In an extremely hostile climate in the midst of an agricultural crisis, an ad hoc left-right alliance allowed the Senate on Thursday to oppose the ratification of the Ceta free trade treaty between the European Union and Canada, a significant shock for the executive on the road to the Europeans. At the initiative of the communist group and with the help of the right, the upper house displayed its divisions by rejecting this much-criticized agreement, provisionally applied since 2017 at the European level but never submitted to senators since then.
Fiery debates
The debates heated up until the end between defenders and opponents of the treaty: multiple points of order accompanied the end of the session to prevent speeches and accelerate the pace of the examination, limited in time. An extremely rare image in an otherwise peaceful hemicycle.
The centrist, Macronist groups and the group of Independents with a Horizons majority even left the chamber before the final vote, facing “a sidestepped debate”, according to Senator Claude Malhuret (Horizons). “Everything was organized for a vote against! We can’t even speak anymore,” protested the leader of the centrists Hervé Marseille (UDI), in the middle of an open crisis with the right, his historic partner in the Senate.
The vote to reject the trade agreement was therefore logically broad, 211 votes against 44. Republican leader Bruno Retailleau denounced “a clear desire for obstruction” from the presidential camp to prevent the vote from having took place in the four hours reserved for the parliamentary “niche” of communist senators, who had chosen to put this government text on the agenda.
A rejection which is not enough, in itself, to denounce the agreement on a European scale
It is “a political thunderclap”, a “democratic victory”, savored the communist senator Fabien Gay, calling on the government to continue the parliamentary shuttle. Minister for Foreign Trade Franck Riester denounced “a crude maneuver, an unacceptable manipulation with serious consequences for our country” and “a disastrous signal” for Canada. “It is simply a political coup that the communists, the socialists, with the support of the Republicans, are carrying out in the middle of the European election campaign to the detriment of the general interest,” he added.
This rejection by the Senate is not enough in itself to denounce the agreement on a European scale, but the setbacks of the French government on this sensitive subject are far from over. Indeed, following their fellow senators, the communist deputies announced that they would include this text in their reserved parliamentary time – their “niche” scheduled for May 30 -, ten days before the European elections.
The deputies had already narrowly approved the ratification of Ceta in 2019, but the presidential camp lost the absolute majority at the Palais Bourbon, which raises fears of a new rejection… In this hypothesis, the equation would then become very complex: either the government notifies Brussels that it cannot ratify the treaty and this leads to the end of its provisional application for all of Europe; or he procrastinates at the risk of attracting the wrath of oppositions who will cry out for democratic denial.
The government in favor of Ceta
In the meantime, the government has gone out of its way to try to convince people of the merits of this agreement which removes most of the customs duties between the EU and Canada, citing the increase in exports and the benefits for the wine and dairy sectors. The discontent of the agricultural world, in particular of cattle breeders, indeed seemed more convincing than the government in the eyes of the senatorial right.
“We are saying stop the unfair competition that we are subjecting to European producers by imposing ever more draconian standards, while turning a blind eye to imported products,” thundered farmer senator LR Laurent Duplomb. Despite some dissonance, the Les Républicains group overwhelmingly voted against.
PCF deputies announce that they want to include the text on May 30 in the Assembly
After its rejection by the senators, the communist deputies announced on Thursday their intention to include the Ceta treaty on the agenda of the National Assembly on May 30, during their reserved day in the hemicycle. The Senate’s vote “cannot remain a dead letter”, they said in a press release, indicating that their group wanted to include the text in its “parliamentary niche”. “The confirmation by the National Assembly of the rejection of Ceta will make it possible to put an end to its application,” they judged.
The left, for its part, opposed it as a whole, with the socialist group notably singling out an agreement “in total contradiction with our environmental commitments” according to its senator Didier Marie. And the Macronist camp, a minority in the Senate despite the support for this debate from the powerful centrist group of Hervé Marseille (UDI), could only note the damage. “Ceta becomes a good scapegoat for the slaughterhouse,” lamented centrist Olivier Cadic, denouncing “the demagogic tirades” of LR parliamentarians, compared to “anti-European Union Brexiteers”.