This is a considerable setback for the executive, two and a half months before the European elections. On Thursday March 21, the Senate rejected the ratification of CETA, the free trade agreement between the European Union (EU) and Canada. The text, which notably provides for the removal of almost all customs barriers between the two parties, was condemned by an overwhelming majority, from elected Republicans (LR) to the left (socialists, ecologists and communists).
Article 1er, in which the ratification of the agreement was recorded, was deleted by 210 votes for, 44 against, before the bill thus amended was adopted by 243 votes for, 26 against. “Today is a very bad day for our economy, for our entrepreneurs, for our exporters, for our farmers,” lamented the Minister of Foreign Trade, Franck Riester, helpless in the face of the coalition of oppositions.
Five years after the difficult vote of the National Assembly, in July 2019, the senators finally voted on this free trade treaty, the communists having decided to include it on the agenda on the occasion of their parliamentary niche. Requested many times by the Senate, the text was never included on the senatorial agenda by the executive, which feared being defeated at the Luxembourg Palace. “We would not be here today if the government had deigned to hear this call to debate democratically with the respect due to our chamber,” declared Daniel Fargeot, centrist senator from Val-d’Oise, from the podium.
“A situation of unfair competition”
In the middle of the European campaign, where the agricultural crisis is emerging as a primordial subject, the issue of relations with the agricultural world has crushed all the other dimensions of the debate around the ratification of CETA. It is in particular the fear of seeing the beef industry compete in the future with imports of Canadian meat produced to significantly different standards that motivates opposition to CETA, particularly on the right. “There are our interests, the interests of our breeders, of our territories, (…) This is what we want to defend today so as not to put them in a situation of unfair competition,” defended the president of the LR group in the Senate, Bruno Retailleau.
On the left, the concern to preserve reciprocity in environmental, health and social standards took precedence in opposition to CETA. “A breach has opened in liberal dogma, giving way to a greater desire for regulation and sovereignty,” argued the socialist senator from Seine-Maritime Didier Marie.
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