THE RATIFICATION OF CETA

Since we are on the verge of a Canadian style FTA or more correctly a Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) I thought it would be useful to have a look in a bit more detail and found that the House of Commons library published a research briefing (HERE) on it in July this year which makes interesting reading. Work began to negotiate a free trade deal with Canada in May 2009 and it took until 2014 to settle the details plus another two years before it was signed in October 2016. The briefing paper says, "CETA has been in force provisionally since September 2017. Most, but not all, of the agreement is in force".

THE EXPERTS IGNORED AGAIN

The Exiting the EU Select Committee heard compelling evidence yesterday from Mr Christophe Bondy. He is Canada's legal counsel on the CETA trade deal and he didn't mince his words. The committee was told we were attempting something never tried before, that is to negotiate an FTA which will reduce trade. He described it as trying to blow up part of the bridge (HERE) that has been built between the UK and the EU over the last 45 years, but without bankrupting ourselves. See the whole session HERE - I recommend it.

CETA - HOW EASY WILL IT BE?

It seems clear (if anything about Brexit is clear!) that we are going to ask for and get a CETA type free trade deal.  David Davis has called for a Canada plus, plus, plus trade deal and Barnier has said a Canada style deal is really the only option, considering the red lines we have set out, so I think CETA is what we are looking at. I should say that nobody who seems to know about these things believes CETA will give us anything like we have at the moment in terms of frictionless trade.