Canada finalizes long-sought trade deal with EU

TORONTO, Sept. 26 (Xinhua) -- After five-year negotiations, Canada and the European Union have finalized a trade agreement that is expected to open markets on both sides of the Atlantic to tariff-free trade worth billions of dollars.

The Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) was signed Friday in Ottawa by Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper, European Council President Herman Van Rompuyand and European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso. The final text of the deal has also been released.

At a Canada-EU summit in Toronto, Harper hailed the pact as the largest trade agreement in Canada's history, saying it could boost Canada's income by 12 billion dollars annually and bilateral trade by 20 percent, which is equivalent to creating 80,000 new jobs.

"The agreement is deeper in ambition and broader in scope than any other trade agreement in Canada's history, including the North American Free Trade Agreement," said the prime minister.

The deal would see Europe buying more seafood, pork and beef from Canada, while Canadians would pay less for European imports like food, wine and cars. It will remove about 98 percent of European tariffs on Canadian products.

The CETA pact, approved in principle last October, will overtake the North American Free Trade Agreement which came into effect in 1994. When fully implemented, the agreement is expected to increase two-way trade in goods and services between Canada and EU by 23 percent, or 37 billion U.S. dollars.

Negotiations for the deal ended in August and it sill needs to be approved by the European Council and the EU parliament. Barroso predicted that all 28 EU member states will ratify the deal in 2015 and its provisions will be in place starting in 2016.

There was, however, a last-minute hiccup in the process. Germany balked at a provision that would give multinationals the right to sue national governments, a provision critics said would give big corporations too much power and could lead to governments being pressured into ignoring laws on labor, the environment, data protection or food standards.

"Germany has the most to gain since they are the biggest economy in Europe. Why wouldn't they ratify it?" Barroso said.

Source: Xinhua