On 30 October 2016, after overcoming last-minute objections from Belgium’s Wallonia region, the European Union and Canada signed the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA).
The European Parliament will now be asked to give its consent to CETA, at which point it will provisionally enter into force. However, CETA’s proposed two-tier permanent investment court – designed to replace the current investor-state arbitration system envisaged by most bilateral and multilateral investment agreements – will not be included within the scope of the provisional application of CETA. The investment court will instead only be implemented once all EU Member States conclude their national ratification procedures.
In the interim, the European Commission has stated that it will work with Canada to further elaborate some of the parameters of the new system, including with respect to the selection of judges, access by smaller businesses to the new system and the appeal mechanism.
For the European Commission press release click here; for the press release of the Prime Minister of Canada, click here.