Belgium breaks deadlock over EU-Canada free trade pact

Grown-up, win-win negotiation between two geographies with shared values.

Meanwhile across the English Channel...

I called it wrong, in another discussion line on this topic. Gomen nasai!

Oh goodie tor the greedy technocrats in Brussels I would almost think this wasnt a thin veilded attempt to shove it down our throats I wonder when the law suits will happen against govermental nations when a product fails to meet the "projected" profit margin in european countries .

On this plus side maybe the food prices in Canada will go down by this.

This (the addendum) is a clarification, the actual treaty does not change

So in other words, it is a useless piece of paper. Let me see how my bank reacts when I add a unilateral 'clarification' to our house loan contract.

It's possible that the EU has always anticipated that the European Court of Justice will eventually strike down the secret investor 'courts' (ISDS) as being illegal under EU law. Why else did they refuse to send their plan to the ECJ for an opinion before completing the agreement? If the court strikes down an entire chapter of the treaty, they will probably be back at the negotiating table next year to sign an identical treaty, but this time without ISDS. I doubt the Canadians will want to let their 7 years of work just go to waste over ISDS.

It would be a master stroke on the part of the EU Commission if this was their plan all along and they were just leading the Canadians down the garden path with talk of ISDS (which the Commission has always been against in the past). I'm not sure if EU trade negotiators are this smart or underhanded, but I hope this is how it turns out.

Did Europe just sold its people out