The free trade agreement with Canada arrives in the Senate this week and for Franck Riester, the Minister Delegate in charge of Foreign Trade, invited Monday on franceinfo, “there is still time to convince the senators of the relevance of this agreement”.
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Ceta, the free trade agreement concluded between the European Union and Canada, has been in force for six years, at least for the most part. In France, it was ratified by the National Assembly in the summer of 2019. But it has not yet been examined by the Senate, which must vote on March 21. It was included on the Senate agenda, at the initiative of the communist group.
“We support this CETA agreement”, declares Franck Riester, the Minister Delegate, responsible for Foreign Trade, Attractiveness, Francophonie and French people abroad, on franceinfo Monday March 18. According to him, this agreement allowed France “to massively increase its exports, by more than 33% in six years”.
Franceinfo: do you fear that CETA will be rejected by the Senate?
Frank Riester : Yes, but there is still time to convince senators of the relevance of this agreement, which is a good agreement. I am not in favor of free trade agreements for the sake of being in favor of free trade agreements, out of principle or ideology. We look at whether they are good deals or bad deals. It’s a good agreement, that’s why we support this Ceta agreement and we oppose the agreement with the Mercosur countries.
The communists promise a thunderbolt.
Yes, because it is an agreement which, today, has many virtues, which has been implemented provisionally for more than six years, and which has concrete, positive results for our economy, for our businesses, in all sectors. Because we have massively increased our exports by more than 33% in six years. We have, in certain sectors of activity such as textiles, chemicals, cosmetics, developments at two or three times the previous activities in terms of exports. And we also have, in the currently sensitive sector of agriculture, very good results with exports up very sharply, including wines and spirits.
“Dairy products, starting with cheese, saw their exports increase by 60%.”
Frank Riesteron franceinfo
Cheese exports have increased for two reasons. First, because in this agreement we have allowed our AOP to be protected. This is what protects our Cantal, our Reblochon, our Brie de Meaux, but also the prunes from Agen or the foie gras from the South-West. The AOP ultimately preserves part of our French identity with these quality products, which until then could be copied in Canada and which today can no longer be, hence the increase in exports. The second reason is that there are no more customs duties today for cheese exports, whereas there were 220% customs duties at the time.
A demonstration is already planned for Thursday morning in front of the Senate, at the initiative of the Peasant Confederation.
Yes, because there is always, put forward by some, the fear that this will negatively affect our sensitive agricultural sectors, such as beef for example. However, this agreement demonstrated that ultimately, sensitive sectors were not affected. You know, there has been a lot of talk in discussions of the agricultural crisis about the need to implement mirror measures. We support this idea, we are working on it with our European partners. These mirror measures make it possible to demand the same health or environmental standards from producers in third countries of the European Union as we demand from our own producers.
“There is a mirror measure that has been implemented for a long time, that on hormones used as growth factors for beef, and which makes it possible to block the entry of beef with hormones from Canada.”
Frank Riesteron franceinfo
And that’s why there are no exports of beef from Canada to the European Union. Because today there are many farms in Canada that use hormones as a growth factor. So, this is the demonstration that these mirror measurements are useful.
If this agreement, Ceta, is not ratified by the Senate on Thursday, what will happen in practice?
This would be a bad blow for the ratification of this agreement. And we will see what happens next in the legislative process for the ratification or not of this agreement. It was ratified by the European Parliament and must now be ratified by national parliaments. It has already been voted on in the Assembly, it must be voted on in the Senate. If it is not voted on in the Senate, we will have to see how the parliamentary process continues. But itThis would be a terrible message sent to all our French exporters, our wine growers, our milk producers who are happy to find outlets in Canada. A very bad signal also for other industries which use, for example, critical minerals purchased in Canada, which were previously purchased from Russia, such as uranium or lithium, which we need for our batteries and our ecological transition. I am also thinking of oil which is now bought from Canada whereas it was previously bought from Russia. And I think of all these companies which exported much less and which export thanks to this agreement.
Is it not paradoxical to ratify Ceta and, at the same time, to stop negotiations on Mercosur? This agreement was about to be concluded between the European Union and four Latin American countries, starting with Brazil and Argentina.
But no, it’s not paradoxical, otherwise there would only be one general agreement for all the countries in the world. It is because there are different conditions that we have different agreements to sign with this or that area of the world. Ceta is a good agreement, we said, and besides, it’s not just us. François Hollande and Matthias Fekl, who negotiated this agreement, have always said that it was a positive agreement. So I also hope that the socialists will be in line with François Hollande and the socialist leaders at the time.
“On the other hand, the one with the Mercosur countries, which is currently being negotiated, does not suit us.”
Frank Riesteron franceinfo
We said it, I think we were clear. Not only have we not validated it, but we will not validate it. For what ? Because the conditions which are different from those of Ceta are bad for our agriculture, in particular with very large import quotas and a certain number of productions which cannot be blocked from entering the European market. Because we do not yet have all the mirror measures, the famous ones that I spoke about earlier which are implemented in Europe.