Does Wallonia’s veto of CETA spell the beginning of the end of EU trade policy? CEPS Commentary, 20 October 2016

Van der Loo, Guillaume and Pelkmans, Jacques. (2016) Does Wallonia’s veto of CETA spell the beginning of the end of EU trade policy? CEPS Commentary, 20 October 2016. [Policy Paper]

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Abstract

Last Friday, Paul Magnette, the Minister-President of the francophone region of Belgium (Wallonia), declined to give the consent of his government to the federal Belgian government to sign the landmark Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) between the EU and Canada. As a consequence, the Trade Council, meeting on October 18th, was not able to adopt the decision to sign and provisionally apply the agreement, which in turn will prevent the EU from signing the agreement next week at the EU-Canada Summit in Brussels. This veto evoked the image of Wallonia as the provincial village where Asterix, the titular hero of the French comic book series, fiercely resisted the entire Roman Empire.

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