about the challenges we face" in negotiating a free trade deal with the European Union.
After a scoping period, the negotiations proper are expected to begin early in 2017.
He said he had watched closely the developments between Canada and the EU "and they will help to inform Australia's position with respect to the scoping study and negotiations".
The Canadian deal's problem was that it had to win the approval of member states, he said.
"Maybe we will look at a deal that is solely within the EU Commission's competence and maybe we will look at the pros and cons of making it more comprehensive than that," Mr Ciobo said.
Speaking of Australians, here's a comment from Brett Williams on the last post that seems relevant here:
Wouldn't it be great if all of these discriminatory agreements fell over and everyone would have to get back to negotiating trade liberalization in the WTO incrementally and gradually on a non-discriminatory basis - and cut agreements on other (non-trade) topics like Intellectual Property and Remedies for Protection of Investment and Movement of People into separate standalone agreements that could be withdrawn from without withdrawing from the liberalization of trade in goods and services!
Is that too far-fetched, or could we get there somehow?
