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Joint press statement by S2B, PowerShift, AbL, BUND, Forum Umwelt & Entwicklung

European and Canadian NGOs call for an immediate halt of the CETA free trade agreement

A new study gives an analysis of the contents of European-Canadian trade agreement CETA

Berlin/Bratislava/Brussels, 22nd September 2016

Important decisions on the European-Canadian free trade agreement CETA will shortly be taken on EU institutional and Member State level. On this occasion, Canadian and European experts of civil society shed light on the most controversial aspects of the agreement. They conclude that CETA in its present form threathens public welfare on both sides of the Atlantic, referring among other areas to investor-state dispute settlement, agriculture and energy policy.

“In CETA, the controversial investor-state dispute settlement mechanism is preserved: investors still receive far-reaching rights to challenge policy measures that could possibly harm their investment”, explaines Peter Fuchs (PowerShift). “Some procedural modifications do not change the very vague and extremely dangerous legal concepts in CETA’s investment protection chapter at all. In addition, up to 42,000 US corporations with substantial business activties in Canada could already use CETA’s investment protection regime to challenge European environmental oder social policies.”

“The ratification of CETA would be a severe setback for efforts to encourage non-industrial farming practices and sustainable agriculture on both sides of the Atlantic and for fair prices for producers instead of dumping export prices“, stresses Berit Thomsen, trade policy officer at AbL.

“CETA will undermine sustainable energy and climate policy in the future. Efforts to stop fossil fuel-based energy production and promote renewable energy will the threatened by CETA, which poses an immense danger to any measures put in place to reach the goals that the EU and Canada agreed to in the 2015 Paris Agreement”, trade policy expert at BUND Ernst-Christoph Stolper explaines.

The publishing organizations call for an immediate halt of the CETA negotiations and the ratification process.

Publishing organisations:
Arbeitsgemeinschaft bäuerliche Landwirtschaft (AbL), AK Wien, AITEC, ATTAC Deutschland, ATTAC Österreich, Bund für Umwelt und Naturschutz Deutschland (BUND), Campact, Forum Umwelt und Entwicklung, Katholische Arbeitnehmer-Bewegung (KAB), Lobby Control, Mehr Demokratie e.V., ÖGB (Austrian Trade Unions Federation), PowerShift, Umweltinstitut München, Compassion in World Farming, Corporate Europe Observatory, Ecologistas en Acción, Global Justice Now, Institute of Global Responsibility, Mouvement Ecologique, Natufriends Greece, EPSU, FFII, Fairwatch, Progressi, S2B Network, SOMO (Centre for Research on Multinational Corporations), TNI, War on want, and the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives

The report is available free of charge here.